cozy little me.

About a month ago I started knitting the sweater of many buttons. I shut my eyes & ears to the piles of christmas gift knitting/sewing I had on my list & allowed myself this project. I don't have a big warm wooly sweater & I felt I deserved one. A cardigan. In a colour I'd probably never think about.

It's done now, and dudes...I *love* it.





A top down raglan cardigan with assymetrical buttons. I used Lamb's Pride Bulky in a delicious colour 'Heirloom Blue' - I love the colour - but holy moley the mohair in this stuff is very fuzzy. I don't think I mind though.

Okay - so I started this about a month ago, knit it mostly on my lunch hour at work & finished it up on Wednesday. I rushed home from work, soaked it, laid it down to block & now it is Saturday & it is still damp. I'm wearing it, hoping my body heat will help it to dry quicker.

I am a bad blogger, but a good knitter - as proof, here is another completed christmas knit:


my first ever toe-up socks, knit 2 at a time using the magic loop method. I'm not sure I'm sold on the toe-up thing, I miss the heel flap that top down has...but magic loop sure was handy for matching those stripes, I really doubt I'd have been able to get those tiny stripes to match up so well if I'd knit them one at a time.

I used Regia Silk Colours for these & while the yarn is super soft, perfect for my mother who doesn't like wool right next to her skin, the colour saturation was a continual disappointment to me. I'd use Regia Silk again, but maybe the solid colour stuff. I just hope they wash okay. I read somewhere that this stuff shrinks a little in the wash.

more soon, since I have a bunch of *almost* completed projects elbowing their way to the finish line.

thanksgiving.

Last week was Canadian Thanksgiving - and the first time I've made it home for the holiday in a couple of years. It was lovely - some of the highlights being that I *finally* got to go to the Needle Emporium in Ancaster & snoop around the place. It's a really great store & I scored some sock yarn I'd never seen before.

My parents are really truly lovely people - I adore them, but I do not love Robin Williams. I was not forced, but rather...encouraged to sit down & watch 'RV' with them.


Which is when I got to work on knitting some of the yarn I had bought earlier that day into socks for Gord.(who is not on my craft calendar at this time - but my father is. And he was sitting very close to me.) Unsure of Robin Williams' ability to captivate my father enough so that he wouldn't notice I was making his christmas gift, I opted to just make something else. Maybe it's Mr. Mork's comedy stylings, but something made me knit like my hands were on fire & before I knew it I had the first sock almost complete. Please note - knitting at high speeds during a movie like this does not make the film any less bad.

In the morning I indulged in their Satellite tv to catch the Coronation Street Omnibus *2 1/2 times* in a row. I loved every minute of it, I said I loved every minute of it (that's my Fred immitation, it sounds better than it reads) By the end of it all, I was done the sock. A personal record.

Then I took a shower, got dressed & noticed my mother was outside....raking the millions of leaves they had on their front lawn all by herself. I went out to ask if she needed a hand & when she said she did, the idea of taking of my sweater crossed my mind - but not for long & before I knew it I was making jolly huge piles of leaves & taking cute snapshots of their effing amazing dog:


OMG! Couldn't you just eat her up with some jam & a scone & some tea?

The Thanksgiving sun shone down on us & I did more yard work that I had been called upon to do in the last 10 years. It felt good - even if I did do the most baddest job ever. (It was hot! I was wearing a cashmere sweater! I was *raking*)

After the lawn was (sorta) tidy my mother added the last dash of suburban Thanksgivingery to the front of their house:


(notice there's still tons of leaves on the lawn)

With the cardburkey in the Cardboven, the house smelled fantastic & soon the house was filled with my sister, brother in-law & my adorable nephew, Nolan. Lots of reasons to give thanks.

And here are the finished socks!

Only my therapist knows.....

I've been trying my best to be diligent about throwing old stuff away. Getting rid of clutter. Only bringing things into my house that I *need*. But it's hard. I come from a long line of stashers - You can't just shake your habits that easily. It's my nature!

But lately I've been looking around my place...realizing that I've lived here for almost 10 years (!!!!) & it doesn't say *home* to me. I want it to be a comfortable, stylish place that makes me happy. And so enters....... Apartment Therapy.

The 8 week AT Home cure online course starts now & I couldn't be more stoked. I even got my copy of the AT book from my great interweb pal Amber yesterday!

So this is week one & I'm going to be putting most of my focus on the Living Room & my bedroom. My bedroom has recently been painted (the most lovely colour in all the land! Limesickle!) & it doesn't need *all* that much work, just some help in the getting rid of books & CDs category..... I wonder if the Apartment Therapy has a chapter on when you have something living in your walls?

In other great books news, I pre-ordered my copy of Crafter's Companion the other day & I'm so so so excited to get it in the mail!


A lot of my favourite bloggers are in it & the projects look super! I caaaaaaaaaanot WAIT for it to appear in my mailbox!

Oh, and for those of you with short term memory & who may have already forgotten about how just paragraphs ago I said I was trying to de-clutter & de-stash & make my life a more simple & serene one, good - You'll be happy to know that I've very recently been bitten by the cutest little quilting bug & have officially allowed myself to start a stash of cute fabrics. Luckily, I was over on Repodepot & discovered they have added lots of stuff to their sale section. mmm! I was already going to this (which is unfortunately not on sale):


so why not throw some other stuff in as well?
like this:


or this:


or this!



Yumm!

of rutabagas, parsnips & Gary Oldman

Just so you know, I tried several photos before settling on one I took about 3 minutes before I loaded into the site & every single one of them came up with Gary Oldman as my highest celebrity face match. I just hope that now when people describe me to others they say "Oh, you totally know Nicole - she looks just like Gary Oldman!" Nana Mouskouri comes as no big surprise since even my own mother used to call me Nana when I switched to plastic frames.



Good news! I've finished the back & both fronts of the Ivy sweater! Here they are pinned to my Judy!
The bad news? All the pieces are slightly different lengths. This is for sure an error brought on by my choice of nighttime unwinding activities & not a pattern error. It's nothing I can't fix but it will require patience - something I have in very small doses. I cast on last night for the sleeves... I'm knitting both of them at the same time to prevent any more wonkiness. When this sweater is done I'll be halfway through my christmas crafting. And just in case you think it's crazy that I started in May, why not go here and see how much time you have to procrastinate before Santa comes? To help me with this intense crafting season, I've hit an all time high in my own personal nerdom. I printed out calendars from October to December & created crafting timelines for all my projects. I'm one of those people that has a million ideas - a billion awesome things going through my mind but an inability to just *start* - so far, this set up is helping me out a lot. Oh! On Sunday I bought my first Rutabaga! And my first Parsnips! And I made stew! With Herb dumplings! (also a first!) It was delicious - I took photos.
Me trying to figure out the rutabaga:
The stew! With dumplings! Dumplings are just big blobs of flour & vegetable shortening!
And Gord brought some delicious Pasteis de nata and we tried to take artsy fartsy photos of them with only a little success.
Doesn't Fiestaware make everything look lovely?