Oooh, I'm lovin' the mitten.  Lookit, I decided to do a braid after all.  I'm lovin' it, too!  I can't believe how easy it was and how gorgeous it is.  The bad choice is in the yarn.  Fuzzy wuzzy was a mitten.  I'm going to finish it, though it may never have a partner -- it'll be my learnin' mitten.  I'll hang it on the tree or something.  My little mistake in the salt & pepper pattern is visible a few rows above the braid to the left of the two white stitches; to the right are the thumb stitches held on some waste yarn 'til later.

Y2K.  This is one of 24 quilted stars that my sister made and gave to me for Christmas 1999.  The fabric coordinates on all of them, but each one is unique.  I display them atop a small cabinet in the kitchen each year on this gorgeous wire tree that I bought from Smith & Hawken.  This one is 40" tall, but I don't think they offer that size anymore (if I recall correctly, they also had one that was 5' tall or so that year).

For those of you more interested in the background (y'all know who you are) -- the blurry green bit on the counter in the Y2K pic is my everyday, depression glass butter dish; a small part of the rest of the collection is glowing in the cupboard beyond.  That cupboard was on the back porch when we moved into the house, but we reclaimed it for the kitchen.  It holds cookbooks, jars of staple dry goods, spices, as well as bowls and other display pieces.  The doorway at left leads to the laundry room.  The cupboard that you see behind the tree is a piece salvaged from an area high school -- I believe it was used in the science room.  One of my chores today is cleaning all that glass.  Ugh.  The bottom shelf on either side holds our eclectic mix of everyday dishes.  The two shelves in the middle hold old bowls and platters, and a nearly complete set of Homer Laughlin Eggshell Georgian dishes.  A girl can't have too many old bowls.  It gives me great pleasure to choose the right bowl for a particular task or presentation.  Great pleasure.  The top shelves hold the punch bowl, cake plate, my collection of glass chickens, lots of odds and ends, and many, many "Grandma dishes" -- they are also Homer dishes, and the design was an important feature in my mosaic table.