post-Christmas fun December 30, 2007

i hope everyone had a safe and happy Christmas and holiday season. i spent Christmas with my family at my grandparents’. i hope it isn’t tacky to show you some of the presents i got… i’m just really excited about them!

1. a photo collage of my trip to hawai’i last year
2. a day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom with my best friend (we went december 26)
3. softies!! (amazon listing)
4. the boyfriend and i are stocking up on some of our favorites things from childhood
5. a notebook wrapped in a leather cover… that leather smells SO good. no kidding
6. wristwarmers from my grandma’s trip to norway in the fall; they are even lined with fleece
7. a dvd player! (not pictured)

i scaled back on the knitted gifts this year and bought quite a few things on etsy instead. that’s not to say there were no handknit gifts, though!

 

this is a set of four coasters for an aunt knit with leftover cotton from last year’s dishcloth craze. i knit a fifth one, but after i finished, i realized that i had used size 8 needles on it instead of the 7s i used on the others. oops! the pattern is a modification of mdk’s baby genius pattern that i found here.

 

my close friends each got a fortune cookie knit with paton’s classic wool in natural mix on 11s. the pattern is here, but if you sneak ahead in the 2008 knitting pattern-a-day calendar, it’s october 20 (i think). i have a collection of fortune cookie fortunes from our regular chinese takeouts, so i used those in the cookies and i found plastic baggies and eurosealed them up to look more like real fortune cookies. i was very impressed by how well the cookies turned out and my friends seemed to like them, too. ^^

 

this was my largest Christmas undertaking. like i did last year, i made little Christmas ornaments for the residents of a local nursing home that my dad heads a weekly church service at. i was getting really worried about completing this project, since i couldn’t find a knitting pattern i really liked that i could complete fairly quickly. as you can probably tell, we ended up sewing the felt doves and adding little accessories instead of knitting. it worked out really well and i heard that everyone liked them. mom came up with the idea for the doves and how to make them, but i used this template to cut out the doves.

 

anyway, i hope that everyone has a safe and wonderful new years and i hope to be back soon with the 2007 recap!

soaring eagles project December 21, 2007

i sent my soaring eagles knits off to rachel last week and (in my classic totally-behind-schedule posting) am just blogging about them now. oh well! the pictures are all terrible because they were taken at three in the morning. sorry!

there are seven pair of mittens and six sets of slippers (the fuzzy feet are photographed before and after felting). i used these patterns for the mittens: 2 needle mittens, 45-minute mittens, longways mittens, and basic mittens. and these for the slippers: fuzzy feet, pocketbook slippers, and aunt maggie’s slippers. can you tell that i don’t like knitting the same pattern over and over? ^^

catch-up and a meme December 2, 2007

looking over my recent posts, i’ve noticed a few disturbing trends. not only has my posting been pretty sporadic, but i haven’t talked at all about what’s been going on in my life or updated you on things that i brought up a while back. so, tonight i’m going to play a bit of catch-up. here we go:

• i accepted a summer accounting internship.

• grandma’s surgery went ok, but she’s been having a pretty rough recovery. it’s very sad to hear about.

• i won a few contests. rachelle had a creativity challenge where she asked readers to finish something and post pictures in the flickr pool. i won the random drawing with my work finishing squarey and got a gift certificate to green prairie fibers. sarah had a grand opening contest for her new online yarn store, perfect day yarns and i was lucky enough to get chosen by the random number generator. look at the goodies that will be coming my way! i chose the rose lipt maiden (pink) colorway…. gorgeous!

• rachel is starting to get worried that she won’t get enough mittens/slippers for this year’s soaring eagles project. if you have ANY spare knitting time between now and dec. 17, please please please consider knitting something for this project! the details are here.

• i had a great thanksgiving at home with the family… unfortunately, i didn’t want to come back to school. ^^ i just have next week and then exam week before winter break. why can’t break start now?!

also, i plan on getting missy’s seven weird/random things meme (from september! yikes!) out of my inbox tonight. in my defense, i told her i was horrible at completing these things!

1. i love star trek. especially star trek: the next generation. i was very sad when it finished its syndication run on spike tv in october. i remember watching with my parents when i was a little kid… back when there were primetime shows that were actually somewhat appropriate for kids to watch.

2. i would rather walk the 1.1 miles to class than wait 5 minutes for a campus bus to take me there. i dislike waiting in general, but especially when it’s optional.

3. in eighth grade, i joined a virtual pet website called neopets. i’ve gone back and forth between not playing at all and being totally addicted. it is definitely a waste of time, but it’s still a guilty pleasure…

4. the last time i did one of these random thing memes, one of my things was: ” i am still dreaming that when i turn twenty, (next month! i’m so old, HAHA) all my zits and acne will magically go away. i am not horribly afflicted, but still!” as it turns out, my acne has only gotten worse! stupid skin!

5. i hate waking up in the morning. i always set my cell phone and i’m so out of it when i wake up that for months i puzzled over the words “alarm” and “snooze” and managed to confuse myself. i think i finally understand now! ^^

6. i think i could eat ice cream all day long. it currently tops my list of favorite foods. my favorite flavor right now is publix premium cool mint cookie low-fat frozen yogurt. so tasty! oh! and vanilla yogurt that i mix peanut butter in. that’s amazing, too.

7. ummm! when i go home, the two biggest differences i notice between school and home are that the bathroom countertop is much lower and we have much less water pressure. i don’t really notice my bed being softer or the food being better or any of that, just the countertop, hahaha.

man, that was tough! i need to go do schoolwork now! good night!