Monster sock

At the Ravelry sock group, we're trying to use up our left-over sock yarn before the new year begins.  Here's my second pair of left-overs sock in progress:

outfit for a little girl

I made this outfit for my niece, Libby, for Christmas.  The patterns were all from Ottobre magazine, the fall 2010 issue.  There was a cute bubble skirt with a machine-embroidered mushroom on it, a blouse with pin tucks, and a velour jacket to go with the skirt and blouse.

It was my first attempt at machine embroidery.  I put a piece of stabilizer under the fabric while I stitched the lines of the mushroom, and that helped a lot.  It was pretty easy and didn't require a fancy machine, as the only stitch required was a straight stitch.

The blouse fabric is Liberty Tana lawn. I had a blouse that I made for myself out of it, but I never wore it, so I took it apart to make a smaller blouse.

Here's the jacket on Libby:

 And on the floor:

 Blouse detail:

Skirt detail:

stashbuster socks

On Ravelry.com, there's a group called Sock Knitters Anonymous, and this month we're all trying to use up our leftover sock yarn from other projects.  I made these socks from a pattern in Anna Zilboorg's book Socks for Sandals and Clogs, called Betelgeuse.  It's an easy pattern, but the accent yarns sort of pop from the background in a good way.