whoosh!

And just like that it's another year coming to an end! Can't believe how quickly Christmas came and went. It was a pretty low key affair this year since my MIL decided to spend the holidays at her new house in Florida. I also took a nasty spill at work and threw out my back two days before Christmas. Luckily, all the decorating, baking, shopping and wrapping were done so all that was left was the fun stuff i.e. spending time with the family, watching holiday movies and eating a ton of yummy food. There was also some knitting and ornament making:

mistletoe socks (pattern: hermione's everyday socks)

yarn: knitmona in mistletoe colorway

pattern: mitten garland advent calendar

stitchable mitten ornaments by katrinkles

Wishing that I had a few more days of bed rest but unfortunately it's a crazy busy time of year at work. So heading back to the grind tomorrow morning. I hope that your holiday season has been chock-full of family, love and joy! I will be back soon with an end of the year roundup.

stripe happy

Happy last day of November! We had a lovely Thanksgiving filled with family, friends and yummy food. I had to work for part of the day but came home to a delicious dinner prepared by my sisters-in-law. One of the many blessings in my life is having family who live close by. Especially ones who know how to cook and throw a good party :)

I can't believe how fast this year has gone by! Only 3 & 1/2 weeks until Christmas! I know that a few of you have been knitting gifts year round. Wish I had the forethought to do that. There are a few gifts in the knitting basket which are underway. Just small things this year: a bunny which is currently on hold until the baby is born in January. The parents are waiting to find out the gender. As soon as that happens, I can outfit the bunny accordingly. Also some fingerless mitts and a cowl which I am still waiting on the yarn for.

And of course, there has been lots of fun Christmas sock knitting going on. Speaking of socks, I've got a backlog of finished ones to show you all. Presenting my Stripy Socks for All Seasons:

Spring

Summer

Fall

Winter

Spring is a plain sock with heel flaps. Fall & Winter are vanilla socks using my new favorite afterthought heel technique without waste yarn. And Summer is a scrappy monster sock with a Strong Heel.

building blocks (westknits mystery shawl kal 2016)

There was quite a bit of controversy in the mkal forum with this shawl. Some knitters did not care for the construction, a few were in an uproar when two color brioche was included in one of the clues, others didn't like the final shape. Guess I'm easy to please because I enjoyed the entire process of knitting my building blocks shawl. I loved seeing how the different colors interacted with each other depending on their placement and the stitch patterns involved. We were essentially blending the colors like paints on a palette. It was also really cool learning how to increase and decrease in two color brioche. Stephen had these funny but very clear and informative videos on the special techniques used in each clue. I especially loved the brioche knitting one and can't wait to knit one of his brioche designs. The final shawl shape is pretty versatile (I made the small size). I like to wear mine either draped over the shoulders with the long ends hanging in front or wrapped cowl-like around the neck. The bat wing shape is admittedly not to everyone's taste (I personally prefer a more curved & rounded shawl). But it's good fun to step outside of my comfort zone every once in awhile.

sweater weather

Yay! It's finally cold enough to comfortably wear a woolly sweater and flannel shirt! To celebrate sweater weather, I wrapped up the finishing touches on my fringe and friends improvised top-down kal sweater. So pleased and truthfully, surprised at how well this turned out, considering that it has been quite awhile since I made anything with sleeves. Here's a visual rundown of the process:

dreaming and planning

(mis)calculating

suspenseful knitting

randomly adding another design element

the part that gave me a migraine

sleeve island

plotting woolly tattoos (hmmm flowers, unicorns, donuts...finally settled for trees)

happy sweater dance!

5 things on friday

Why hello there! Can't believe that it's already October, my favorite month of the year. I've been having a little case of writer's block for the past few weeks so I'm hoping to jumpstart the words by writing a list of things that are making me feel all of the good fall time vibes:

Halloween Pixel Rise socks. So gruesomely fun to knit, especially when using the frankensocks Halloween edition kit by Havirland. She's a talented indie yarn dyer based here in Maryland.

Midori Traveler's Notebook. This is the planner/ journal/ scrapbook of my dreams! Even though I love the culture & style of the hobonichi planners, it was a total fail. Mainly because all of the pages are dated (of course they are! It's a daily planner duh!) which meant that I felt pressured to write something down every day. And of course I fell behind and ended up with a lot of blank pages. Which caused more guilt and avoidance etc etc. But the neat thing about the MTN is that it has different paper inserts which you can choose to customize it to your journaling/planning style. The inserts are easily removable and you can combine several different ones in the notebook. (Mine are all non-dated). All of which is held together by a beautiful leather cover which seems to get wonderfully aged with use. It feels good to be excited about journaling again.

Rhinebeck socks. No I'm not going. But a girl can dream. And wear cute stripey fall socks while she's at it.

A new weeknight mealtime game plan. One of my favorite food bloggers has just come out with her first ebook. It is filled with easy weeknight dinner recipes paired with the perfect side dishes for each. Also includes lots of yummy desserts. I think that my two guys are even more excited about this book than I am since they gobble up everything that I've ever cooked from Mel's website.

My favorite hangout spot (trader joe's) + my favorite month = everything pumpkin.

Hope that you are finding lots of reasons to celebrate this beautiful season!