The last little unblogged bits of 2014

The good news is, I think I'm finally starting to get better. The constant nausea is going away, at least, but it's kind of hard to tell--just when that started letting up, I got slammed with a virus 2 days before Christmas! The doctor at the clinic called it "flu-like", and while I wasn't actually having stomach issues from it, I did have to spend the next 3 or so days fighting off fevers. Since then, it's just felt like a nasty cold. And hopefully without going TMI, when I'm really stuffed up, I easily get nauseous anyway. So I still haven't had a nausea-free day, but I'm hopeful that it's coming soon. At least I'm slowly able to start expanding my diet again--I can actually drink water and a little tea now, and I've been eating fruit in the form of smoothies. I may even be able to start cooking dinner again soon, and while I know that takes up time, when you've been living off of chicken noodle soup and cheerios for a few months, that's pretty exciting!

All that to say, I wasn't able to do much sewing for those first couple of days after I finished up at my retail job. Because that ended the day before I got sick, and I was feeling so progressively lousy that day that I couldn't even finish cutting out one of the projects I do have to show. But I did get that done on Monday, and then sewn up yesterday.

I'm going to start with some knitting today, since I recently finished this fairly quick project. The pattern is called "Magic Hat", and it's supposed to be so stretchy that it can fit a variety of sizes. I used some leftover bamboo-blend yarn that I already had, and knit this up in the 4-12 month size, since Hobbit will probably be about 5-6 months old when he or she will need a winter hat. I also didn't quite use up all of the yarn, and I'm rather tempted to see if I have enough left to add some Yoda ears! But the yarn is so drapey, I'm kind of afraid it wouldn't work.

The hat looks a little cone-head on the table, so I had to improvise on a model. My parents gave us a few Christmas presents for the baby, including this little stuffed German shepherd. So its ears seemed to be enough to make the approximate shape. Cute, right?







I do have a little sewing to show. I stitched up this first one back at Thanksgiving, but never posted it here. Just a quick refashion--my mom was getting rid of some unwanted pants, so I picked the zipper out of these corduroys, scooped out the front and stitched up what was left of the fly, and then added this stretchy panel. I know it looks kind of distressed brown in the picture, but these pants are actually black. I have another pair all cut up and ready to sew, save the panel, in navy blue. Hopefully I can knock that out soon, because I literally have two pairs of "work" pants (both black), and two pairs of jeans right now. And that's it. I swear I bought 3 pairs of jeans, but the one pair seems to have vanished without a trace!

And then yesterday's sewing project was these burp cloths. I promised Doug I'd make some hockey-related things, so I found this flannel print that has the logo and colors of one of his two favorite teams. I managed to use up about 2 yards of flannel on this, between the one yard of Penguins fabric I bought, and the solid black that I partially got for this and partially to back one of the geeky bibs I made earlier in the month. There's a total of 9 burp cloths here, and I know my mom has a stack of others for us, too.

I do have one more bib to sew up, since Doug also really wanted to help make one! So he cut one out yesterday and I'll be sewing it. I also need to fix a pair of pants for him ASAP, but then I'm hoping I can start sewing some clothes again! 

I did some quick looking over my spreadsheet to see what my final tally was for stashbusting this year! It looks like I started 2014 with about 340 yards in...and ended with 375. Oops. Granted, I did just buy about 20 yards of stuff to make diapers with, which will get used up in the next several months and accounts for the bulk of the overage. On the plus side, it looks like I sewed up close to 72 yards this year. And I did manage to use up about 27 pieces of fabric altogether. I think that's pretty good, considering that I spent the entire last third of the year unable to do much at all, between traveling and pregnancy sickness!