crafting and ballerinas

Thanks to conference weekend, I was able to finish this hat and booties set for a friend. You can't tell in the picture (I have no idea about camera lighting) but they are a really pale pink with white ribbons.

These are some large swaddling blankets I made for the same friend. (I actually feel badly for saying that I "made" them because all I did was do a roll hem and a straight stitch on the sewing machine. Seriously easy.) She came with me to pick out the fabric. Isn't the owl one on top just the cutest?!

The following pictures are of Maryn in her ballet class. She is enjoying every second of the 30 minutes each Wednesday. (The teacher only allows parents to visit class on the last Wednesday of the month.) While observing the class, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the teacher is actually teaching the girls ballet positions, using the correct piano music for each.
The ballerinas in the pictures are (left to right) Zoe, Samantha and Maryn.

As an amazing coincidence, two of my best friends (one mentioned previously) are being induced with their third babies tomorrow. (In different states, one having a boy and one having a girl.) Best wishes to both of you for minimal pain, healthy crying babies, and speedy recoveries!

the finished product

My goal over the next few weeks is to finish a bunch of projects that have been sitting around my house unfinished (some for over eight months). I have this problem where I get all excited to start a new project and then get burnt out when I realize I can't do it perfectly the first time. I need to get over that. Thus the push to finish everything, perfect or not. I can do it...right? (I'm going to chronicle my progress here so as to add some accountability, if only to myself.)
Project #1 finished: A crochet bag for Jon's new Macbook. (I'm obviously not doing these in chronological order because I started this one most recently and finished it first- mostly because Jon needed it quickly.) I started with the idea that I would use up some cool brown and black wool yarn leftover from making hats and few months ago, instead of buying anything new. I'm really bad at trying to gauge how much yarn will make how much product. So after I did that one big brown section and saw that I was almost out, I panicked and decided to add the green wool (of which I had recently bought a bunch on clearance) in small increments with the remaining brown and black. As you can see, the green sections started to get bigger and bigger until I finally ran out of both brown and black and had to finish everything up in green. I think it turned out kind of ugly, but Jon thinks it looks cool (and has even gotten some compliments on it since) so that's all that really matters. The inside lining is just three of those craft foam sheets hot glued together to form-fit the computer. Stitched together the yarn and lining in a few place, sewed on a button and presto- a laptop bag!

rear view (this probably should have been the front, more interesting stripes)

interior view