Tiffany Morgan

On Monday I finished these:



And on Tuesday (her birthday), Tiffany's mom put them on her:





And of course I had to have my turn to hold her :)



Congrats to Erin & Ben on their beautiful baby girl!

Finished Objects

Just a quick post of some finished projects...yay!

Here is the Felted Fair Isle Bag that I did as a knit-a-long with some lovely ladies in my knitting group. The KAL was done on Ravelry. Check it out here.





I recently finished Anouk. I knit the skirt in the round instead of leaving it as two pieces that you button together. I omitted the pockets and did three flowers across the bottom instead. This will be a gift for a very special girl that will be turning 1 this month :)



Last night while watching the San Jose Sharks lose :( , I finished these socks. They are just basic toe up socks with an afterthought heel. They remind me of Andes candy...the mint chocolate candies. I am giving them away as a Christmas gift and might include some of those candies. BTW, you didn't misread that; I said I FINISHED A CHRISTMAS GIFT. So proud :)



On the needles I have Make Up Your Mind Tank and Calypso tank. Obviously I am ready for summer!

Birthdays Are the Best!

I don't know about anyone else, but I really like to stretch out my birthday celebration as long as possible. I haven't been doing a ton of knitting lately, so I have some pictures of how I have been celebrating my birthday thus far.

First, the night before my birthday, DH gave me my gift (I am super impatient). The first things I pulled out of the gift bag were these:



DH said one is me and one is him. I love how adorable he is in that way. The monkeys are wind ups and they do make me laugh as the move sideways across the table.

Also in the gift bag I received this:





It's a Kindle in a purple case! Awesome! I have been debating over getting a Kindle for over a year. I love reading and I liked the idea of the Kindle (portable, light weight, many books in one for travel, etc.), but I was not sure if I wanted it because I was resisting change. There is something to be said about having a paper book in your hand and actually turning the pages. Now that I have it, I LOVE it! I still have some books on my bookshelf that I will keep because I will reread them. Also, I don't think I would want a digital version of a knitting books. You really need to be able to flip through those.

When I told my dad what DH had given me and that he was also taking me to a nice dinner on my actual birthday, my dad said, "It better be nice if all he got you was a candle." Cracked me up!

So the dinner was a surprise...we went to La Fondue. Melted cheese, lobster, filet mignon, chicken, shrimp and melted chocolate for dessert. Can't go wrong with that!



They brought out our dessert dippers with two candles and two glasses of champagne.





Probably the best birthday dinner ever!

On Saturday, I went to the LYS with a knitter friend. This shop has a make your own birthday sale with a chance for 100% off. On Saturday they were having an anniversary sale for everyone that was similar. You draw a poker chip out of a vase and get 20, 40, or 80% off. I decided to do the anniversary sale on Saturday and then save the birthday sale for another day this month (remember, I like to stretch out the celebration). I was stoked when I pulled out the chip for 40% off! I bought a pair of circular needles and this yarn:



After the yarn shopping, my friend and I went across the street to a bar for a drink, a couple games of Scrabble, and knitting. Again, awesome!



Then Saturday night I went out to dinner with DH and friends. We went to BJ's Brewery. They have this amazing dessert that is called a Pizookie. If you haven't had one and you are ever near a BJ's, you must get it! Normally they are not this large, but this one was the size of a large pizza.



After drinking, having appetizers, and dinner, I figured there was no way the 7 of us there would finish this thing. Five minutes after singing "Happy Birthday" this was what was left:



I also received a couple more gifts. A bottle of wine and a wine glass. The related gifts were not planned that way, so I thought that made it great.



My friend decorated the wine glass and named it "Big Al." For those of you who don't watch the show, it is a reference to Cougar Town and "Big Joe" (RIP) and "Big Carl." Love it!

Needless to say I had a fantastic birthday!!

Spinning & Fair Isle

As I posted in an earlier blog, I have tried to do some spinning with a spindle. Another knitter in my knitting group and I decided that it may be helpful to take a class. She took a class at Stitches West, and I wanted to try a class. Even though another knitter in our group taught us how to spin, there is something to be said for paying for a class and knowing that you are going to devote that said amount of time to the new activity.

The class was good because it was just the two of us and we were able to ask lots of questions. I don't feel like a pro and I constantly had to remind myself not to get too discouraged. It's not like my first knitting project was a cabled sweater or anything. It was more like lots and lots of stockinette scarves and some dishcloths. I have to keep that in mind when I feel that I should have evenly utn fiber that looks like store bought yarn. Anyway, after the spinning class I was able to walk away with my first (mini) skein of two-ply yarn.



By no means perfect, but it actually looks more like yarn than anything I spun before. Now I just have to practice...

Another thing I have been inspired to do from knitters in the knitting group is to join a KAL on Ravelry. There are several of us in the group who joined the Fair Isle Tote KAL. I have done fair isle once before, but I have yet to teach myself how to continental knit so that I can knit with two strands of color with one in each hand. This is how far I've gotten on the tote so far:

the bottom:


the side:


and the dreaded ends I will have to weave in:


A couple of knitters were working ahead of the KAL schedule, so I decided to do the same. I forgot how much fair isle knitting is "potato chip" knitting. You can't stop after one.

Since I am well ahead of schedule, I am going to try to force myself to learn how to continental knit (which I know will slow me down, and therefore has put me off to doing it). As another knitter reminded me, the point of this project is to learn something new. Since I have done felting and fair isle before (although not together), I should really take this opportunity to learn the new skill of continental knitting. Wish me luck (and patience)!

The Thirteen Dollar Sweater

I finished the Garter Yoke Cardi in a day over a month. Although that month was February, so technically I finished in 29 days which is less than a month for every month except February. Point is, this was by far the fastest knit for a sweater.

It was also the cheapest! I used Lion Brand's Fishermen's Wool. It wouldn't be considered a high end yarn, but it's warm and I have read that it tends to soften up with several washings. The best part is that it was $6.40 a skein with a coupon and I only needed 2 skeins. Can't beat that! I did spend an extra $5 for the buttons (with a coupon of course!), but I had store credit, so I don't really count that as part of the cost.

The sweater is a perfect fit, which is one of the benefits of making your own clothes. My one minor criticism is that it ripples a little where the buttons are, but I was assured that it doesn't stand out too much because of the color of the yarn. I can deal with a little rippling on the button band (although I would like to learn how to avoid this) if it means the sweater isn't baggy.

It has been really rainy and cold here, so it is the perfect weather for a nice cozy sweater.

Quick Knit

As I try to finish up my cardigan, I felt that I needed a quick knit. I also have a baby shower to attend next month. I made a baby blanket already, but figured I might add some other knitted things to the gift. I finished this bib:



The pattern is Quacking Up and I was able to use some cotton yarn from my stash. There are several other bib patterns on the Down Cloverlaine blog and I would definitely like to make some more. So cute, quick, and easy.

In non-knitting news, my job has been going well. Part of my job entails meeting with families and collecting some sample work. I usually meet families where there is free wifi so that I can work in between appointments. I won't say where I was, but I bought this sandwich for over $8 (no drink) and was super disappointed:



Seriously!?! And the bag of chips...are you kidding me. You may not get the full effect of how few chips there are so I dumped them out and took a picture before eating a single chip.



I don't even like potato chips that much and I was sad about this. Maybe this is my American portion size crazy talk, but I know I could get more sandwich for less money elsewhere. Oh well. Live and learn. The next time I had a meeting there during lunch I got a clam chowder bread bowl. It was much more filling and less expensive, so I guess that's the way to go.

One last picture that I must include. DH and I sometimes have what we call "date night," which some times means going out and other times means watching a movie at home and laying on the couch. Apparently the cats felt that they were in need of a date night as well.



It actually cracked me up because they don't lay like this often, if ever.

Baking and Recreating

I woke up this morning and felt like making something different for breakfast. On the weekends, DH and I usually make a hot breakfast as opposed to our usual cereal that we eat during the week. This morning I woke up early while he was still sleeping I baked scones.



They turned out pretty good and it's kind of fun to rediscover what you can create with some simple ingredients most of us already have on hand.

As for the recreating...I started the September Sweater in January and I finished one sleeve (I decided to make it long sleeved):



That's as far as I got. I love the way this sweater looks and I really wanted to own it. After getting this far, I decided that it had become a "dreaded knit." I love the way cables look and I can handle knitting them, but I think this sweater had too many cables throughout the whole thing and I just decided I didn't want to make myself finish it. Also, I felt like the cables got lost in the yarn that I chose for this project. I should have used a solid color yarn. I really wanted to complete another sweater for myself and this wasn't the way to do it. It just took far too much concentration.

So I started something EXTREMELY simple. This was better for me because I could mindlessly work on it while watching TV or while talking at knit night. I wasn't quite ready to frog the sleeve I had finished on the September Sweater, so I used the rest of the ball of yarn to start the Garter Yoke Cardi. Finally I came to the point where I needed to use the yarn from the first sweater so I am knitting straight off of that.



This way it feels less like frogging and more like recreating.