Onion Market mitts

This is the one thing I finished over break:



They're fingerless mitts - really, more like little sleeves for your wrists as there's no thumb opening/gusset - called Onion Market (or Zibelmarit, if you're using the Swiss name) mitts. Inspired by the onion market in Berne, apparently. The circular pattern on the mitts (made with increases and decreases) resembles an onion.

(Perhaps Shrek would like a pair. Or maybe Fiona).



I used Poems Sock (an impulse buy from the local quilt/yarn shop) in a color called "Aurora". It's kind of dark in places but the "onions" still do show up.



And another little thing I did - I kept spotting bare spots on the tree, so I finally decided to stick some of my blindbag pony figures up there. You can see my glow-in-the-dark Pinkie Pie (who DOES glow, but it's with an eerie green phosphorescence, rather than a wholesome pink Pinkie glow. But I guess that's not possible given the state of glow technology) and my glittered Twilight Sparkle, and Sweetcream Scoops, who is a Twilight Sparkle repaint.



I like to think I'm just carrying on a little tradition there. One of the Christmas books I have ("Have Yourself a Very Vintage Christmas" which is fun, if maybe a bit light and "surface" in places) notes that in the 1920s, it was fairly common practice for children's toys - "active duty" toys, from out of the nursery, not just ones intended as gifts - to be used to decorate the tree. (Though I don't know how I would have felt as a child to have some of my favorite toys taken out of service for a few days to weeks in order to decorate a tree....)

But of course, now that I'm an adult, I'm perfectly happy to put my ponies on the tree. (I don't really "play" with them. Oh, I arrange them and make little vignettes and I confess to having done the "now kiss" thing (but ironically, of course) with Princess Cadance and Shining Armor. (And also with Fluttershy and Big Macintosh. I admit some of the fan "shippings" - most of them, in fact - don't really work for me, but I could see Fluttershy and Big Macintosh slowly noticing each other over the months, and somehow eventually shyly starting to date.... And I think she'd be a much better match for him than Cheerilee would.)