Hello February

We usually have more snow a little earlier in the season, so I've been grateful that the weather has been taking it easy on us. Starting at about 3 am this morning we welcomed the first major snowstorm of the season. All the schools and a lot of the businesses in the area shut down preemptively in anticipation. I don't think it was as bad as they expected - I estimate we got about 6 inches total where live. However according to those that had to go out today, the roads were terrible because the plow trucks just weren't doing anything. Please, if you must drive in weather like this, be careful, go slow, and arrive safely.

I had gone to the grocery store yesterday (along with, apparently, every other living soul in the area,) so Smidget and I hunkered down while Jack had to brave the roads for work.

Crafting is slow going as the Smidget takes up most of my time and any time not spent interacting with him finds me doing things like dishes (ugh) or laundry (meh), but I have learned to carve out just a little time every morning for me during his first nap of the day.

This month I've been working on Tiger Chilling Out for my cross stitch project. I'm hoping to finish the top half by the end of the month. I'm trying to decide whether to do the backstitching and couching now or later. I would prefer to do it now but I'm worried that the q-snap will damage the couching as I move the frame to the bottom half.

Before

Current

 I also finished the purple and black hat and started on the matching scarf. We're playing yarn chicken with this one, as I'm trying to use up leftovers and I'm not sure I have enough for a decent scarf. I might unravel it and try a different pattern.
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Ever buy a skein yarn that you thought was pretty cool and then have it stitch up totally ugly and hideous-like? Well I have - see below -  and so when I was able to start my JAYGo Craftsy class this week, I used the hated Herschnerr's Worsted 8 in Spice for my practice squares. This is for the first set of lessons, which teach a flat join on squares. It's really a nice way to join squares and I wish I'd known how to do it before starting my Shall-In-A-Ball afghan.

 

So here's a question - I can continue with this JAYGo square project and turn it into a tote bag OR recognize that I've mastered this type of flat join and move on. Which should I do? I don't really like "wasting" things but is it really wasted if I learned something new? Does everything I do need to have an end use? Will I actually use it for anything as I hate the colors? Is there anything inherently wrong with scrapping practice pieces? I've gotten around this in the past by pawning off my incomplete projects on my niece who has a knack for reimagining and repurposing items but I wouldn't wish this yarn on anyone I liked. If this was your project, what would you do with it?