Crafting nook "makeover"

I'll make this a short one since it's not yarn related.

Recently I pruchased a dress that I got half off original price from a online clothing store. With it I got two decorative pillow cases and a blanket for free with free shipping. I figured that these last mentioned items would be great upgrades on my otherwise boring little crafting nook.
When I craft, I'm located in this huge, comfy and green chair from IKEA. It's actually so big that I could curl up like a cat and still have room for half my yarn stash next to me. But when I snug up, I like to stuff my surroundings with pollows, so I got in total four pillows in my chair that I use to keep my butt in place. Two for the back and one each to pop my elbows on. It's like I got a chair of pillows inside a chair...of pillows!

Not to mention that I love to cover myself up and snuggle down with a blanket, so I got this huge and fluffy faux fur blanket...that's full of cat hair mind you. But all of this seem pretty bland, don't you think? Black on grey on green? Even though the colors are great, there's not much going on there. The only kind of fun thing happening in that chair are my awesome polar bear pillows!

Let me talk about the polar bear pillows for a bit, cause they are actually hand sew by yours truly! Let's try and make this craft related at some point atleast...
So, I've had this extreme facination with polar bears since...I have no idea when... Forever it seems... And one time when my parents and I were off on a shopping trip in Sweden (cause we norwegians do that all the time), my mom dragged me to this craft store for some reason. They sold yarn and fabrics, but since this was before my yarn craze, I didn't really browse through their yarn stash. Instead I found this little piece of plush, fleece fabric with polar bear print on it. It wasn't a big piece, but because of my facination with polar bears, my mom bought me this fabric and suggested that I could maybe sew something with it.
Some time later, my mom dug out some kind of stuffing fabric thingy stuff and gave it to me along with the polar bear fabric and told me to bring it to school. Since we at that point had sewing in the art and craft class, she said that I should ask the teacher if I could use this stuff to make myself some pillows, which my teacher agreed on.
Since the polar bear fabric was so scarce, I could barely make two pillows out of it. To get the big polar bear on the front, I had to be creative with how I sewed it up. One has the seam on the side while the other got it 1/4 on the back. This may not be the biggest accomplishment for you sewers out there, but for me, this was big!
So the polar bear pillows have followed me for over 10 years now, to every dorm and appartment I've been living in.

Because of this, it's sad to see them go, but they were the only pillows that would fit these new pillow cases. It's kinda comforting knowing that they're still there, under the fancy zig zaggy pattern.

The blanket is thin and acryllic, so it's not very warm, but perfect as a summer blanket. The faux fur ones tend to be too warm during summer, so it'll be good to have this lighter one to pull over myself, even when I don't need a blanket. As I said at the beginning, I love to snuggle down under a blanket, no matter the temperature!

So what do you guys think of my new surroundings? Does it look any better? I do think so!

First yarn purchase of 2014!

Stupid me didn't get to think about yarn for the skirt until almost a week after I ordered this yarn... Stupid me... I could have saved so much money on shipping...

Oh well... Gotta just wait for the next yarn sale and I "need" more yarn. Not in a hurry making the skirt, it's just that I really want to start it NOW if I got it on my mind.

What I did get though, is baby yarn in superwash merino for baby CarCar! Tried to go for more gender neutral colors that would work great in stripes, but the color choice was pretty wonky and limited, so I just had to take those whom looked the best from the picture. Sadly, the blue turned out too dark for my taste, the website pictured it as a more mellow, sky blue with a hint of lavender. Now, I'll just have to dive into my baby clothing patterns!

I also got some more superwash wool yarn for socks cause I was running out of it in my storage. The best all wool blends for socks in my opinion is Rubin from Spar Kjøp and Karisma from Drops. Not the most excisiting colors, but why not try a color combination that I'm not used to?

And the last yarn I got was Ullteppegarn. At some point, I will be making myself a "lang nisselue", and a friend of mine (the spawn of the Knitting God) told me that this yarn was perfect for those hats. I was originally planning on doing the colorfull version Amalie uses in Amalies Jul, but they didn't have the right shade of green so I'm just making the normal, all red version instead.

Spar Kjøp got this giant sale all though january, not just on yarn, but on all kinds of stuff! So I also picked up a flannel PJ set for 50NOK (100NOK discount so I just had to) and four decorative pillow cases for 25NOK each (originally 40NOK). They're not really special, but they do a so much better job than plain grey or black pillows in our green couch! They're also faux suede so they're soft and purty!

All in all, I got away with 28 skeins, that's 1400gr.