has a hat, too....................
They wore their matching hats today. :-)))) Momma was so pleased................
Christmas decorating going on around here!!!! Got the advent calendar set up just now. I'll show you some pictures of that tomorrow.
I made a new hat for JR today.................
I know I'm partial.......... but isn't he too cute with those top front teeth coming in?
I think he might have to be promoted to Etsy model as I'm thinking I might offer some of these up for sale since I have lots more fabric where that came from. I'll make an Erika sized prototype tomorrow as she wants a hat like her brother, too and I have really cute pink fleece with colourful hearts. I don't think I'll list it tonight but maybe tomorrow.
I promise I won't keep making this blog a sales pitch.......... but I do like to show off new things.
Now, back to my Dad's Christmas sock. I got quite a bit done on the foot already. Luckily, my Dad has small feet. I'm making it with a Regia from the stash that I never was too keen on. Well, it's knitting up into the most perfect man's sock I've knit so far.
I still have to pick a manly colour out of my very pink and purple stash of sock yarn to knit a stocking stuffer for hubby........ sort of become an annual tradition without planning it. Along comes the annual sock into Little Miss' stocking, too. Oh, I guess I can't forget JR's stocking now either. Yikes, I have more Christmas knitting to do than I thought. What did I see somewhere today............ 26 more days or something like that.
It's warming up again but tonight could be a very icky night and tomorrow might not be fun traffic wise. And of course, with all the snow heading for the big melt, it will be slushy and wet and yucky on the streets for days.
Back to the knitting..........
When you live on the west coast, when there's a major snow fall, that's all you talk about. So, that's all the pictures I have to show off. It's a snow day. Our school district closed all schools. So Little Miss also didn't go to daycare. Our street, not a major thoroughfare, is a sheet of ice. Evan tried to work from home but then the server went down and later, he found out that all the power was gone in their office building and everyone went home anyways. So yes, we west coasters do get limited in our activities when we get a major snow fall like we did this past weekend.
I've been spending the time at home, knitting, making earrings and other fun stuff. But except for some new earring pictures, I don't have any knitting pictures to show you. I finished another Christmas present and am working on the socks for my Dad. I think November will be my first month this year where I haven't at least finished one pair of socks.
Tomorrow should be more back to normal.
Here are some more snow pics:
Back to some jewelry pics:
A lovely pair of Christmas earrings using emerald green and siam red Swarovski bicone crystals and some siam drops. Lovely but not perfect, so they are for me and not for sale. :-)
But these ones are for sale:
I love these. They remind me of ice crystals - the blues just sparkle. For sale in my Etsy shop.
Time to get back to the "big secret" Christmas gift. I just joined sleeves and body today and am working on the yoke now. I think I can finish it, don't you? Just a yoke and the finishing....... should be good.
Frosty the snowman has arrived on the west coast. If I remember correctly, this kind of snowfall at this time of the year, is kind of unusual for us on the "WET" coast. After all the storms and downpours, this is different. I hate driving in the stuff but since it is Sunday, we're enjoying a snow day without much worries about the traffic, driving or any of the other things that suck about snow. Being inside, with a hot cup of coffee, watching Little Miss and her Daddy play outside........ perfect.
This was taken last night - quite late......... the excitement just couldn't be contained.
And as a result of the snow, I've created some snowman earrings. I really think they are cute and perfect for the season and since I have the materials to make a few more sets of these, I've created an Etsy store.
So far I have only this one item listed but if you'd like a little bit of winter sparkle in your wardrob, check them out over at my brand spanking new store. I've only listed one, because I have no expectations.... but just in the event that the one pair sells, I can make more - just get in touch with me if that's the case. I'm expecting some emerald green sparkly spacers next week so the snowman could also have a green scarf instead of the red scarf.
Well, I should get out of the PJs now, do some laundry and get back to the knitting. I have more to share and show off so I'll be back to posting more in the next few days, especially if we continue to get snow at this rate.
Really, truly............ not a whole lot is new. Evan said to me last night, "you realize that there are only 5 weeks to Christmas? Are you sure you'll get all your projects done?" How is that for sending someone in panic mode? I'm doing okay though, except that one of my projects was finished on Sunday. I thought I was keeping the bracelet nice and short for a skinny wrist and then somehow, it turned out that it fits me perfectly or even a bit on the big side so I have to re-do this gift. Here is a picture of it though. It's a knitted wire bracelet with a variety of glass beads and non-tarnish silver craft wire. I have more beads, I have more wire, I just need another clasp to re-do it and make it fit nicely for the intended gift recipient. I quite love it so it's not so bad that it will fit me..... is it? It has put me behind the 8-ball a bit though.
(oh, I didn't realize how hard it was to see the detail in this picture)
I'm 2/3 of the way done with my version of Branching Out using some Blue Sky Alpacca/silk blend. I think it will be really pretty. The other mystery project I think I should be able to finish as well. Then that leaves the bookmarks and one is over halfway done and 2 or 3 pairs of socks. Forget the idea that I'll be able to start a tradition and make Christmas sweaters for the kids. That's just not in the cards.
A few other bloggers have inspired me to pick up my spindle again and actually practice. I started a daily spindling session after I saw that Brenda had picked up a spindle and was learning with her drop spindle. And then Rachel teased us with her new spinning wheel. Well, I made it a habit to spindle a little just each and every day and I've almost used the roving I got from a good friend. Lara, if you weren't basking on a cruise ship somehwere, you'd be so proud of me!!!!! I think I got the hang of it a bit better than ever before. I've just got to keep practicing.
It's really stormy out again this morning.
And a few gratuitous kidd pics............ JR was 10 months last Friday and weighed in at about 19 lbs. 19 lbs 1 ounce but he had a diaper and a light sleepver on. So realisticall, bum naked he would be just under 19 lbs. Not a great gain for the last month or so but they do slow down, especially now that he's so active. Can't slow that young man down.
I love it that LIttle Miss loves to read!!!!
Have a great day!!!!
For our neck of the woods.................. boy, did we ever get hammered by the wind and the rain of the last few days. We lost our power at around 12:30 on Wednesday and only had the lights turned back on around 5 pm last night - well over 24 hours of cold in the house, no lights, no warm food etc........ it sure wasn't a lot of fun.
When the power first went off, I ended up stuck in the house and couldn't manage to lift the garage door manually so I had no way to get Little Miss from school in time. In a panic I called her daycare and asked them to pick her up and then I asked the principal who was fielding calls from all kinds of paniced patients to deliver the message to Erika that Mommy couldn't get out of the house to pick her up. We ate by candle light and listened to the hand crank radio. It's a cool gadget. I spent my time spindling (more to talk about that later) and knitting a bit...... simple things of course when you only have candle light.
After school yesterday, I took both kiddos to the inlaws and we had dinner there. Thank God for nice neighbours (who unfortunately are moving soon)........ they called me on my cell when they came home to let us know that we had our power back. Otherwise, we were going to camp at the inlaws for the remainder of the evening.
Well, that's done and over with. Today is fairly normal and now I have to hustle to get Little Miss up and off to daycare as JR and I have a little baby storytime session booked at the library. JR is 10 months today and I'm also taking him for a quick weigh-in and a yummy lunch with hubby (sind the public health office where I can weigh the little guy is in the same building as his office).
Better go.............. I'm starting to run out of time to get everyone up and out of the house on time.
Another week has gone by................
Mostly a kiddo update here today:
Crawling - Oh My God..............
Friday JR took his first few crawlies.... he's been moving and scooching about all across the place for a long time so I didn't think the crawling step would be too much different but the moment he took those first few tentative real crawlie steps, I knew I'd be in trouble. As I'm typing, he's already back into the bathroom. He's getting faster and more dangerous as the days go by. Being the curious boy he is, he is already working on pulling himself up on things now that he is truly mobile and his sister's things need to be kept out of reach........... oh, gotta check what he's up to now............ closed the door to the ensuite now..... check. I know little Miss turned into a bit of a problem when she started crawling but she never got into things quite the way he is working at it.
Plastic Surgeons
We had a plastic surgeon's appointment with JR on Friday afternoon. I have no idea what I expected but not this high end, really upscale plastic surgeon's office where you sink into the couches and you listen to the girl at the front desk quoting costs of various surgeries over the phone and talking about costs in the tens of thousands. While we're waiting there, we were looking through the info and had a good chuckle about various procedures that we had never heard of, especially relating to certain private body parts of the male anatomy - and why would you hang 1 lb weights from there after surgery? - I'll leave it up to you. And what were we there for? JR's little skin tag at the side of his ear. I kind of felt a bit out of place. We saw the doc and he checked out JR and determined that it truly was just that......... a little skin tag. Apparently these can be signs of other things and especially he mentioned that often they point to other assymetries in a baby's head/face but he didn't detect anything. So we were given the choice of having him knocked out for the surgery or giving him a local freezing and holding him down to scalpel the little thing off. The surgeon was leaning towards the local freezing and so were we. So we're waiting to get a date in the hospital to get this procedure done. We probably have to wait into the new year for an appointment. We are having 2nd thoughts on the holding him down method though, since he's just been impossible to even change a diaper on. But the thought of putting him out completely scares me so we'll manage.
More Beads
After the doctor's visit I took the opportunity to visit a store called Country Beads. Very cute little bead shop with lots of inspiration. I ended up buying some silver plated wire (see, I'm working up to the sterling silver stuff) and a few other findings but no beads. Go figure. I hope to take some courses there maybe in the new year. That same evening, I bought some lovely (oooooooooooo, little boy is out and into the hallway....... see, this is getting tough) glass beads at Michaels and over the weekend, I put together a new bracelet. I would usually direct you to my Vox blog All that Glitters but I don't think I'll have the time to post the bracelet over there right now. So I'll show it off here.
The glass beads are a lovely, light pink with a flower pattern wrapping around the centre. On either side of each bead, I used some Czech Fire Polish beads in Amethyst. Instead of making my own clasp, I used a purchased toggle clasp. This bracelet is really pretty but it's almost a tad short for my big wrists. However, one more bead link would have made it a bit big, I think.
Knitting
I also managed a bunch of knitting. Sleeve #1 of Christmas mystery project is done. I finished the body of Ruby for Erika and started on the sleeve. And now, get this............ I'm working on a beaded bookmark fro Greatgrandma (Evan's grandmother). I don't know what I was expecting but it's very fiddly on 1.25 mm needles, with DMC perle cotton #8 and size 11 seed beads. I'm almost halfway done but this picture only shows the start. This is a definite project for the patient........... I can only do a bit at a time because my hands do get tired from working on this.
And I have plans to make at least one more for another Christmas gift.
Little Miss is in school this morning instead of the afternoon. That was hard to get her off in time. I was planning on going for a visit at the office to discuss my return to work in January with my boss this morning but they way everything was rushed, I didn't have a chance to feed JR before taking Little Miss to school. So, I had to come home and feed him and now I still "owe" him his morning cereal, a diaper change and feeding the cats......... I'm not making it today. Ah well, tomorrow will work as well.......... I didn't have a booked appointment or anything....... I like the "drop-in" factor. 
Okay, JR is heading back down the hallway so I shall chase after him.
Have a good one.
I'm still here. Did anybody miss me at all?
Well, it's been a bit of a lull here on the blog. No post for a week. What's up with that? Well, first I was annoyed with bloglines taking forever to pick up my feeds and then life just happened all around me. With kiddos getting up quite early these days, I haven't been able to steal those few moments to download some pictures and write a decent blog entry. We've also just been really busy and I haven't knitted very much at all. That doesn't bode too well for the Christmas knitting.
So, since I haven't posted since Halloween, I do need to show you the pumpkin shot. I didn't get a good picture of Little Miss in her Tiger costume but then, all you need to do is look up last Halloween post and she looked basically the same........ just a year taller.
Evan spent a lot of time carving the Thomas pumpkin............ at least 2 hours..... that's why the others are more basic.
As for knitting, I'm almost finished my MIL's Christmas scarf. I'm just casting off. It's a horizontal scarf so the casting off is slow. I can't wait to block it. It's pretty but I'm not sure how much I like the lace diamonds with the garter stitch. I think I do like lace set on a stocking stitch background much better.
I'm also working on the other "big mystery" Christmas project and although I haven't touched it all week, the body to the armholes is almost done. Time to start the sleeves before putting the raglan all together. I think I can get it done.
JR has been getting into my knitting. I have to start hiding everything away. Yikes.....
The beading still gets me.......... I have done one more bracelet. Check it out over on All that Glitters. It's just very basic and I'm wanting to try more, different things but I just don't have the supplies. With beads, I'm discovering that you really need a bead stash so that you can go pull out things and play with them to see how they'll work together and all that stuff. I'm all for project buying with the knitting but I think with beads you have to build a stash, most definitely. I've been trying........... but not really - I wish I could win the lottery.
Last but not least, I received my scarf for the Internationl Scarf Exchange. Bev created a lovely, drapey, cabled scarf in the most lucious colour for me. It's going to work really well with my "back-to-work" wardrobe that I'll have to start thinking about in a couple of months time. Thanks Bev. The package made my day yesterday - one of the rainiest days of the season.... yet.
I'll be back sooner next time.
