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.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Since I have no pictures of knitting that I can show you right now, here's what our Thanksgiving dinner looked like:
My sweetie made stuffing, cranberry sauce, and turkey and I made some mashed sweet potatoes.

I had a knitting disaster near miss the other day when I walked in the apartment and half of Valerie's Christmas present was missing, luckily the pups just decided they didn't want it on the coffee table and they nicely picked it up and moved it into the bedroom without damaging a single stitch. Today I had a true knitting disaster, but I can't tell you about it without giving away what I'm making for one of my sisters. So, you'll just have to live in agony until Christmas thinking about what I could have done wrong. I'll give you a hint. . . it has something to do with the needles and the yarn. Oh, that doesn't help you at all? Sorry!

I think I'll have to start another project just so I have something to blog about!

On the moving to Ohio front, we're closing tomorrow!!! We should have a house by noon. Keep your fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong! We still have yet to hear from the military that our stuff has made it to Ohio from Virginia. It should be in Dayton by December 5th and then they'll call us to set up delivery to the house.

#5 is alive!

Does anyone else love the movie Short Circuit? I don't know why that isn't on TV ever. It was such a good movie. Steve Guttenberg, Ally Sheedy, and a robot. . . what could be better than that?

Anyway, I wanted to do an update on super secret project #5 so Gloria doesn't feel bad about her present. The new pattern is superb! I've been wanting to make this pattern for a while but just didn't have the right yarn. Well I've got the right yarn now and I'm a few pattern repeats into it and it's looking great. I now want to keep that one for myself too. Glor, you just may be getting a knitting book as well!

That's it, I wish I could post some good pictures. Oh, I took a picture of our thanksgiving dinner. I'll download that later and post it. What good is a blog without pictures!! Ok, I have a million things to do today. My main objective is to get my car registered in Ohio (trust me, it's easier said than done!)

No Knitting Details

All my current knitting is holiday knitting for my sisters so I can't give details since they each read this blog. But I can give progress reports (maybe knowing their projects are getting done will inspire them to finish mine!)

First is Super Secret Project #4: this one is for Valerie. It's coming out fantastic! I really want to keep this one for myself. It's just the perfect combination of yarn and pattern. And the yarn!! I can not say enough about this yarn. It's my absolute favorite yarn I've ever knit with!!!! I can't wait to tell you what it is. So far I'm about half way finished with her present.

Next is Super Secret Project #5: this one is for Gloria. It's not nearly as far along yet since I just did gauge swatching last night. I started one project on it this morning and decided I was not at all happy with it. It went to visit the frog pond about an hour ago. So, thanks to ravelry I was able to find a much better pattern match for the yarn. I'm not far enough along to know if I like the pattern yet, but I think it will be great. The yarn is unfortunately not as nice as Val's yarn. It gorgeous, but just doesn't have as nice of a feel to it. I think I will wash is before I give it to her to soften it up a little. It's knitting up a lot softer than in the ball too.

OK, that's it. I have to go cut up some bread for Sunday night dinner (my sweetie cooks a great dinner every Sunday night. . . isn't he the best!)

In Honor of Black Friday

For anyone who thinks they won't have enough time to knit everyone presents and they want to buy me something (or if you're not a knitter. . . GASP!) here's my Christmas wish list:

Anything from my amazon wish list (see link on the side)

Danah's Earflap Hat Kit (in green)

Yarn to make a Starsky Sweater: Knit Picks Cadena - 13 skeins in Mist or Natural

Anything from Lotus Yarns with a superwash merino or superwash merino/nylon base. I prefer semisolids if she has any available.

Gift certificates to stores that I could furnish/accessorize my new house with.

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure I'll add to it as the shopping season progresses. And of course any and all hand made items will be most appreciated!

My sweetie and I had quite the shopping day today. Usually I refuse to leave the house on black friday, but given that we're buying a new house and need to get a whole lot for it, we thought maybe we could get a good deal on a TV. Our current TV is the one we've had for 7 years or so, it's about 25" big and we recently got an xbox 360 but can't play any games on it because you can't read the directions on such a small screen. So, we ventured out to Best Buy and got a fantastic deal on this little beauty! We got it for almost half price! But we didn't get there until after lunch so there were none left at the store. We're going to have to pick it up later, which isn't so bad since we don't take possession of our house for another week.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!! I'm having a very low-key Thanksgiving. My sweetie and I are in Ohio far away from our family and friends in NY and Virginia. We just went grocery shopping and got stuff for my sweetie to make us a Thanksgiving dinner. I'll probably knit on the couch until he says he needs help prepping the veggies or something.

This year I'm thankful that my sweetie is here with me for Thanksgiving and not in Iraq like he was last year!

My Owl Has Landed!!!

After taking a layover on Long Island, my Hogwarts Sock Kit Swap arrived today!!!!! It's absolutely amazing! This is what I got when I opened the package of mail sent from my parents' house:
Unwrapping the tissue paper I found this beautiful messenger bag in Ravenclaw colors. It's very thick and sturdy. Super secret project #3 has already been transferred into it. I've made a bunch of felted bags, mainly small ones for our annual charity auction. I've only made one that is about this size so I know just how much time and effort goes into knitting a bag this big and I can't say thank you enough for this bag. I LOVE IT!
Onto the goodies inside of the bag:
There's some Harry Potter candy, which I didn't get a close up picture of, but it's the Bertie Bots Every Flavor Beans (I'm really hoping that I can get my sweetie to try the earwax and dirt flavored ones since he thinks that they all taste like regular jelly beans) and Jelly Slugs.
Knitting goodies included a Harry Potter snitch washcloth. I actually have 2 other washcloths in this same shade of yellow so it will fit right in!
There are some gorgeous handmade stitch markers with a stitch marker case. I have a little plastic case that holds some knitting notions, but I think I'll switch it to this case cause it's much prettier than a plastic case.
There's a set of US 1 bamboo dpns that I can't wait to use! I had a pair of bamboo dpns that I managed to bend to an almost unusable point. I've learned to relax a bit while knitting socks so I think it's about time I give bamboo another shot. Along with the needles there's some bath "potion". As soon as we move into our house there's a definite bath or 2 on my schedule!
Then there's the piece de resistance, sock yarn!! Ravenclaw colors, of course. It's absolutely gorgeous. Superwash wool, my favorite! It's from Razzy Tazzy Knits, which I had never heard of, I have no idea how she found this place, but it's fantastic. The yarn is so smooshy! You can't really tell from the picture but the colors are so great. It ranges from medium grey to light grey to baby blue to a rich bright royal blue. I really can't wait to knit this up. I'm definitely knitting this up into socks for myself so I have to wait to cast on until I'm done with my holiday knitting, although maybe it can be my "solace from holiday knitting" project.
Oh and then there's the pattern! There's just so much I almost forgot it even though the whole thing is sitting right in front of me. It's the flicker sock from Cookie A (one of my favorite designers. The pattern is on my ravelry queue so I definitely want to knit it up soon. I'm completely overwhelmed with all the amazing stuff that I got in this swap. The best part about the whole swap though was getting to know my swap partners. I spoiled Sarah and I was spoiled by Nancy. Both of them are friends of mine on ravelry and their blogs are on my bloglines so I can stalk them all I want! There's nothing left to say except THANK YOU to Nancy! You went above and beyond and I really feel spoiled!

Things I Miss

We moved out of our house and all our possessions were put into storage just about 3 weeks ago. There are some things that I'm really starting to miss:

- my winter clothes
- a yard for the pups
- my bathroom towels
- having a dog park nearby
- my lap blankets
- knowing my neighbors
- non-stick pans
- getting mail every day

Surprisingly, my knitting supplies are not missed yet. I guess that was the one thing that I properly packed. I think I brought more knitting supplies with me than clothes!

Secret Socks

I actually have knitting content so I don't have to make up some blog fodder with sock reviews (I'll save that for another day.) Yesterday was an exciting day here in the Williams household. My sweetie had to go back to Virginia for our friends' wedding. Unfortunately I wasn't able to go given the $500 price tag for a single plane ticket. After dropping him off at the airport at 445am (!!!) it was a knitastic day. I spent most of the day knitting and ignoring my stay at home wife duties like dishes and laundry. I had to meet the realtor and decided instead of meeting him at the Barnes and Noble that's halfway between my apartment and the realtor's office, I'd drive down to the Barnes and Noble near his office since it happens to be less than 2 miles from a yarn store! I haven't had a yarn buying opportunity (besides internet buying) since Rhinebeck. That's almost a month of no new yarn! Well, I guess that's not true since I did have a fantastic package from my secret pal.

The yarn store I went to is called the Yarn Shop in Pickerington, Ohio. I heard about it from an Ohio knitting group on Ravelry. It was very nice, it lacked some of the atmosphere I'm used to in the high end yarn shops. But it was still very nice and there was a pretty big selection. Unfortunately there was not much in the way of sock yarn. Actually there was quite a bit, but it was not the sort of sock yarn I buy, it was all self-striping or self-patterning. They did have a small selection of their own hand dyed sock yarn, but none of the colors really spoke to me at all. Never fear I did still manage to purchase quite a lot:
- Victorian Lace Today (there's plenty of stuff I want to knit in the book, but I don't know why I bought it since I have yet to do a successful lace project except for socks)
- Knitting Fair Isle Mittens and Gloves
- Pace (3 skeins to make some fair isle fingerless gloves)
- Elsebeth Lavold Cotton Frappe (2 skeins to send to my secret pal)
- 3 packages of soak wool wash (my eucalan is in storage)
- stitch markers (not pictured, they are already in my knitting bag)

When I got home after that yarn binge, I spent the rest of the day knitting. I FINALLY finished the second of the secret pal socks. The second one came out quite different from the first one. The first one turned out pretty well variegated and I think it looks like pink camouflage, the second one had a lot of pooling and wound up with pink and green stripes down the leg and, they're broken up a few times so it doesn't look bad. I guess that's just one of the risks you take when making hand knit socks. I hope my secret pal doesn't mind! I've got a few more things to make for her and then I'll be ready to send the final package and reveal my secret identity!
Made for: My secret pal from secret pal 11
Yarn: Crystal Palace Yarns - Maizy
Needles: 2.75mm Knit picks dpns
Pattern: my own, just a simple stockinette sock
Size: Woman's size 8 foot