a tale of 2 fleeces

if you find me quirky, you'd better believe that my quirkiness derived from mom and dad's quirkiness.  they don't have a problem matching, so i figured i'd make them matching red fleeces for christmas (actually, truth is these were last year's christmas gift...  i'm at the stage of announcing gifts for my 1st year of holiday gifts, then executing them for the 2nd year's gifts... terrible child i am).  eric and i also don't have a problem matching, hahahhahahah, we both have very similar green hoodies.

from 1 red fleece blanket, i made these 2 jackets: mom's has a grey sports zipper and dad's has a white one (his is actually double-sided... not that these jackets are double-sided... a waste of a zipper, i know).  things were zipping right along until i sewed dad's left sleeve onto mom's jacket by accident, HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!  oopsies.  look how long and roomy it looks below, on mom's jacket.

otherwise, nothing else was new or interesting with this project, as this makes the 3rd of dad's fleece jackets and mom's 2nd.

dad got his elastic sleeves (i wish he'd prefer non-elastic ones as elastics are so PESKY)

mom doesn't care, so of course, she gets no elastic on her sleeves, hahahhaa.  hey, i do what i can to get these gifts out faster!  after this project, i learned that all my skipped stitches are caused by using a ballpoint needle vs a stretch needle.  (omg they drive me CRAZY!!!  i'm a perfectionist so i will go over skipped stitches over and over again until a regular stitch gets laid down.) now here's the annoying thing: ballpoint needles are sold as knit/stretchy fabric needles.  fleece is a type of knit.  so why the heck are there also stretch needles!??!?!?  apparently stretch needles are for very stretchy knits, which apparently include fleece.  i've hated sewing fleece for years.  now, no more skipped stitches!!!  YIPPEE!  i learned this from reading someone's sewing blog.  who knows, maybe i just taught you a thing or 2 hehe.

here's a pear pandowdy i made recently.  it was good, in theory, but a bit sweet.  pandowdy is essentially a top crust pie whose top crust gets sunk in to get soaked in all the yummy juices.  i used an apple pandowdy recipe and didn't realize that ripe pears are sweeter than ripe apples.