Dance of the Moose Pants Fairy

Happy holiday season! Whatever you celebrate, if anything, I hope you have  a good one. It's getting festive here at the House of M.

It's also recital week this week and, for the first time, both girls are dancing. It's kinda neat that Bu's first recital is Nutcracker because it's a special thing at the dance school. Bu's part is pretty small because the littles have short attention spans and are pretty much there to be cute and experience being on stage, but she's super excited and will just randomly start doing parts of her dance.

Bu and some of the Nutcracker Corps dancers

 The littles wear Christmas-y pajamas for their costume, which is easy, inexpensive, and comfortable. I had some wintery fabrics on hand, so I thought I'd do up some pajamas for her instead of buying some. I had just enough of this fabric for some jammie pants and the shirt is one she already had. I'm missing some bias tape to finish the other two sets of jammies in the works, but these are delightful and perfect for her first dance on stage. I give you the first FO of this week: Moose Pants!

The moose are my favorite

The second FO this week is a pair of socks for Miss Iris. These are called Pronaia, which means "forethought." This is the Fork in the Road pattern by Lara Neel in  Sock it to Me Fair Isle in the Covered Bridge for the main part and Knit Picks Stroll Solid in Fedora for the heels, toes, and cuff.

I'm also doing a fair amount of stash fluffing, which includes washing and measuring some of the handspun, generally taking stock of what there is, and making sure everything is entered properly with pictures into the Ravelry stash. For a taxonomist, this is a walk in the park compared to obscure Andean butterflies, but I'm using many of the same skills. Sort by shared characteristics (in this case, color), label everything, take more notes than you think you need to. That is how you science.

 Finally, as part of the upcoming Project Make reboot: A year long along of alongs, I'm announcing the first few months' alongs.

January is for Mending: Visible mending is more than just fixing your clothes. You're applying functional art to garments that would otherwise be tossed in the trash bin or headed to the thrift store. Mending is fun, decorative, and good for the environment.

February is for Finishing: I'm certainly not the first to suggest this, but as a person with  DaVinci Disorder*, I always have unfinished projects to attend to and this is a good chance to take stock and give some attention to what might otherwise be abandoned to the depths of the WIP pile.

Weaving in ends

March is for Embroidery: Embroidery is one of my favorite crafts because it's like painting with thread. It's also one of the oldest crafts known to humankind and hasn't changed much since the dawn of time. If you're into socks, mittens, or other things that come in pairs, March will also be for Making Mates, but I'm going to be focusing on embroidery for the purposes of Project Make.

That's it for now! I'm looking forward to the beginning of the year. 

*Da Vinci Disorder is not a real disease.