Some recent and not so recent highlights...
- Doctor Who Melted Snowman Ornament~ I made it for a swap with my knitting group.
- Preparing for Follow Your Arrow Mystery KAL~ Pattern by Ysolda Teague
- Make-ahead Mason Jar Salads~ Made on Sunday evening... they really do stay fresh right through Friday.
- My Arrow blocking~ what a fun KAL this was!
- The Yarn Harlot~ how surreal it was to meet her. I so recommend her new book. So, so funny!
- The softest socks I've ever knit
- However, these are my favorite socks...
- So why not make some for my sister?
- Willow Cowl~ easy knitting and the color changes are so entertaining.
- Springtime in Virginia~ Pattern by Kirsten Kapur. Not such a springy color... so, maybe "Autumn in South Jersey". Scored the perfect buttons in Mom's old button box.
You may remember I've written before that I belong to an awesome knitting group. We have such a mix of people, older, younger, male and female; and yet we are quite a homogeneous group and have a great time together. Two of our members we don't get to see very often because they live about an hour and a half from our meeting place.
These two great guys invited the group to brunch at their home this past Sunday and we had an absolutely wonderful day. We enjoyed so much yummy food, everyone brought an offering to the table.
There were mini blueberry scones. I wish I had eaten another one of these, but I just didn't have room!
Two different kinds of quiche.
The famous Ambler Donuts (that we hear so much about!) cut in bite sized pieces so we could sample them all. I loved the maple cream filled one. I did't try the peanut butter one. I wonder how that one was...
A wonderful fruit salad that everyone wanted the recipe for.We were told that because of the constraints of ingredients on hand, the dressing was an adaptation of the one in the cookbook. We all agreed we wanted the New Jeff Original recipe!
Some Ham Stuffed Rolls with a Maine Honey Champagne Mustard. I guess I didn't to get a photo of these after the basket was opened.
Juices, Coffee, and the most amazing Hot Chocolate made with real milk and large chunks of chocolate that melted in the mug of milk. (Again no photo.)
And then, there was the ever growing leaning tower of waffles! These waffles were the best! They were light and crispy around the edges. Oh so tasty!
Jeff slaved at the waffle iron most of the morning.
We were able to keep the Cook company as the guys have a huge kitchen with a great big table... clearly the hub of their home when entertaining!
After we stuffed ourselves, we retired to the living room (or as Will claims they say in Downton Abbey, "crossed over to the drawing room").
There was much knitting and spinning going on. We also discussed and planned for our next Secret Swap.
A knitter couldn't help but feel the warm and welcome in their home. Everywhere you look there were signs of fiber awesomeness!
Thanks for having us, Will and Jeff! I can't wait for our next outing!
It seems I can knit, or I can blog about it, but I have a difficult time managing to do both. I've been knitting up a storm for months now. I knit many Christmas presents and then proceeded to gift them out before snapping any photos of them! I've always been notoriously bad about posting my finished objects to Ravelry.
So here it is the beginning of March and I already have some progress made on my 2013 Christmas gifts. Let me share them now before it's too late.
One pair of socks completely finished~
Another pair with about an evening of knitting to finish them off~
And of course as is my mercurial nature, I couldn't finish those because I "needed" to start this pair~
I'm really enjoying knitting some simple colorwork. I have no desire to knit intricate Fair Isle or Intarsia, but knitting simple stripes or stripes combined with slipped stitches keeps me amused.
I've also been working on a crochet project. I've been longing for a vintage-like granny bedspread for my bed. This was inspired by a beautiful spread made by Sucrette. Read about hers on her blog: Le Monde de Sucrette to see how beautiful the finished product can look.
I'm using up leftover yarn from other projects. I think I need about 100 of these squares to make a queen sized spread. I've got 12 so far.
And then there's this~
I thought that I had already blogged about the Bee Keepers Quilt that I started a long time ago, but I took a quick look at my past posts and couldn't find anything about it. For my non-knitting followers, The Bee Keepers Quilt is made up of about a bizzillon little stuffed knitted hexagon shaped puffs (called "hexipuffs", although I prefer to call them "Honeycombpuffs".) stitched together.
As of this post, I have 49.5 puffs completed. I love displaying them in the glass bowl on the dining room table and watching the pile grow. I'm making them in neutrals of tans, browns, grays, and black, with an occasional dark ocean blue or deep sea green thrown in.
It reminds me of the rocky New England Coast. I'm naming my quilt the Archipelago Quilt.
It's probably going to take me forever (years) to finish this project, but won't it be awesome when it's done?
Yesterday was a wet, dank, and cold day. Although the rain was only falling lightly, it was constant and saturating. The droplets seemed to be feeling the same as I was... unwilling to leave my resting place.
I had plans to be productive around the house, packing away the snowman decorations to start with. But my plans were changed when my hubby took an unexpected day off from work. A wonderfully relaxing day was spent snuggled on the sofa watching an old movie.
We ventured out to run a quick errand and have a yummy dinner together. After dinner, the race to car in the miserable weather was enough to send us hurrying home to resume our "jammie-clad" hibernation and enjoy another movie together.
Today it is sunny and dry and so much warmer than yesterday, although there is a brisk spring breeze which seems to be trying to blow the remains of winter away.
I am amazed by the number of beautiful red-breasted robins visiting our yard. They seem to be standing sentry against any more wintry weather!
Today, those snowmen will be packed away and I think I'll start a knitting project fitting for the season!
I don't know how any of you feel, but for me, the panic is starting to set in as the holiday season approaches and I count how many gifts I still need to make! And it's not just the gifts I want to make, it's the other things I wanted to accomplish this fall, like perhaps putting more items up on my etsy shop to make a bit of Christmas spending money. There just aren't enough hours in the days or days before Christmas.
So fortunately for me (well actually it's unfortunate, but we have to look on the bright side, don't we) I am without a car this weekend... and it is a long weekend, as I have Monday off from work for Veteran's Day. The car is in the shop and won't be ready until Tuesday.
I'm going to take this opportunity to get as much done as possible. However, it is now well past noon and so far today I have darned the holes in a pair of socks, checked my email, read a bunch of blogs, and started this blog post. None of these things are getting me any closer to my goals. I really should get going, but before I do, let me share with you one of my finished objects.
This is a pair of socks I knit for my sister this the summer and just sent to her recently. (They don't count towards the Christmas knitting.)
They are knit in Black Bunny Fibers Silk Sock (55% wool and 45% silk) in the colorway "Irridescent". I think I may have "lost" some of the lace patterning because of the variegated colors, but they still are beautiful, and so, so soft.
The pattern is by Nancy Bush from the book Favorite Socks and were inspired by historical socks she had seen in museums. Nineteenth-century women's stockings had decorative stitches on the front only since that is all that would show beneath a long skirt.
FYI- I slipped them on for just this photo shoot before popping them in a nice wool wash and blocking them. (Just so you know Sis, I sent them to you clean ;-p )
Okay, so now it is time to go and get some serious work done. No more frittering of time. I'm going to ignore the fact that the living-room is dusty! But wait, hang on... it's time to feed the dog, and perhaps myself as well.
