Let’s be honest, there really hasn’t been much time for crafting or projects since our Leiflet arrived. I’ve been knitting a baby blanket for him since sometime in the second trimester, and it’s only just past halfway done now (he’s nearly 5 months old). But this past week I managed to actually start, and finish, a project. And it made me realize that it’s been ages since I’ve actually completed a knitting project. I went through the basket of knitting and realized that I’ve abandoned or frogged the last 4 or 5 projects in a row. There the lace yoga bag. The sweater dress for myself. There was the sweater I was going to repurpose into leg warmers. Oh yes, and the onesie knitted on SIZE ONE needles (what was I thinking?) that was purchased for the first nephew (now 3.5 years old), actually started for the second nephew (now 1.5 years old) and in danger of being too small for my own son before long it’s complete.

So it was nice to actually finish a project. I remembered that the point where knitting finally took off for me was when I developed the patience to knit things right — stop and pull out mistakes, check and recheck the gauge, read the pattern all the way through before diving in — and therefore stopped being discouraged by hastily-knit crappy things and started being pleased with the results of patience and effort (umm, duh, but one has to learn these things for oneself). The last few projects have been too slap-dash: ignoring mistakes, trying to frankenstein a pattern into something it’s not.

These hand warmers are my contribution to a holiday gift exchange. I don’t personally know the person I’m gifting (it’s a facebook moms’ group I’m part of), but I google-stalked her enough to know she lives in Massachusetts, and so I figured that these would be of good use. (Let’s hope she’s not allergic to wool).

I used this pattern, and pulled these together over the course of three evenings.