A VERY Cool Giveaway!

I think I found a new favorite Etsy store to add to my list! :) Head on over to Tea Rose Home for the chance at a gift certificate!

Chrismas Going-Ons

While I'm still plugging away on my Traveling Woman Shawl I decided to take a break and do a quick bulky hat in some Lion's Brand Thick n' Quick. And let me tell you.. It's both THICK and QUICK! I did this hat in about the span of one movie:

look mom, no pattern!

So as we're getting ready for dinner guests tonight, the snow starts. About two hours later, it looks like this outside:

And the inside of the house looks like this:


Should be a fun evening! Happy Friday everyone! We should be getting back to normal Find a Deal Fridays SOON! I promise! :)

General Updates

Hi folks! I hope everyone's Holiday Season is moving along smoothly. :) I have all but one gift out in the mail and the last is going out this afternoon. I have all my gifts bought for Mr. Pie they just need wrapping. All this means that I get to dedicate a bunch of my break to knitting!

I'm truckin' along on the Traveling Woman Shawl, but it's slower going than other projects so far because I'm reading from the charts. I'd post pictures, but it pretty much looks the same as last time. hehe

Oh, and did I mention that I'm done my finals??? YAY! I kinda feel a bit shell shocked still, but I'm makin' my way to relaxed!!

2 Finals Down, 1 To Go

... and instead of doing that final that's due today, I'm writing you a post about Gingerbread Houses because yesterday Mr. Pie and I finished our very own Gingerbread house! From Scratch! (and because I'm a pretty good procrastinator. lol) We really didn't know anything about building gingerbread houses unless you count "Buy a kit" as step one. hehe

So we made our gingerbread dough like you would for a gingersnap cookie and rolled it out in to sheets. I cut out templates like those I found online and we got to cutting out our pieces. The crazy part is that our oven is so tiny (just the 24" apartment kind of thing) that we couldn't bake all the pieces at once, so we baked them a couple at a time over 3 days. lol

We were very very nervous when we first started putting the pieces together! Does this look to you like it wants to remain standing?


We let that rest and get hard for an entire day from morning until after dinner, then we delicately added the roof.

You can see there was a slight accident with the roof breaking in half. More on that later! We let that sit overnight and then the next morning we got to decorating!


And here's the final product!

our crazy resident ghost snowman

Here's what we learned and will do different next time:

1. Keep template pieces so you can compare the pre-baked size to the post-baked size. Use a bread knife to cut away what doesn't fit the template anymore.
2. Put the dough in the fridge for a while before you cut the pieces. Otherwise, they stick to the templates!
3. Bake the pieces extra long so that they are very crisp and hard. If they are too soft they fall apart in construction. Ex) the roof. hehe
4. Make your frosting with extra powdered sugar so it's more paste-like than you might use for cookies. Like the consistency of elmer's glue. hehe

On the knitting front I have very little news to give you. I have one last minute Christmas gift, which I said I wouldn't do, but I realized that there was one person I forgot on my list. Argh! It'll be a blue and white hat for the PennState Football team. I bought some LionBrand Thick and Chunky for that. lol Hopefully it'll be done today!

Alright... now I'm off to tackle that stupid essay. Wish me luck!

1 Final Done, 2 To Go

First of all: I hate being sick. I've been fighting a nasty head cold ALL WEEK. ARGH!

Second of all: I hate finals week, but I most especially hate finals week if I'm sick at THE SAME TIME! I've been asleep at about 7:30 most days this week and I probably really should have been studying. lol

Third of all: I hate that both of these things kept me from knitting! I haven't knit even one stitch, and have had to just stare at this on my desk longingly, instead:

Traveling Woman Shawl

I'm finally starting a project with that sumptuous green yarn that my from Hope bought me! This shawl has two different patterns in it yet to come which means reading the charts, which I haven't done much of yet so far. That's going to be my big stretch with this project. I'm not much of a Shawl Wearer, but I picture me wearing mine more like this:


.. so we'll see. :)

Also, Christmas has visited our house! The tree went up last night! (in between study breaks, of course) and our house smells soooo good. :)

and we bought another piece for our winter village too:


Other than this, it's been school school school all week. Just a few more days and it'll all be done!

FO and some Snow

Only one full week left of incredibly insane school, then it's Christmas break! YAY!

To help with last week I was knitting on an extremely easy, no thought required, kind of hat with a ball of the free yarn that I got. Here's how it turned out:

Hurricane Hat

Do you see the cool traveling purl stitch all the way around the hat? I thought it was an interesting slightly different approach to a straight forward hat. It's not really in my favorite colours, but it's so warm that I've been wearing it around the house the last few days. hehe I'm sure I'll be able to find it a permanent home soon.

In other news: IT SNOWED!! I really really love the snow, and especially because it was Saturday and I didn't have to leave the house or even change out of my pajamas until we had to go get some groceries mid afternoon. These were taken out the kitchen window in to the back yard:

9am
10am
11 am

Then after that it got kinda warmer and patchier. But it's still on stuck on the grass today! YAY!

A Little Something for Me

I got another quick project done before the onslaught of school! This one was done over the weekend and was super duper easy. Knitted on sport weight yarn and then size 11 needles, it was done in a flash!

Sunday Market Shawl

This project was a perfect fit for the yarn I hand dyed and had a chunk left over after knitting a Christmas Cowl. I would have liked for it to be longer, but this works fine, too. What do you think, maybe a shawl pin? :)