Mittens

I haven't yet shown you my first finish for this year. I got these mittens done almost two weeks ago now. I got the yarn from eBay last September and was going to knit long gloves from it. I didn't find any pattern that I would have been happy with, and having never knit gloves I wasn't brave enough to just wing it, so I made mittens instead. I used the flap-top mittens pattern from Handknit Holidays as my guide, but I didn't so the flap.
Since I'd purchased enough yarn for long gloves, but ended up doing normal mittens, I still have about 100g of the yarn left. Gotta find something to knit it into as I really like the yarn!

As for the picture... Well, DH bought a digital systems camera a while ago and we both like to go out and practice using it whenever we can (the rainy and super-cloudy weather we've had for, um, two months now doesn't give us that many opportunities). It rained a lot yesterday, so today we drove up to the rapids near us and they were gorgeous! After watching the rapids and DH photographing them for a while, I just stuck out my hands and told him to take a picture of them :)

Knitting review

In 2007 I knitted the following items:

Moonlight cardigan
Legwarmers
Grace sweater
A Bamboo cardigan
Ballet camisole
A scarf
Breezy cables

The last one is the one I am most proud of as it is the most difficult thing I've knit. Thanks to the warm winter, I've already had a chance to wear it a few times.

It's hard to pick a favourite, though, I use them all quite often. Well, not the leg warmers that much and also the bamboo cardigan hasn't seen the light of day that often as it was sans buttons for most of the summer. I had expected to use the Ballet camisole a lot in summer, but I've actually worn it more often now during autumn and winter. It's great with a long-sleeved T-shirt or with a white dress shirt and a small silk scarf for when I need to look more put together. The Grace sweater and the Moonlight cardi are so warm and I wear them almost constantly (I'm wearing Moonlight right now).

As with last year's cross stitch accomplishments, it's not a lot in numbers, but I'm happy with them all and I think that's enough for me :)

Cross stitch review

Here's the latest, and last, ornament I finished. It's from the 2007 ornament issue. This was done a few days after Christmas, still in 2007. This brings the total of orneis I made last year to four. And none of those got finished into actual ornaments. How sad is that?



Otherwise I had a decent stitching year. I finished:
Strawberry Garden
A small pillow
Sampler Mystery II
A card
An autumn needleroll
Winter's Eve (kind of)
Wedding Sampler

Plus a small exchange piece and a small Halloween ornament.

I worked on some of my WIPs and continued to neglect others. But I won't count those now :)

The New Year

"I couldn't think of a better way to start the new year than with flowers," said a friend as she handed me this beautiful bouquet. I agree. And am lucky to have a very special start to the new year with lots of flowers in my home at the moment.



In addition to the bouquet and the poinsettias (white and red ones) which are still looking beautiful, this hyacint opened up on the last day of 2007 (and another one is just about to).
One of my orchids has started to bloom as well and it makes me very happy.



I'll be posting about my knitting and stitching plans for 2008 soon and I'm also soon going to show you some ornaments I've finished.

Happy New Year everyone!