stealthin elfin'

Now that these projects have reached their destinations, I thought I'd show some of the projects that have kept Elf Leah busy over the past couple of months. Since she was so happy with the prototype wallet she made for me, she made a bunch of others, each with the fabric combinations chosen specifically for the recipient (except the two stripey ones for male teen cousins, as the seamstress decided we didn't have very many "boy fabrics" in our stash). More beaded snowflakes too, with bead colors to match the wallets.

One morning, she marched into my office and plunked down this completed needlepoint project. I had never seen it before, had no idea she was working on any such thing, and didn't know that she knew how to do needlepoint! She had been working on it, completely on the sly, for weeks. She only brought it to me when she needed help with blocking and framing. It's 6" square, a kit she bought at Joann's with a gift card a while back. It definitely shows signs of being her first needlepoint project, but for being stitched by a 9 y.o. with absolutely no help, wow -- she blew me away with that one!

Last is a project she started before Halloween, a shark hat for cousin Zach, similar to the one I made for Scott. We were smarter this time and blocked the hat before taking pics of it, so the coned yarn could bloom. We tried a different technique with the teeth this time, which made them more pointy, as planned, and also more crookedy/jaggedy, like scary shark teeth should be.

Zach put it on right away and enthusiastically came outside with me for photos with his snowboard later on xmas morning. When I explained to him that Leah and I were test knitters, helping the designer of this hat because she's planning to offer the pattern soon, and that I'd be putting this pic on my blog, he was visibly a little bothered by the idea. He moaned, "But then all my friends will have one!" But he perked right up again when I reminded him that they can't all be lucky enough to have a cousin who loves them enough to knit such a cool hat. :-)