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!

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.