Warming, in Green

I finally finished the last of the winter stuff for my kids... only about a week after it started to get cold enough for them. After finishing them I took a night or two and just watched tv without crafting before picking up another project to work on during my evenings.

First, the mittens:



Second, the hat/scarf:


I really wanted to make one of these for one of the kids - and the girls didn't need hats or scarves, so Tomato had to be talked into it. It didn't take *too* much talking, but every time I tried it on him he would freeze for a second, then feel with his hands where the knitting ended, and then really quickly WHIP it off while declaring '2 inches'. So, if I needed to actually measure anything I had to do it really quickly while he was frozen for 1.5 seconds.



I think he decided that he liked it though.



He really loves that it matches his mittens and that they are both green.


Speaking of green.... I found a really neat group on Ravelry that likes to barter - yarny stuff of course, but really anything. I swapped my many skeins of lopi yarn for four skeins of this:



At this point I'm not sure if it will end up being for me or for one of the kids, but I am really excited about making something with it in the new year!

Decisive Element

Happiness Project blog

I have this Goethe quote I find myself going back to:

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

The Un-Fun has begun....

I have a song stuck in my head. It's a silly song from my childhood - in fact I mentioned it to my sister and she burst out laughing. I looked into getting it as an MP3, unfortunately it'd be really expensive right now to do that, as it's part of a 12 book series (and you know I couldn't just get one!) and each book and music sells digitally for more than I want to pay (or for a lot all together). Someday perhaps, but in the meantime I went onto Ebay and found an auction for the three music books that hold the piano music for the whole series- no going and snatching the auction up!

The exact song I had stuck in my head was all about Professor Un. He's the arch enemy of Captain Dependable... you can see why I loved this growing up. He somehow makes it so Captain Dependable becomes Un-Dependable. ...and when that happens, the Unfun has begun! Hooray Professor Un! Don't worry, the brave children manage to fix the situation and all is great in the end.

So, instead of doing laundry and cooking and all those other nice things, we took Thanksgiving off. We brought our veggies and rolls to the extended family meal, we split up some food assignments and had our own feast on Friday and then other than attending church we did nothing. We had some Un-fun. We ate leftovers... We sat and read... I got a little knitting done and I think a couple of games were played. It was a wonderful weekend. ...and hard for it to all come to an end.


With all that down time I managed to finish the Gl-ittens for Curly.


She had to come running when a called about 486 times to try them on, but she did so happily....


...and now she loves them!


She even wore them to the store last night when we had to run out for a few things for a certain husband birthday cake that needs making this week.


I even managed to start the mittens for the little boy....


so many stories already while knitting for him... the first mitten is almost done!

Slippers, Slippers, and a Glitten

The slippers for 'Little Tomato' are done:


He loves wearing Red Socks (and we get a kick out of the sports pun that he has no clue about). He insisted as we were picking out yarn for 'Lily' to start making her own slippers that the red yarn was his. Nice of him to pick out some bulky yarn.... they worked up fairly quickly and aside from a couple days when they were missing, he has worn them almost non-stop around our cold house.




'Curly' chose some yarn out of the girls' yarn basket in their room and had me start slippers for her. Unfortunately I ran out of yarn as I was starting the second slipper, so they have different color bottoms, but they are warm and fuzzy (and can be machine washed, unlike the red ones) and only took a couple of days of tv watching once I got moving on them.




As I said earlier, 'Lily' chose some yarn out of my stash and is working on her own slippers... She's almost to the sole on the first one, and then the second should move faster. I might take pity on her and do the sole, which is the only tricky part on the whole slipper.

However, as she was starting to work on her own slippers she was not left out of the mommy knitting juggling act...

I was finishing up her glove/mittens:


And they are now done!



She had to try them on ummm... about 435 times in order for them to have the perfect fit.


...Curly's first glitten is almost done, work will commence on her second and then only to plain mittens for Tomato - he is insistent that his mittens will be green!

New England Fiber Festival

The first weekend in November was a very busy one. Saturday we squished in a lot, and then Sunday we recovered....

The first annual New England Fiber Festival was held on the Big E grounds. My kids were very excited, as they had wanted to go to the Big E and although we didn't make it this year they would at least get to see where such an event would take place.

It was a fun way to spend the morning - some animals, lots of vendors, and many fun things to see. I ended up bringing home a small amount....

(this does not include my husband's meager purchases of one skein of yarn and two patterns - he's already snatched them and put them away)

I purchased my fiber at Spunky Eclectic. This included some fiber for me to use, green fiber for 'Little Tomato', and sparkily fiber for 'Curly'. I also bought a small skein of fiber at the New England Felting Supply booth and a little wet felting kit there also. It was funny to buy from them as they are based in the town my husband grew up in, and I've never been there before... maybe when I use up more of my stash.... I also bought three skeins of yarn - two of them on 50% off sale at Creatively Dyed. Once again, green for the Little Tomato, and pink for 'Curly' and then I picked up some neat rainbow Kauni yarn for a shawl for the girls. 'Lily' wandered around the show with us but wanted to play at the train table with her brother more than she wanted to choose yarn, so we let her do that.

We then had a couple of hours downtime - which was nice since it had been a crazy week.... and then the near-by crazy uncles showed up to babysit so my husband and I were able to attend a Pink Martini concert. If you've never heard them you should check out some of their music - jazz and pop and world music all on the same album. We own all four of their albums (and just got the fifth one - a holiday one - this week) and really enjoyed the show.