Amidst the big projects, little things slip in.  Here are a few.

A gift, a teacosy just for one…for surely, the act of making a proper cup of tea just for ourselves is a moment of commitment and love.

The body is crocheted in a mystery yarn from my stash. It is from someone else’s destash and I have no clue what this could be, only it is sooo soft but sturdy with lots of short fibres like possum or something.  It is like a wee pet all curled around the littlest Brown Betty teapot. The flower is a Jamieson and Smith left over in the stash.

No pattern, I just chained the circumference and worked a couple of rows of double crochet in the round (US: SC) and then some trebles (US: DC) back and forth, decreasing for the top in double crochet in the round.

A couple of hot water bottles for cold nights.

After cutting a rough template from a hot water bottle, I cut out the fronts from an old slip stitch wrap that I had fulled.  Years ago, I had got very excited about Kaffe Fasset’s method of joining random yarns together in a ball and knitting a colour work pattern from them. I found a slip stitch pattern in a Harmony Guide and just kept knitting.  I had no plan or design in mind, just a burning drive to knit up these mixed balls of mostly Jamieson and Smith fingering weight. It never really became anything…till now.

The backs were cut from a moth ravaged pure wool sweater that had been fulled. Luckily the holes were conveniently placed in other spots.  The opening at the back was a velcroed closure reinforced with woollen fabric.

Is there nothing that cannot be made better by wool?

Finally, a wee garden.

We found a fishbowl recently that was being thrown out and I briefly contemplated fish, then contemplated the cleaning, the feeding, the inevitable deaths and probable spillage and then made a garden instead.  Our Dear Girl and I searched the garden for rocks and gravel and we bought some tiny air plants.  All they need is a little water mist every now and again.

These simple projects which generate from the materials to hand and a purpose or need give me so much pleasure.  Of course, there is something exciting about the anticipation of a project from a pattern and the gathering of materials but these other kind of projects make me feel quietly capable.