just another raveller

We received our first snow of the winter overnight on December 26th. It's barely stopped since. It makes going for a walk a bit more challenging than usual but it's a bsolutely gorgeous to look at. Here are some things that I would like to knit in the coming months. Excuse the margins. 1) Finish my Fleurette II cardigan. I have only the top of the sleeves to do and to put it all together. 2) Knit up the Amaryllis Mittens kit that I won as a prize last year in NaKniMitMo 2012 during the month of January. 3) Knit a secret wedding shawl before the beginning of March. 4) Chug along on my current North Sea Shawl, a very relaxing project, pictured below. 5) Hem and press the bleeping living room curtains that I recently sewed and hung in place, also pictured below. The ones in the previous post only cover half the windows. I had a complete pair of beautiful, pale green ones that I found in the Salvation Army in Bath, NY, but the fabric was disintegrating. I'm ble...

I'm so thankful to have my daughter with us for a few days. We're trying to finish up sewing new curtains for the living room and are otherwise generally laying about and catching up. I wish you all good health and cheer!

Lesson 1 for me. The Blogger iphone app places the most recently uploaded photo first. Hence the unfortunate reversal of tea cat and Bruno cat in yesterday's post. Sorry 'bout that. A quick update about Fleurette II. I am still on the sleeves. It's been so warm here that on Sunday I was able to sit outside and knit for an hour while my better half circled around the woods. Still, slow progress.

I'm trying out posting from my phone. If there's too much pointless babble from my end, I'll stop this and go back to regular posting. I managed to make 92 shortbread cookies this evening. It was the first baking in my gas oven and it went really well. Ooh, that's 5 grams of butter per cookie. Too much? Here are some of them, unbaked, under the watchful eye of the tea cat. Plus a bonus photo of the gorgeous Bruno.

Thanks, everyone for your comments. It's so good to hear from you. September will stand as the peak month of 2012 in my mind, but hey, what happened to October and November? I find that if I don't mark the time in some way, it is hard for me to remember much that happened, or if I remember an event, a vacation, a visit, a walk, etc, then I can't remember when it happened. What would I remember of my knitting projects if I didn't track them on Ravelry? It doesn't bear thinking about. Sorry for bringing it up.  Earlier today, I browsed through my photos to garner some hints about what went on in October/November, with little success. All I have to show are a few blurry shots of half finished objects and some hackneyed nature scenes. In October I gathered these seeds from the special Russian radishes (red'ka) that we grew from seed this year. The radishes were spectacular, unlike everything else that I tried to grow. I'm hoping that the seeds will...

September seems so long ago now. This is Lac de Ste Croix near the Gorges de Verdon in Southern France. We stayed two weeks in a the lovely hill top village of Tourtour  and then a couple of days in Nice. I got on with my knitting, but I didn't see any yarn shops, people knitting, or people wearing hand knits. And no one offered to buy the shawl off my shoulders. Texas it ain't. From Nice, we took a train to Menton , near the Italian border and climbed to the highest point in the town. This was taken near the bottom, showing that the top isn't always the nicest. You may remember Fleurette, a lacy cardigan which I designed and knit in 2008.  I had originally intended to knit a loose, hip length garment, but it quickly became clear that my 9 skeins of Koigu wouldn't make more than a short, fitted cardigan. Here is the swatch for Fleurette II, my vacation knitting.  I'm having another go at knitting what I originally intended. The yarn is So...

One evening a few weeks ago, the discussion at the Yarn Boutique turned to the second hand craft shop in Fairport, NY - Craft Bits and Pieces.  It's in the plaza upstairs from the Fairport Public Library. Run by volunteers, this shop takes in, sorts, and sells used craft supplies at low prices, all to raise money for elders. Great idea, right? Someone told a story about someone else who picked up a passle of Addi's there at a buck a piece. Urban myth or true tale? We talked about a section of the shop that I have never noticed but which I find intriguing -  Lovingly Begun. Apparently they regularly take in unfinished projects and the supplies to finish them. The volunteers tidy them up and package them together for sale.  I don't get out to Fairport often, but when I do, I always stop by, if only to peruse the 80's patterns.  And here's my own "lovingly begun project." Some years ago, too many to say, I made a garage sale purchase that included 21 bl...