The Winter Blahs

It's winter. Not the fun snowy winter of Christmas shows, but the oh-so-blah-and-grey winter of only 9 hours of rainy daylight in the Pacific Northwest. Sigh. It's given me the blahs. I don't even feel like crafting! No knitting progress to share (because I'm not doing any knitting). Can't work up the enthusiasm to make progress on the auction quilt either (even though it's due Feb 1st). Haven't gotten far on the"year of organization" idea that Colin and I had either (Cyndy's progress all last year was making us envious) - although we do have a nice new whiteboard/corkboard/calendar in the kitchen now.

Add on to the regular blahs a kiddo who's been sick on & off and wailing at school drop-offs and you get the picture of an exciting time at our house lately. Max is now on a bland food diet for a week, trying to stabilize his tummy and get it to digest foods correctly again, then off milk and cheese for another 2 weeks. Hmm, what can I make out of noodles, rice, or potatoes for dinner tonight? I'm exploring casseroles...

Hey, at least we have clean carpets now (finally used the coupon we bought at last year's auction) - and Max sure enjoyed taking everything out of his room & the office and putting it all back in.

Quick note to sis Lisa: Thinking about you today. Hope surgery went well. Love you!

Gingerbread, Snow, and Project Pix

Last night, we made a Gingerbread house (cheating, with a kit). Max really enjoyed himself.


Some snaps of Teri's backpack (hope she got it! FedEx couldn't seem to figure out where her house is. I'm relying on the fact that she never gets near her computer to not spoil the surprise ;-).

I'm rather pleased at how it turned out. Not bad for no pattern. And much better on my second attempt! (It had gotten really big & shapeless, so I frogged and tried again with a more defined round bottom and fewer stitches).

And we had some snow back in early December. Here's the snowman Max & I made with the inch or so of snow (pretty much actual size ;-).


Here's a photo for scale. It was really a snowball snowman.


A quick peek at a few of the assortment of Christmas cards.

There. Enough photos for you Lucy?

Pathetic Blog Break

Sorry for the radio silence here. Been busy? Isn't everyone this time of year? I have very few projects to show for it too, but here's what's been up on the project front:

• Christmas cards - done! And arriving soon! It was fun to do them all a little bit different this year, although it took longer. Cool paper, and cool cutout designs, plus a little ribbon I had laying around for some, and my famous Crop-a-dile for eyelets on some. Maybe I'll post a couple of pictures of my favorites.
• School auction quilt - finally, finally, finally!, got all the sun-print fabric squares back from all the kids. I now have a complete set of 12 squares, ready to sew up. 2 Moms have volunteered to help piece, one has her row back to me, one I expect any day now. Taking Thursday & Friday off this week, so I should have time to work on them then, or on Saturday's DOS.
• Knitting - not much! Ordered enough yarn for Juno (Estelle Alpaca Cashmere Tweed - super yummy, and it went on sale at Ram Wools), but still don't have the pattern, so no progress there. Finished up Teri's backpack (picture coming soon) and sent it off as a Christmas present (oops, just spoiled that non-surprise). Cast on, frogged, and cast on again for a wrap for me (Cozy in Nashua Julia, Velvet Moss). Not really thrilled with the lace pattern for this - I just want a simple rectangular wrap to keep at work and keep me warm. Maybe I'll be lucky & get a stitch dictionary for Christmas and I can find the perfect easy lace for my own custom wrap.
• Sewing (or rather, altering) - ordered some cord pants from Lands End, which fit well in length & hips, but sadly are saggy in the waist (i.e., falling down!). Trying to alter them to fit my waist (starting with the super-on-sale, can't return, green ones ;-). I hate sewing clothes. And altering is almost worse. The green ones are unpicked, ready to take in. Definitely need to take these to DOS for a consult with the master sewers there.

Hey - very cool idea on Chef Messy's blog - all homemade Christmas. Whattdya say, Robertsons - up for that next year?

Post-Grad?

I followed Lucy over to The Blog Readability Test and found out that this blog rates post-grad. Hmm. Seems unlikely, maybe it's all the "technical knitting jargon" :-).

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Birthday shout outs to Lisa & Jana

Happy Birthday to Lisa (today!) and Jana (was Wednesday!). Hope it's a good year for both of you.

I always think of Hawaii when I think of Jana now, because she got married there several years ago. So here's a Hibiscus for her to remind her of the islands:

The pinkish hue isn't just the picture (although it's a little darker in the picture than in real life). Taking an idea from shadow trapunto, I layered a bright pink fabric behind a nice white to give it a little pink flavor. Seemed like fun.

And Lisa loves roses (and other flowers) so I thought I'd send her a bouquet of them (cut from the rose fabric I used for her book several years ago):

Also for Lisa, another cool, cozy, comfy bamboo hat. Same yarn (different colorway), same needles as the blue hat, made-up pattern:

Now I ask you, do you see any purple in the colors in this hat? Nor did I. But when I washed it in cold water and then let it air dry, these annoying purple stripes appeared at the folds. What? Where did that come from? Wandering dye, I suppose. Washed again, inside out this time, and dried without folds (over a glass column), and the stripes on the outside were gone, but remained on the inside and at the bottom, just fainter. I've instructed Lisa not to dry this near anything light, for fear of future purple stripes. Wacky.

Blueberry's candy haul

A picture says it all.

The Blueberry!

Max the blueberry very much enjoyed his halloween and ALL the candy he got. Hoo boy did he get a lot of candy.

Before T&T at Riley & Reed's house:

Being a blueberry at ours:

We couldn't seem to get a picture showing just how darn cute he is in this. Ah well, you'll just have to imagine. And he's so happy to have a blueberry costume. Who knew?