Holiday Fun

Since I've only been posting about knitting FO's lately, there is a fair amount of updating to do about the holidays.

My mom came into town the Sunday before Christmas, getting here around suppertime. Even though I had to work on Christmas Eve, C was off work, and the two of them were able to do some prep. I did get out of work early, and we were able to go to church before supper. I had bought some HUGE crab legs, and they didn't quite fit in our biggest pot:


We tried and tried to come up with a solution, and finally found one:

Whatever works! The crab was fabulous....so yummy!

Christmas morning gift display:


My Bayerische socks finally made their "on-feet" debut on Christmas!

I have to admit, now that I'm away from the pain of making them - I love them.

Highlights from my gifts....


I already have a lovely stand mixer, but for jobs that are smaller, a hand mixer is more appropriate...but my hand mixer was about to burn out, and this is a very fancy one with all kinds of attachments. :)


This will come in handy for future apple-pie making (I think C already wants to make a pie...)


All sorts of fun stuff in here!


This looks amusing - have only flipped through it so far, though.


SOCK YARN!!!!
I know you all are thoroughly shocked at the color ;) This is Handmaiden Casbah, which is 80% merino, 10% cashmere, and 10% nylon. I can't wait to use it. I really need to get faster at sock knitting!


Fun shirt from my sister :)


Brand new computer!!! This thing is tiny. It's about 3 inches tall, and if I put my hand on the top of it, my hand covers it completely. I spent Thursday getting it up and running, and put a few finishing touches on it yesterday. It is going to be absolutely lovely for photo editing and blogging. I'm sure I'll do more optimization over time, but I am going to really enjoy having this.

And now for the Christmas feast!


Warm spinach salad with bacon, mushrooms, roasted red pepper, and pine nuts...


Herb crusted rack of lamb (our first time roasting a rack and it turned out beautifully)


Freshly made spaghetti tossed with fresh herbs and olive oil (and yes, we did drink that HUGE bottle of wine...it's 5 liters in case you were curious).

Hope everyone else had a great one too. I look forward to hearing about things once the craziness winds down!

Embossed Leaves

Powered thru these and got them done!


I love these. I wish the photo showed the detail better.

Pattern: Embossed Leaves by Mona Schmidt, from Favorite Socks
Needles: Size 2 Knitpicks circulars
Yarn: Crazy4Dyeing Merino Superwash Wool, Pumpkin Pie colorway
Started: November 11, 2007
Finished: December 28, 2007

Oh, and I was convinced I was going to run out of yarn. Here's how close I cut it:

In other words, not close at all. Ha.

Airy Scarf

Christmas gift for my friend Vicky:



Pattern: Airy Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts
Needles: Size 10 1/2 Clover DPNs
Yarn: Rowan Kidsilk Haze
Started: December 8, 2007
Finished: December 16, 2007

I wanted to keep this for myself, but had to send it off. I have enough yarn to make another, so eventually I will do one for me. The yarn was very fiddly though, especially since I was using bamboo needles. The worst part was the bind-off, I kept dropping stitches and one of them actually fell down several rows which was really NOT fun to fix. The actual knitting was very easy though.

Embroidery is not my friend.

At long last, the Baby Bobbi Bears are done. It may have taken double-digit numbers of tries (and ripping out and cursing) to get them both done.

Reece's Bear:


Julie's bear:


Pattern: Baby Bobbi Bear by Bobbi Intveld (for Blue Sky Alpacas)
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas Organic Cotton (except the purple detail which is Peaches & Creme)
Needles: Size 9 Clover DPNs
Started: Sometime in November (don't remember, and they were both different start dates)
Finished: December 16, 2007 (both)

To anyone considering using this yarn, be forewarned: it BREAKS with a vengeance. Worse than Noro Kureyon.

Where did the weekend go?

I feel like it was just Friday night. And yet now we are only 2 weeks from Christmas and I am not even close to halfway done with shopping. Eek!

Speaking of Friday night, that was our Ktog Christmas party. I took surprisingly few photos. We had a Thieving Secret Santa game...here is the pile o' gifts at the beginning.


Vanessa brought numbered tickets to determine the order of play...here she is getting ready to pick the ticket for the first person to select:


I know others took photos too, but that's really all I have.

Here is what I ended up with from the gift exchange:

A fun fabric drawstring bag...


Chocolate and yarn needles


More chocolate


and the Knitting Stitch Bible. I actually stole this gift rather than unwrapping one...it was a pretty popular one and was stolen a couple times, but I ended up with it :)

Vanessa also gave everyone a tape measure:


And Erica gave everyone an ornament filled with novelty yarn:


It was a very fun event. I was there till almost midnight...and then on the 3 mile drive home I pretty much ran out of gas...my car gives you a couple miles warning so I knew if I didn't get gas on the way home I wouldn't have enough to get anywhere else, even the gas station. So there I was at midnight by myself in the 9 degree weather, filling up my car. Bah. Oh well, now it is full for the week.

Here's a little Christmas knitting for you:


Ribbed scarf for my dad


Booga bag for stepmom


Partial Airy Scarf....not sure yet who this is going to, it sort of depends on how long this takes. I want to do at least 3 of them, but one has to ship so if only one is done by next weekend that's the one that is being shipped.

I also finished #1 of the Embossed Leaves Socks:

The color is way too dark but you get the idea. I am terrified I am going to run out of yarn for the second sock, and I got this from Etsy so buying more is not possible. Please keep your fingers crossed for me - I love this sock!!!

Weak.

Since the bears are done, I decided to do some Airy Scarves as Christmas gifts. I ran out to the LYS to get some Kidsilk Haze today (I took a vacation day today...ended up doing a fair amount of work too but that's another story altogether):




That second one is dark purple, but the photo didn't come out too well. This should get me 4 scarves, and only one of them will have to ship so I'll get started on that one right away. I used wooden needles for the fingering weight one, this time I am using Addis because the stickiness of the wooden needles drove me NUTS. I can only imagine it with the Kidsilk Haze.

I was supposed to just grab the Kidsilk and go, but this caught my eye on the way to the register:

Dream in Color Smooshy! And look at those colors :) I am weak.

I did finish the first Airy Scarf:

I didn't bother blocking it (as you can tell) because when I finished it, it was barely long enough to go around my neck, let alone tie it. (No, I didn't swatch. Nor did I measure before I did the end pattern on the second end. Shut up.)

I did, however find a home for it:

Keeping busy

Between work, knitting, and Ravelry, I've not had much time for blogging.

The last bear is done:

Now that this is done I think it is pretty much on par with the brown one. There are some things I like better about each, but overall they are both pretty good. Now I just have to get the faces embroidered.

I also started an Airy Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts:

This is going fast. I think I am going to get some more yarn and do more of these. This is supposed to be done in laceweight but I think it also looks nice in this fingering weight (Louisa Harding Kimono Angora).

I also had some stash enhancement on Wednesday...my STR Raven order came:

You can barely see the colors but it is primarily black with blue and purple. I can't wait to knit it up.

Catching up...

I am way way behind in my blog posting...primarily due to Christmas knitting. :/

So here is the practice bear...

I guess he could have used a bit more stuffing...though he seemed overstuffed at first. This is my first stuffed knit item, so I guess I am learning there. I got the nose on but am having horrific trouble embroidering the eyes (you can see a bunch of fuzz from my prior attempts). I am hoping someone at Ktog will be able to help me next week.

Here is Reece's bear minus face embroidery:

I actually don't like the duplicate stitch effect around the neck...so I don't think I'll do that for the next one. This one definitely turned out better though, aside from my forgetting how to do m1 increases without making holes....it's not so bad that I feel the need to rip it out though.

And my pet project - this is what I keep bargaining with myself on....if I do some work on the bears, I can do some work on these....

This pic was taken a few days ago. I'm now past the heel and just finished the gusset decreases. I love love LOVE this pattern. Very easy (though not so mindless I can read a magazine while knitting), really fun, and just LOOK how beautiful it is!

Close-up:


This sock is really all I want to do. I'm going to the symphony tonight, so this will be coming along with me for the car ride (the bear just isn't so good for car knitting).

Knit, Knit, Knit...

This time, the reason I haven't been posting is that I've been KNITTING!!! (See, the Grasshopper socks are done!)

For the last few days I have had my head down working on Christmas knitting. Here is my progress on the teddy bear for my nephew Reece:

This knits up nice and fast. I'm glad I did a practice one though - I found it much easier to continue on from the body and do the head right away, rather than putting the stitches on holders, doing the legs, and coming back to the head. I'm ready to start the legs now.

And I'm getting ready to start another pair of socks (I may have cast on already by the time you read this):


One of the yarn stores in Ohio a couple weeks ago got me obsessed with finding an autumn-y orange/brown yarn to do some socks in. They had a great display, but unfortunately I couldn't find a combination of color, texture, and gauge I was looking for. This is the whole package, found on Etsy. Hopefully I'll like knitting with it. The plan is for the Embossed Leaves socks.

I also signed up for Netflix today. We've been talking about watching more movies, and I find movie-watching time to be prime knitting time (especially for stuff like that bear). I'm going through and rating things and adding stuff to my queue. So far my queue seems to be full of documentaries and foreign films.

Knee High to a Grasshopper!

Finally, finally, FINALLY done!!!



Pattern: Knee High to a Grasshopper (April '07 Rockin' Sock Club Pattern)
Yarn: Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silkie in "Walking on the Wild Tide" colorway
Needles: Size 3 (3.00 mm) Knitpicks circulars
Started: June 6, 2007
Finished: November 8, 2007

(just remember these were hibernating for quite awhile, because I didn't want to do these the same time as Bayerische.)

I love the yarn. The "mesh" pattern is very difficult, basically it's a lot of yo, p2tog. There are a few holes I need to patch up because there are a few spots where I purled together two yo's (oops). I think I only did it once on the second sock.

I do love the socks, but I'm not anticipating using this pattern again.

All kinds of fun

I took the last few days off to go to Ohio and help my mom out for a bit (she had surgery so she only has the use of one hand right now). Among my duties:

• chauffeuring (lots and lots)
• cooking for us to eat immediately, as well as cooking things and freezing them for her to eat later
• chopping/shredding/grating to make cooking easier with one hand after I leave
  
• trash collecting around the house
• hair washing
• moving large items
• etc.

It seemed to be helpful for her...though the time went by really fast!

Here's one thing we saw on our foray to the local Whole Foods:

I have never seen ostrich eggs in the store before. It was tempting, but we had no clue what we'd do with them, so we moved along.

I also went to visit my dad for a few hours. My 13-year-old stepsister was painting a window for Halloween at the local Caribou Coffee, so we hung out there for a while....I got some knitting done (which subsequently was ripped out...sigh). The finished window:

Pretty impressive, eh? A ghost dressed up as a pumpkin and a pumpkin dressed up as a ghost. :)

I also snapped a photo of this hanging from a tree on my dad's street:

It's very blurry because I had to crop the heck out of it in order to be able to see what the subject of the photo is. A mini-pumpkin with a jack-o-lantern face and bat wings. I thought this was so cute.

I do need to mention that I went to 3 yarn stores in Ohio and didn't buy anything. Behold my awesome willpower.

And I did actually get some progress made on my long-suffering Grasshopper socks:

Pretty good progress, especially considering I had to rip and re-do the heel 4 times. I'm about 8 rows from starting the cuff. And then I have a whole other one of these to do. :( I love the result but am hating the knitting - much like Bayerische. But I have to get through the STR club socks because I signed up for next year :) Hopefully that wasn't a bad idea, but I did love the first installment and the others look like they'll be OK to knit too.

Some yarn for Christmas knitting:


Blue Sky Organic Undyed Cotton in Nut


Blue Sky Organic Undyed Cotton in Bone

And I leave you with the best yarn score of all...the latest installment of the STR club:

Part of the Raven series - Lenore. This photo is a little dark, but the yarn is black with red and purple in it. I LOVE it. And the pattern, but I didn't take a photo of the pattern.