The perfect husband. . .

At least for a quilter! Yesterday my sweetie was trying to open something and he couldn't find scissors. I told him there was a pair on the coffee table with me knitting. And he asked in his most sheepish voice (no pun intended), "I can use these?" Just what every quilter wants to hear!!!

My sweetie and I are sick, which means lots of knitting time when I'm not cleaning. I should have the cutest FO EVER in a few days!

AHHHH!!!

I think I've been sucked into an alternate universe where everything is exactly the same except that ravelry and bloglines don't exist!!!!! It's horrible! Both sites are not responding and I finally have a second to sit in front of the computer. I had a very fussy day. It was a good day until my sweetie reminded me we have to go to a wedding next week and we have yet to set up dog boarding (we've never boarded our dogs and I'm very nervous about this!), plane tickets, hotel, car rental, buying a present, or buying a dress! But the good part of the day is that we got an Amish made dresser for the bedroom and it should be delivered next week. I'll be able to get my clothes off the floor and the dogs won't be able to bury anymore bones in my piles of clothes! THe major find for the day was a cedar chest for a whopping $75!! I'll take pictures later, I'm not in the mood to take pictures right now. Anyway, with very little to do right now due to the ravelry/bloglines dilemma, I'm going to knit. I could get the tickets settled for this weekend, but I'm far too fussy!!

Christmas knitting revealed

I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday, I sure did! I can finally post pictures of what I've been knitting the past few months!!! First off is the socks. A pair of Monkey socks for Gloria:
Pattern: Monkey socks
Yarn: Wildfoote, color ragtime
Needles: US 1, 2.5mm
Notes:I should have used a larger needle. I got gauge with the 1 but the socks were a little tight to get over the heel, but they fit great when they are on. They were a fun knit and the pattern was pretty easy. I did change to a slip stitch heel.

Next is the embossed leaves socks for Valerie:Pattern: Embossed leaves from Favorite Socks
Yarn: Lotus yarns, color Dig
Needles: US 2, 2.75mm
Notes: I was very sad to see these go! This is by far my favorite pair of socks I've ever knit. I didn't make any changes to the pattern. The yarn was the softest sock yarn I've knit with. It's such amazing yarn and I can't wait to get more of it!!!!

I have better pictures of both of these socks on the sock blockers but they are on my computer at home so I'll post them on the next post.

A pair of convertible gloves for Mom:
Pattern: Pop-up Paws
Yarn: Harrisville Designs New England Highland wool, color periwinkle
Needles: US 4 and 6 (I think)
Size: the second smallest
This was a pretty quick knit. Mom picked out the yarn and pattern. They are for when she takes her little pup to agility in the cold.

Now onto the gifts!!!

I got this from Gloria:
It's a clapotis in Brooks Farm yarn that she secretly got when we were at Rhinebeck. It's ridiculously soft and the colors are just perfect! It will go great with my gray pea coat. It's knit very well too, you'd never know she used to just knit occasionally!!!

From Valerie I got this:
And this:
First up a skein of hand painted sock yarn. It was immediately wound into a ball and a swatch was knit. It's a future pair of Jaywalkers! From the swatch it looks like the color will change just about every row. I can't wait to cast this on and will as soon as I get back to Ohio and my needles!!! The picture does not do this yarn justice, it's the only one of the 6 or so shots I took that actually shows the color correctly. It's varying shades of royal blue and purple with small bit of white. Then there's a set of hand made stitch markers. They're blue and green and will be put to good use on my next projects that uses needles larger than a US2!

Happy Solstice to all and to all a good knit!!

I'm off to NY for a long holiday weekend! I'm looking forward to my presents and some relaxing knitting time (HA!, nothing is relaxing at my parents' house during a holiday!) Stay tuned for podcast #6 that will we hopefully get out while I'm home and stay tuned for pictures of the items I knitted for Christmas.

Happy winter solstice!!!

Christmas knitting is done!!!!!!!

I actually finished all the projects I set out to do with one exception. I was going to make little sock ornaments to put on all the cocoa jars. They weren't as much fun as I had hoped so I probably won't make them, but we'll see I still have a little time left.

Now for my knitting new years resolutions:
1. I will finish my sweetie's sweater in 2008
2. I will not buy yarn unless I get pregnant (then I have to buy lots of yarn), I go to the Knitter's Connection or Rhinebeck, or when I'm traveling (which I don't plan on doing much of in the coming year).
3. I will finish super secret project #2 - this is a biggie!!!

Not many resolutions, but they're big ones!!

My big personal resolution is to lose weight. I've gained back almost all of the weight I had lost before and I hate it, so I'm going to lose weight again. It's tough with being home all the time, we'll just have to make some big changes. I'm thinking of contributing to the Flickr 365 days project where you take a picture of yourself every day for a year (actually 366 this year!) and then maybe if I lose weight it will be pretty cool to see it over the year. We'll see. I'd probably have to pay for flickr then since it would be a whole lot of pictures. I'll think it over during the holidays and if I start it will probably be on Jan 1st.

4 years!

Today me and my sweetie are celebrating our 4th anniversary!! We're going out to dinner at the only 4 star dining in Knox county! We used to have "our" restaurant in Virginia where we went for all special occasions. It will be weird going anywhere else, but maybe we'll find a new "our" restaurant.

Ok, onto the crafting content. I haven't had all that much knitting time lately. Today will be a knitting day. Organizing the house can wait a few days for me to finish up Christmas presents. I got a few things made the other day. Including some homemade cocoa mixes that will go to the Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents. Don't they just look scrumptious!!!
I'm also working on more calorimetries. I finished my second one. This one is the slightly narrower than the last one and I think I finally have the perfect pattern (at least with this one type of yarn).
I have one more to make and then I also want to make little ornaments to attach to the cocoa mixes. I think that I have a cute sock and mitten ornament pattern in one of my pattern books. And I still need to finish one of my sister's presents. It's about 75% done and if I work on only that all day today I may be able to finish it. I know that's not going to happen though. It's supposed to be 40 degrees today and it's not supposed to rain so I really need to get the dogs out for a nice long walk.

The more time I spend blogging, the less time I'm knitting, so Bye!

I missed Knitty!

I can't believe it! I missed the new Knitty!!!! Sharon had mentioned it on her podcast, She-Knits, so I went to check and yep, I missed the announcement of the winter issue. Not like I'm going to be running out to buy yarn to make anything today (being that Christmas is just a week away and I still have Christmas present to knit!), but I feel kinda out of the loop. I went and updated my e-mail address with Yahoo so this will never happen again!

Anyway, the new issue is great, although I think that the Toothpick Optional would have been a perfect addition! There's not one, not two, but 5 pairs of socks (although one is for the kilt wearers out there!) Slippery will be my first project. Sally the Eco Fairy will definitely be knit if I ever have a little girl. And I am thoroughly intrigued by Jeanie. A drop stitch cabled shawl . . . interesting, very interesting.

An FO that I can actually blog about

I actually finished something that I can blog about. It's the first time in a while.

Pattern: Calorimetry
Yarn: Paton's SWS in Natural Navy
Needles: US8
Modifications: I cast on 100 instead of 120 and I did about 10 repeats of row 5 instead of 15.
I think it came out pretty good. I plan on making 2 more, they will be for my female in-laws. I have one more skein of SWS in another color and a skein of Noro Kureyon. It's a pretty quick knit. Everyone on ravelry was saying it took them 2 hours so I must be a super slow knitter since it took me about 4 hours. Maybe the next one will go much quicker.

I'm also still working on one of my sisters presents. I spent a while yesterday working on my craft room. I got everything moved from the guest room down 2 floors to the basement. My sweetie helped by moving the bookcases for me. I've started straightening up but there's still a pile of miscellaneous craft material (like cross-stitch and soap making) that I don't have a place for yet. And I need to get a new sewing table because the mover's broke my old one. I also really want a permanent cutting table so I don't have to take over the dining room table whenever I have a project going. I think that will have to wait until we get a new dining room set cause then I can take the old table and use that.

I'm cleaning up my blog a bit so there will be no more finished object list. I figure anyone who's going to look for an old finished object is probably on ravelry anyway and updating that list is just pain in the butt!

I'm off to play in the snow with the pups! Can't wait for that damn fence to be built!!!!

Picture Time

This will be a very picture heavy post, isn't that why you're here anyway?!

Ok, first off, my secret pal. . . She's been fantastic! I got the last package from her the other day and it was just perfect. This package had a theme, can you tell what it is?
Orange! There's some twisted sisters yarn, which I've seen but never tried so I'm excited to use that.
A chocolate orange (which, with a little help from my sweetie, has already disappeared). A journal with a hula girl. 2 dog toys for my pups (I love it when people think of the pups!)
It was just great! She has really spoiled me beyond what I expected from this swap! So, at this point are you wondering who she is yet? Well here you go: She's Samantha from stitchnbitchlafette.us I went to check out her site when we got internet and was shocked to see that it's a site I've been to before. I definitely remember the mudflap girl sweater! Knitting is a small world!

Ok, now onto some house stuff, no inside pictures though, especially since I just decided that the craft room is going to be a guest room and half the basement will be the craft room. There's stuff EVERYWHERE!

Here's a nice outside shot though:This is the backyard after our first Ohio snow storm! It's been snowing or raining just about every day since we've been in this house, we're getting a little tired of it! The boys are liking the view though. If you look out our picture window in the computer room you can see a horse farm behind us. The horses haven't been out much since it's just being built, but now and then you can see them. Some are regular horses but some are these gorgeous Frisian horses. The dogs love to watch them, but even better than the horses are these:The deer! There's only one in the picture and it's kinda far away. I can't seem to find my camera when they're close to the house. I have a little video of 4 of them in the field behind the house and the dogs going crazy, I zoomed in to see the deer and then realized I couldn't zoom out to show the pups so sorry if this makes you dizzy! And I would turn the volume down. The dogs were whining and yipping at the deer.


And here's a picture of the boys by the picture window, where they spend the majority of their time.
I think that's it for me now. Oh, one more thing, possibly the best thing of the day. We got cable yesterday, woohooo!, and we got the vamped up service where you can pause and rewind live TV. I know that's not a big deal for most people, but it took a lot of convincing of my sweetie to get this service. Anyways, they have a free movies on demand channel and they are featuring Christmas movies and my favorite Christmas movie of all time is on there. I tried last year to find this on DVD but it was only available on VHS. So, if you happen to be a fan of this movie:
And you happen to be a Time Warner Cable subscriber, check you free movies on demand channel!!

We're online!

After 5 tortuous hours of having the dogs on leashes in the house, we have phone, cable and internet!!!! The phone only works in one jack and the cable doesn't work upstairs, but it's better than nothing! I'll have pictures later in the day, I need to shower and go take a driving test. Can you believe that Ohio requires you to take a written test to get your license even if you have a valid license from another state? I was shocked to hear it. But I've got a fantastic secret pal to tell you about and some pictures of our snowy property. No pictures of the inside of the house cause it's still a mess (and probably will be for a while since we have cable and internet now). And no pictures of finished objects since I'm still just knitting for my sisters. Although one of them is done (my second Christmas present of the year). The other one is halfway done. I'll resurrect one of my WIPs later today cause I can't just work on one project at a time. That's it for now. Stay tuned for another post today, unless I fail my driving test and need to wallow for a while.