Another log cabin!

DSC00011, originally uploaded by a-chan.

With Richard challenging me to use 85% of my stash by the end of this year, I decided to knit a few more log cabin blankets. This one is a twin to the one I knit last spring for my cousin's baby. This one is for my baby banana, cuz you know all the babies are sporting college colors these days! I think I'm about half done, but I'm going to try to go as far as I can before I run out of yarn (which I planned for the first one, but I had so much green and yellow that I had to stop before it became a tent).

I have enough pinks/reds and blues that I'm going to knit another log cabin for my 10 year old niece. I have never knit her a blanket! I'm going to aim for a big enough size that she can actually use, but we'll see how it goes. I really am liking these giant log cabins with the two color themes. I'm drawn to them. Every time I think I'm going to do log cabin squares and sew them together, I just can't do it.

No new updates on baby banana, but we're going in on the 17th for a follow up ultrasound to make sure everything is okay. Maybe they will be able to tell the gender this time. The banana is definitely moving around, though. Sometimes I feel like the Space Balls scene where the alien bursts out of the guys stomach and starts singing "Hello my baby, hello my darling..."

Mid-day workout and late gifts

sock yarn, originally uploaded by a-chan.

I decided to walk to knit/purl on my lunch hour. I had never knit with Malabrigo and it's the yarn called for in the scarf I want to knit: the mabel's scarf. I looked at the knit/purl website and they had some! yay! But it turns out I didn't like the colors once I saw them in person. I'll have to find them at another store, I guess. I don't normally knit a pattern in the called for yarn. But this one seemed to call out to me. Instead of starting the scarf tonight, I'll do something less productive, like play video games and eat pizza.

Anyways, I have this skein of Fleece Artist Sea Wool that's just been hanging around and I've decided to knit a chevron scarf with it. I just needed to pick the right colorway. I think one of the three skeins above will work. The Sea Wool is more a more muted green and blue (plus brown).

I'm also hoping to make my way to Fabric Depot this weekend to pick up some Lion Brand Cotton-ease for a blanket. I've decided I'm going to start knitting for baby banana even if I don't know if it's a boy or a girl. I'm thinking a dark gray can go either way. I love Fabric Depot's 30% off everything sales!

I have a question. When you knit a hat for yourself, do you also knit a scarf or mittens to match? Now, before I would have said that is silly. But I'm finding myself more and more wearing non-matching hats/scarves/mittens. Wouldn't it look better if I would just knit matching sets? Not even using same stitch patterns, but just the same colorway.

So I was thinking I should be buying more yarn.... wow, that's not where I thought this was going! Maybe instead of one or two skeins, I buy 3 or 4 or maybe 5. My husband will like that. He's already said I need to knit or get rid of 85% of my stash this year. That doesn't mean I can't buy yarn, I just need to only buy what I'm using... and then knit from my stash.

I guess this is a stash busting year. I'll come up with something for it all. I wonder if I have enough Lion Brand Homespun for an afghan... probably. I probably also have enough old acrylic to do an afghan.

Where did you go?

SUC53595.JPG, originally uploaded by a-chan.

I have lost these needles! They are either 10s or 10.5s and they are no where. Perhaps they're still in the project. It's a mitten, can't you tell? I started these just about 1 year ago for a present for a friend. I don't think I ever knit further on them. How sad!

Sure it's cheap yarn, but they would have been warm and fuzzy!

On the mitten front, I have now knit almost 5 whole toddler mittens. There are two with no thumbs and the tops still need to be kitchenered. Instead of frogging the one that was wrong, I started a new one to match the right one. I know this is making more work for me, but I decided to knit a 6th mitten to match the odd one. When I'm done I'll have mittens for all 3 of my flower girls (one niece and two cousins, all within a year of eachother, they're so cute!) I feel like I'm back where I started.

White Christmas

White Christmas, originally uploaded by a-chan.

Cookies

DSC_0286.JPG, originally uploaded by a-chan.

Okay, so I didn't finish my to do list... I think I came close. I had the sugar cookie dough in the fridge and the house was clean.

My sis-in-law, Erin, and I had a half day on Friday, so we started baking cookies around 3:00 and we baked until 9:00. We had some help, but it was mostly Erin, her sister and me. My kitchen isn't huge, but it's big enough for 3 people to work on 3 different cookie recipes at once. We only had two mixers; my kitchenaid and my little hand mixer. Seemed to work okay, but sharing one cookie tray was what really slowed us down.

I felt the most movement on Friday night. It was exciting. Around 8:00 I realized I needed to take a break, so I put myself in a time out and laid down on the couch. All of the sudden, my stomach was like there was an earthquake going on in there. It was crazy! Baby banana was probably just waiting for me to stop moving.

Well, we decided we needed more cookies. Saturday morning I woke up and baked one more ranger cookie batch and a double batch of cranberry cookies (so good!). Erin came over when I had one sheet of the cranberry cookies left and she took over and made some awesome chocolate peanut butter cookies that took way too long. We finished just in time to go to dinner with my cousins and then go to PIR for the Winer Wonderland thingy. We were there forever! The line to get in was insane and I don't believe we'll ever go back.

So much for the rest I wanted.

Sunday morning I spent knitting crazily on the toddler mittens. One pair was going to be gifted that night. I got to the top decreases in the second mitten and noticed I had cast on 2 fewer stitches than the first one.... It's chunky yarn on size 7 needles, so there is definitely a difference. I'm just going to finish it and see if it fits, but by then I was ready to quit. She'll get them later. I spent that night at my aunt's house (on my dad's side).

Monday morning was spent shopping for last minute things like bread, egg nog, fruit tray, and a present I forget to buy. Then it was time to make the peanut butter pie (numm!). Then, we were late for Christmas Eve mass. Not really late. We were 20 minutes early and there were no seats. My mom grabbed some chairs from the basement and we settled into the social room to watch the mass on a big screen tv. Then dinner and dessert. When the nieces and nephew were asleep we helped wrap the Santa gifts. By the time we got home, it was bed time.

Woke up this morning and headed back to my brother's house right away for presents and breakfast. Got home, showered and set out for another aunt's house (mom's side) in Scappoose. The snow was awesome! But totally gone when we got home.

So, four and a half days off work, and no rest. I'm glad this is only a 3 day work week. Maybe I'll rest some this weekend. Probably not, we have tickets to go see Beauty and the Beast Saturday.