Merry Christmas!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday, filled with family, friends, and blessings too many to count.

GRRRR!

I finished the Pi Hat that I've been working on, and was very excited until I tried it on. Ummm, it's WAY too short. Like, doesn't even hit the tips of my ears. And it's a little tight. I'm sure the tightness is from the colorwork - I tried to keep the floats loose, but need to get better at this. It's so tight that it can't be worn, but it's definitely too short. So, I'll be unknitting to where the decreases start and adding some stockinette rows. This seriously cramps my Christmas knitting though, so I've decided to put it away for now, and work on other things (like Little boy's Fair Isle hat, the fingerless gloves and scarf I decided to add to my to do list, and baby girl's sweater that's been on the needles since September.)

I'm starting to think it won't be getting all done....

Fourth Trimester

My church is restarting a ministry to new moms called Fourth Trimester. Each new mom will receive a visit from an experienced mom, and each new baby from our church will receive a gift bag that includes, among other things, a handmade item. I've volunteered to coordinate this ministry (which really involves spending time knitting stuff with other knitters, and an email here and there to coordinate a visit - no biggie!) We kicked off the knitting portion last month with a knitters luncheon. One of the knitters who came is Joan. Go check out her blog - she's working on a really cool afghan, and she's already finished a sweater for Fourth Trimester. (I've barely started mine - Christmas knitting still getting in the way.....)

Earlier today, baby girl took her first steps that didn't result in an immediate fall. When she did finally fall, she totally clapped for herself! I love that she knows to be proud! Right now she's playing with two spoons. It cracks me up how busy she keeps herself!

I'm off to work on more knitting that hopefully I'll get around to showing you soon!

Happy Knitting!

The Cool Quotient

I am not someone that the general population would consider "cool". I've known this for quite sometime in my life, and am pretty comfortable with it. In fact, I embraced my geekiness years ago, and accepted that in the sitcom of life, I might get to be the fringe friend who shows up once in a great while. But now, I've knit this hat, and I've seen hats like it in stores everywhere, and I'm pretty sure that wearing this hat ups my cool quotient considerably. (Of course, since I was taking the pictures myself, and I'm not very good at it, these phots probably diminish that quotient a tad - but I don't care.)




The pattern is here, and I used Cascade Baby Alpaca Chunky, which was like knitting with butter. Wearing this hat keeps my head warm, makes me look stylish, and could convince people who don't know me that I go out on Friday nights to hip places with fabulous people. And if you substitue hip place for my living room and fabulous people with entertaining children and a loving husband, they'd be right!

So Much to Say...

I have SO much to update you on! Projects started, projects completed, a new knitting friend, a knitting ministry at church, cute kid things, Black Friday shopping...where has November gone? I won't get everything into this post, but hopefully I'll be able to catch you up over the next week or so.

I'll start with this:

Baby girl's December hat. I used this newborn sized pattern, but used larger needles and knit more rows between decreases. I did this on the 10 hour car ride to Buffalo last Wednesday. It was a good match because we were in the dark most of the trip, but I don't really need to see very well to knit and purl. Although, at some point I had to unknit and used the glow of my cell phone to see what I was doing (I forgot my book light.) I did not knit bobbles for the ornaments, but used pompoms I had, and I also added two large bells under the yellow pompom. Baby Girl jingles!

In kid news - Big boy has some really cool things going on! On Monday, he was tested in his karate class, and is now an official yellow belt. He'll be competing in his first competition on December 12th. To get ready, we've watched The Karate Kid - I love that movie! On Veteran's Day, Big boy attended a poety workshop through the Chamber of Commerce. His poem is one of 8 poems selected to be read during the city's holiday pops concert this Friday. The Navy Band is playing the concert, and the kids will be reading their poems between songs. We're really proud of him!