sewing skillz... or lack thereof

While wrangling with my mom's ancient sewing machine, something finally occured to me: the sewing machine was supposed to make things easier. Duh, right? So yeah, hand-sewing it together. Have stabbed myself with the needle more times than I care to count, but it's going a lot better now.

I couldn't find totoro fabric. I don't think they make it. Or if they do, please tell me where so I can send you cookies. So I tried for camphor trees and acorns. Found something that would fit the bill,
I got it from Fabric Tales. Highly recommended! Cheap and fast shipping, and none of that fat quarter thing you see on Etsy--fraction of the price too.

needlessly complicated

So, I like to change patterns because I don't want to knit the carbon copy of somebody else's project. Fair enough, right? It's just that I end up making them WAY HARDER THAN THEY NEED TO BE.

I'm making mittens, out of sock yarn, and I thought it'd be neat to have them reversible. So, double knit. But corrugated ribbing isn't reversible. Tried a few different things, but have resorted to tubular cast on, and will knit 2 sets of cuffs, connect them when I get to the main body part.

When I first cast on, was sitting on the fence whether to do a variation on somebody's latvian mitts, or a herringbone stripe thing for the back side. Went with the latvian boxes, but not so thrilled. Too many long floats. Hey, at least the double knitting should take care of any floats, yes?

I dislike this skinny yarn thing. It makes my hand cramp up. But I couldn't get enough detail with worsted yarn.