What do we have here?

What are these things that suddenly appeared so bright and colorful and comfy and warm on my feet? Why, they are my new socks that I knit (knitted? which one is used?). They just... happened. I sat down on the couch on Friday with five bamboo sticks and a ball of yarn and voila! (The yarn is self-striping, Novita 7 Veljestä)
The pattern is a combination of three different patterns with some changes as well. I pretty much just did them by measuring them against my foot, but had to look up some help on the general number of stitches needed, the heel and the toe.

Have you tried photographing your own feet? Not as easy as you would think. Here you see one of the socks trying to hide from the world by camouflaging itself on our arm chair in the living room.

Strawberry Garden SAL

I did a lot of stitching yesterday. I had so much fun :) Here's what I got done on our first SAL day:



I aslo noticed I'm missing one of the threads. I don't know how I could have missed it when I placed my order, but I did. I'll have to see whether I'll order it sometime soon or replace it with something I've already got (like DMC).

Nicki, I'm looking forward to next Monday :)

Some stitching

I've been meaning to show you these pictures of the ornies I recently finished. The first one is by Amaryllis Artworks from the 2005 JCS ormanent issue. The second one is by Cherised Stitches from this years issue.




I've already begun yet another one, but today, I'm starting something completely new. It's the first day of the Strawberry Garden Stitch-along I'm having with Nicki.

It's done!

I finished the vest today!
Day light being a very precious (and rare) thing these days, I couldn't wait for DH to come home but had to try to take the pics myself. The pattern is from last year's fall issue of Vogue Knitting. I didn't used the yarn specified (I used Sandnes Garn Smart) and changed the colors a bit too. It's 100% wool so it's very warm :)

I haven't blogged in a while...

...and suddenly I have so much to show you! I'll start with these :)

Last week I played around in the kitchen and made magic batter (taikataikina). I'm sure most of you already know about this. It uses salt and flour and a tiny bit of water and then you bake them in an oven on low temperature. I used to do this when I was a kid and was recently reminded of it by an article in a magazine. So I decided to give it a go.

Here are my creations out straight out of the oven:



The numbers 2, 0, 0 and 7 for the new year, some small hearts and pieces for playing board games. On Monday I bought gold paint and this is how they look now:



On Saturday I attended a craft fair in Tampere with a friend and in addition to tons of ideas, I brought home these:



Beeswax and wick. After reading the Tasha Tudor book I've wanted to try making some beeswax candles. I, again, remember doing this as a child with my mother one time, and I've bought some beeswax candles in the past. I just love their smell. The friend I was with, another friend I showed it to and DH all think I'm just going to make a big mess in the kitchen (you can just feel the trust, can't you?). They may be right, but I have a feeling I'll have fun doing so :)



I also got a skein of variegated greenish linen thread for embroidery and beautiful stitch markers made of sterling silver and tiger eye gemstones. They are by Valhalla Design and you can read more about them from here. This is the second set I've purchased and I can truly recommend them :)

Progress

Today I took out the dark grey wool fabric I bought in Shanghai and cut out the pieces needed for a dress.




There's still quite a lot of the fabric left, so I think I might be able to do a knee length skirt as well later.

And look! I just finished knitting the front piece of the vest. The next step is then weaving all those billions of loose ends in. This definitely isn't my favourite part of knitting (is it anyone's?). Then I'll block the pieces and sew them together and knit a rib edge on the neck and armholes. So a bit more to go before there's a finished item to show, but I'm getting there :)



I have no idea what was going on with the back piece (on the right). I thought I had counted the pattern very carefully, but I must have gotten confused by all the decreases as I know see clearly that the pattern does not match.. Oh well, it doesn't look too bad, I hope.

These make me smile

I am slowly getting back to knitting and stitching. The vest is almost done and I would so like to just knit knit knit until it's done, but I have to pace myself. I finished the ornament I started and started stitching another one.

But what I wanted to show you today, are my Christmas Cacti, which are blooming at the moment. They make me smile. And I just love it that they choose to bloom at the darkest time of the year!


This one hasn't opened it's buds yet, but there are plenty of them (you can only see the biggest in this picture). This is my oldest and biggest. It's sits on a shelf in our bedroom.


This one is also in our bedroom and it is placed on DH's nightstand. It's right next to our alarm clock, so I see it every morning and every evening :)



This white one is in our study, and despite its small size, has plenty of buds.

New books

My wrist started aching again (most likely due to the excessive amount of in-hand stitching and knitting and hair pin lacing I was doing). After complaining about it to DH for days, he told me not to do anything for a week.
"A week?" I said, shocked.
"Yes, a full week."
"And what if I don't?" I asked.
"I'm going to be very very very disappointed in you."

Oh well then, what else can you do but obey? Seriously, though, it will do me good (well, for the wrist at least) and I should remember to be careful with it afterwards too. I have to remember that although the surgery "fixed" it, it hasn't made it any stronger.

In the meantime I've been buying books. I found all these quilting books on sale:






I have to say, these are not superb books, but well worth the price I paid for them. The first two had some nice projects in them and the last one is about wool felt applique, which is new to me, so I'm looking forward to having the time to try one of the projects. The Wine Country Quilts was sadly a bit disspointing. I guess, because I was expecting too much from it, for some reason. But it, too, had two or three quilts that I might do, or derive inspiration from.

November goals

My October goals were:

Knit a vest -almost done!
Knit a hat -erm... no
Stitch Sampler Mystery II part 4 (almost there already) -done!
Stitch something relatively small with an autumn/Halloween theme -done!
Stitch at least one Christmas ornament -done!
Sew the top of the picnic quilt (I'll leave the quilting for spring) -done!
Sew a skirt -nope
Crochet at least a bit on the tablecloth that's been a WIP for ages -nope

November for me is the month to get ready for Christmas. So I'm trying to go easy on myself with the goals and even so I'm assuming I won't meet them.

Finish the knitted vest
Start to knit a pair of socks (at the moment I need these more than the hat)
Stitch on part 5 of the Sampler Mystery
Stitch at least two Christmas ornaments
Sew a skirt (preferably two)