Phoning in the weekend

I started off the weekend with some wine and good friends. We all had rough(ish) weeks and needed a good time! We took this picture to send to one of our other friends who was cheersing us from a distance on vacation.

On Saturday, I did some car knitting (dishcloths are the perfect travel project) on our way up to Houghton Lake to visit some friends. I snow shoed for the first time and it's my new favorite thing! It's so good to get out on a winter's day when the weather allows it.

On Sunday, we celebrated my nephew's first birthday. He won't officially be one until Thursday, but he got to smash his cupcake (verdict: smashing is fun, eating is alright, but less fun) and got TONS of presents. His favorite thing to do was grab a box and scootch across the floor with it.

I have had these cats for 10 years and they still manage to find ways to be cuter than I ever thought possible.

How was your weekend? I hope you got to spend it with animals, activities, and children you love!

Phoning in the weekend (only not really)

Here are the three pictures I took this weekend. That is it. It was a super busy and fun weekend, I just didn't document a lot of it. What these three pictures do document is getting ready for a fancy dinner, getting a surprise picture of Roman, and a difficult pattern I was working on which I sent a picture of to Erica to get her to join in on my self pity.

Not pictured activities include: getting coffee and going to the coolest specialty bookstore, the 1939 copy of Jane Eyre I bought there, finding SO MANY RECORDS I've been searching for at the record store (including two Mel Tormes, Jethro Tull Stand Up, Little Orphan Annie for  a dollar, and a Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers Christmas album!), walking around a super cool fish store, knitting, eating dinner with my family, and playing cards with good friends.

Sometimes your just too busy to take pictures, I guess! What did you do this weekend?

Friday FO's Procrastination Buster

Remember my super awesome cast-on? Well, it turned into this hat:

Nate, in all his sassy glory.

Poor Nate has waiting four years for a hat. It was one of those things, I just never got around to it. But finally, it's done! I loved that pattern, it's my favorite basic hat pattern thus far.

I also finally got around to finishing this blanket for my lovely Heather:

I highly recommend this pattern if you are trying to knit a blanket in a hurry. You can see that at one point in time I was in such a hurry that I started my i-cord border before I cast off! And then I let it languish for a long time, for reasons. But it's finished now and keeping Heather warm and cozy!

Another project I finished was this cute Generations Bag for my cousin's Natalie's wedding!

And finally, this scarf which is the first thing I can ever remember knitting solely for myself and not as a gift or for a craft show! I made up the pattern as I went using beautiful yarn I bought at a LYS in Lansing called Sticks and Strings. I used the yarn as inspiration and knit long stretches of garter stitch and seed stitch (which I am currently obsessed with). The interplay between the textures and colors are exactly what I was hoping for!

I foresee more FO's in my future now that classes are done for the semester. I'm going through a major knitting phase so if you have any TV or movie recommendations for while I'm knitting, I would appreciate it. I just started season one of Moone Boy and oh my lord I love it! I'm trying to ration it out, but I'm not being terribly successful.

Happy Weekend!

Phoning in the weekend 1/13/2014 edition

 The weekend started out on an interesting note when one Ms. Erica, partner in craft and coworker decided I didn't have enough Nick Cage in my life and stuck this to my office door. He lives inside my coat closet now so I can have a heart attack each morning when I come to work.

Then came Friday night and a soothing symphony orchestra concert and soothing dirty martinis to help calm my Cage-frayed nerves.

On Saturday I did the most perfect long-tail cast-on I've ever done! I got all my stitches cast on with just enough yarn left over to weave in the ends! Woo hoo!

It helped that I was closely monitored by this handsome guy.

Sunday was my niece's third birthday party. I had to look my best.

What do you buy for the coolest three year old around? Binoculars, a toy story etch-a-sketch, and glitter bracelets. Obviously.

To top off a great weekend, it was so warm out and so much of the ice and snow melted that I got to run outside TWICE! Woo hoo!

I hope you had a lovely weekend too! What did you do?

FO Friday! Christmas and the Devil's Winter edition

Hello everybody! At long last, here are the things I knitted for Christmas!

I knit this French press cozy for my boyfriend. It keeps your coffee nice and cozy (haha) til you're ready to drink it! This is the pattern I used (and am using for my own French Press cozies (SP?!)). It worked really well! The buttons are because his other French Press has a handle that connects at the bottom. For this one you can just slide it on and off.

My boyfriend is not a weird mannequin head, obviously. He just owns one.

I also knit him this hat using alpaca from a farm we visited this summer. If you're in the Frankfort area, go visit the alpaca. They are TOTALLY adorable, the shop is super cute, and the owners are very nice. I ordered this yarn online and the owner included a personal note letting me know the name of the alpacas that provided the yarn! Such a sweet touch. I sort of used the pattern from this book but with a 1x1 rib. I tried to make the large size first in a stockinette and it came out HUGE:

No good. The hat I mean, my modeling is SUPERB.

So I frogged it and I'm really glad I did. I actually had nightmares about whether or not the finished product would fit (because that's normal) but it did! I love that book as a starting point, but sometimes things come out goofy. I am willing to take the blame, maybe (probably) I'm bad at measuring gauge? Who can say.

I also knit neck-gators for my brother-in-law and my brother-in-law to be. They're like super small infinity scarves with flaps to tuck into your coat or in the case of my dad and bros-in-law, your hunting gear. In the words of my friend Mike, they're basically a knitted dicky. I made one for my dad last year or the year before and he likes it a lot. After I made these my friend Nate asked for one and so did my mom for walking the dog. Probably because we are having The Devil's Winter up here in Michigan and are always cold and covered in snow. Which is great for knitting, but not always so great for other things like driving and not getting frost bite. So it's neck-gators all around! Except for these two, wearing their respective partner's gators:

They have clearly lost their neck-gator privileges.

Phoning in the weekend 1/6

 I started out the weekend by keeping one of my New Years Resolutions and going to yoga. It was a fantastic practice; I'm out of shape and felt my abs all weekend, but that's why I do it!

 Then I was inspired to do a little New Years decluttering. I gave this stack of magazines to my sister for projects with my niece and now it looks like this:

That's where that book went!

 There was a lot of knitting this weekend. A lot. Since I'm working on destashing projects, that counts as decluttering right? Right. My poor old coffee pot finally bit the dust so I'm French Pressing it from now on. I started one of the two French Press cozies I'll need (one for work and one for at home). I also worked on this destashing project:

 which I highly recommend. It's a really fun pattern, great for using up randoms in the stash and won't take your attention away from the exploits of these fine gentlemen:

 (Thanks to Anne for the recommendation!) Netflix it, you guys. If you like British murder mysteries, you'll love this.

I did get off my butt long enough to do a major grocery shopping adventure, complete with meal planning, stocking up on staples, and some apples bossing me around in the fitness department.

Overall it was a lovely weekend! What did you do?

Pinterest Wednesday: Christmas Edition

Merry Christmas to you and yours! I hope everyone's enjoying  a quiet, restful holiday!

As I mentioned I was not originally going to knit anyone Christmas gifts. But then money got away from me and I got ambitious and I got on a knitting kick, so I decided what the heck! I don't have the resources to give all of my friends gifts, but there are some friends that I would like to give more than just a Christmas card. I found this pattern on Pinterest and thought it would be perfect. They are quick, easy, I could use yarn I already had in my stash, and they are cute!

You could do a lot of fun things with this pattern: use sparkly yarn, add beads, do different colors, etc. I actually knit the stars and made them into individual ornaments for peole and didn't do the garland, but that would be a fun/pretty project too! I was going to do an i-cord border in a contrasting color, but then I remembered my love/hate relationship with i-cord borders and this was meant to be a quick project so I refrained.

Here's my first one! It was a really simple project with minimal construction at the end. I will say the pattern doesn't describe wrapped short rows very well, but I had just started working on another project that involved them so I knew what it was talking about. So if you're reading the pattern and unsure on what to do, that's what it means: wrapped short rows. You might want to find a video or other instructions if you've never done them before, but rest-assured they're super simple once you know what to do.

Have you ever knit Christmas ornaments before? Do you have any favorite patterns? And one more Merry Christmas!

Friday FO's

Like most knitting bloggers around this time of year, there is not much I can show you. The projects I have finished are gifts, the projects I am working on are gifts...I can't even show you some of the yarn I'm going to use because: gifts.

Quick side note: I definitely told some craft friends in November that I wasn't going to knit any Christmas presents this year because that way lay madness in years past. Hahahahaahahaha, I have three knitted Christmas present finished, two on needles, and at least three or four more to try to knit before the big day. It's a sickness, I tell you.

What I can show you is the way I torture my cat when he just so happens to be sitting next to me when I'm knitting gauge swatches. Did I say gauge swatch? I meant cat bonnet:

O. Henry you are a good sport.

Second quick side note: Henry's full name is O. Henry because he's named after this guy. So when I would normally say "Oh, Henry." I use his full name instead. Because I am a dork who lives alone with her cats and needs to get out more.

There will be SO MANY FO's the Friday after Christmas, my friends! SO MANY, I SAY! Good luck to all of you who are in the heat of the holiday knitting frenzy. Rest your hands frequently, drink lots of tea and if you feel like you need to slip a little whiskey in your tea, well, it's the holidays!

Because that's what people do

 

Hazel: Well, that's how life is, Lars.

Mrs. Gruner: Everything at once.

Sally: We brought casseroles.

Lars: Thank you. [looks around the sewing circle. The three ladies are knitting and doing needlepoint] Um, is there something I should be doing right now?

Mrs. Gruner: No, dear. You eat.

Sally: We came over to sit.

Hazel: That's what people do when tragedy strikes.

Sally: They come over, and sit.

 

 

These lines from this movie have been in my head all day. (Thank you internet in general and Google in particular for confirming this is a real movie quote and I am not crazy.) It's a weird, beautiful movie but this scene struck me in particular when I saw it the first time. There are so many cultural examples of this: tragedy strikes or is striking so you bring food, and you sit. When my sister had her first baby (not tragedy, certainly, but a major medical event) I brought knitting and granola bars and sat. When she had her second baby I was ready to do the same but his quick arrival meant I didn't even get out my needles. From funerals and wakes I've attended, I remember food and I remember groups of people, just sitting together. When someone is ill, in pain, tired, sad, or in trouble the instinct I have or the behavior I have learned from my family is to feed them, cover them in blankets, and sit with them. I think it's the most comforting thing you can do. We all know you can't do anything to heal heartbreak, so you take care of the body as best you can until the spirit comes around to a better place. It's the best gift you can give a person, your presence. And maybe a casserole and a handmade afghan to go with it. 

 

These are the reasons I love cooking and knitting: they are simple, tangible expressions of love. Whether it is for myself of for another person, every ingredient or stitch, every move of the needle or circle of the wooden spoon is from a place of love. They are ancient crafts that make me feel connected to the people who have made their love real through the ages in these ways. They are instruments to forge connections with the people you love in their time of need. They can even reach forward, the way my grandmother's Apple Cake recipe connects us even long after she's gone or the afghan my other grandmother made connects us long after she's stopped crocheting.

So when tragedy strikes, when your heart is full of love, in the good times and the bad times, just remember: feed the stomach, warm the body, and just go and sit.

Phoning in the weekend

Weekend reading about Genghis Khan. Star Wars reference compliments of funny coworker.

Hot weather=cold beer on porches

TVP nachos with locally grown tomatoes and greek yogurt. I could have eaten 3 plates worth.

This is where Henry sits in the morning. NO MATTER WHAT.

If the mug says so...

Hats on babies: cutest thing ever. Who knew?!

Finally finished this mammoth knitting project.

Not pictured: humidity, a couple of great runs, whole wheat pancakes with fresh strawberries, the season and a half (or two...or three..) of How I Met Your Mother that I watched (I had to knit!) and time well spent with my grandpa and grandma.

Phoning in the weekend, May 20

Happy Monday, everyone!

It wasn't really the weekend, but last week I went to a conference in Traverse City. It was totally awesome and my brain is full to bursting with library ideas and enthusiasm. My stomach was full to bursting with delicious food (Traverse City, I love you so hard.) I knit the whole way there and a little bit on the way home. And a little bit while I was there. That bulldog is Hilda, a cutie cute English bulldog who hangs out in an awesome store called The Red Ostrich. You should probably go visit her. When I got home, my Aunt surprised me with the yellow tote bag and I hunkered down and did some research and writing on my Grandpa's memoirs. My cousin had a graduation party on Sunday and so we feasted on Lebanese food. Yummmmm..... My grandpa stood by the food line helping (bossing) people with the food. Look at that smile: food, family, and being in charge, all the things he loves! I...am not so different from my grandfather, I've discovered.

Not pictured: hanging out with Evelyn for a bit. Whenever I come over she "makes coffee" for me in her play kitchen which shows that she is as thoughtful and hospitable as she is observant because I usually have a travel mug of coffee with me when she sees me. She tried coffee once (her grandmother gave it to her, not me) and stuck her tongue out for a solid minute saying, "Aaaaaggggggguuuuuuhhhhhheeeee." It's an acquired taste, kiddo.