I seem to be going longer and longer between blog posts these days. What have I been up to over the past few weeks?

Let’s see. I got it into my head to make a heart-themed pizza for Valentine’s Day this year. After some thought, I decided not to make the entire pizza heart-shaped, since that would make it cook unevenly, not to mention that the slices would look ridiculous and end up in weird-shaped pieces. Instead, I ended up creating heart-shaped pepperoni to adorn my Pizza of Love. This was easier said than done with a pair of dull kitchen shears and a pile of greasy pepperoni, but I succeeded in making enough vaguely heart-shaped bits to cover the pizza. I discovered that I could cut two pepperoni slices at once, but three was right out.

The scraps, as well as the failed hearts, had to be consumed. Urp.

Here’s the pizza with just the cheese and pepperoni. You can still see the hearts in this shot.

Not so much after adding the red onion and bell pepper and baking it, though.

Here’s the one heart that was still discernable after the pizza was baked. I think I’ll skip this little exercise in futility next year. 🙂

I’ve managed to finish a couple knitting and sewing projects for myself this month.

First up, a knitted and felted purse to replace the tattered $10 Target number I’ve been lugging around for the past 3 years or so. I used the free It Felt Random Bag pattern as a guide. I’m extremely pleased at how this turned out. I knitted this on and off for probably 9 months, using random scraps of yarn left over from other projects and varying the stripe colors as the mood struck me. It felted up beautifully, and when I pounded in the metal grommets to reinforce the holes for the straps, I only smashed my thumb once, which I consider to be a triumph. I hate pounding grommets.

Since I had a new purse with no built-in credit card slots like my old one, I needed a wallet. I poked around online and found this great tutorial for a cloth wallet. I managed to quickly sew this up during Griff’s naptime on Friday morning, and again, I’m really pleased at how it turned out. I even got to use one of my sewing machine’s fancy embroidery stitches, woohoo.

The outside:

And the inside, with my three most important cards showing: my debit card, my driver’s license, and my cabin-fever-relieving NC Life + Science Museum membership card.

I also finished up my first colorwork mitten and cast on for the second one. Whether I’ll get to wear these before next winter is anyone’s guess.

You can still see the waste yarn on the palm where I’ll create the opening to make these “flip-top” mittens. I’ll do them both at once, at the end.

Now that the weather has warmed up, we’ve been taking Griff outside at every opportunity. One mistake we made during a recent trip to Little River Park was bringing the stroller out onto the field with us. Griff was totally obsessed with it and spent the entire time pushing it around on the grass. Sigh.

Today he discovered a nasty old broom that was leaning against the house and insisted on dragging it around the deck, up and down the deck stairs, and all over the yard. (He’s surprisingly strong for his age, it seems like.) When we finally had to pry it out of his hand to go inside, you’d have thought we were torturing the poor kid. All we can figure is that he’s been reading Harry Potter books in his crib overnight and wants to play quidditch. A Nimbus 2000, this ain’t.