Needlework Tuesday - Old and New

Needlework Tuesday is an occasional post detailing my needlework and/or crafting projects.

This week, I was been busy knitting my shawl (almost done!!), but I did manage to find a few minutes to complete a project I started in December 2014. It's one of the decorative snowman mittens from Mary Maxim. I didn't have much to complete, just the side seam and some finishing touches. But here it is:

I remember knitting this way back when and it certainly wasn't fun working with that many yarns hanging from the work. That's double the number you see on the front because there's another snowman on the back. I still find it odd that it was the same motif on both sides. The packaging shows the trio hung on a mantel, so you'd never see both sides at once. Unless I read the pattern wrong.... Anyway, while this guy is cute as hell and I love the shape of the mitten, I won't be making the other two anytime soon. In fact, I've been thinking of some options:

• not make them at all and use the yarn for something else
• make the mittens but forget the snowman motives
• make the mittens and only put the snowman on one side
• make the other mittens as I did here, with motifs on both sides.

I'm not going to decide right now.

I also had a little time to plan my next project. I have a number of Mary Maxim's Knit Club of the Month kits sitting about. Some of them started, others waiting to be started. Here's what I've lined up:

 

The first is a spa set. I wasn't happy with this kit at all. First of all, the pieces of the set were made from differently coloured Scrub-it yarn. While the colours mostly coordinated with each other, they didn't really look like a part of the same set and definitely didn't say "spa".  At least not to me. Second, the kit didn't some with enough yarn to complete all of the pieces. I contacted the company after running out of the one colour and they said they could send me one extra ball. After I said that I'd more than likely run out of two more colours, they said there was nothing more they could do, but I could order more if I liked. Since I didn't love this set anyway, I declined to order anymore. I think I'm going to rip out what I've done so far and make myself a few dish cloths instead. I think there are some free patterns online.

The second project is a Kitchen set. Again, another kit not to my liking. I only made a few of the pieces before running into problems. I'm going to go through this one again to see if there's something I can salvage.

The third one is pink baby blanket. I started another one of these and didn't get too far last year. I'm not interested in finishing that one yet, but this one is entrelac, which I haven't done before, so it might be fun to at least try.

First things first, though. I'm going to finish up the shawl I showed last week.  I have less than 20 rows left before casting off.  Then I'll take a look at these three projects to see which of them I'll tackle first. 

Needlework Tuesday is hosted by Heather over at Books and Quilts.    If you'd done any crafting this week that you'd like to share with others, please head over to Heather's blog and use the Mr. Linky to link up your post, so others can enjoy your creations.