Happy Halloween!!

Does everyone have their candy bought and their costumes picked out?? Today was our Halloween Preparation Day and we carved our pumpkins. It's crazy to think it's our 4th year! Now, as the seeds are roasting in the oven, hot off the press, is the pictures:

Popeye helping me carve

Mr. Pie modeling his pumpkin

Finished and waiting for dark to fall

Mr. Pie's Masterpiece

My finished Object D'art

Have a happy and safe Halloween everyone!! And check back soon for my ...

100th POST GIVEAWAY!!

Find a Deal!

Okay you guys, I found the COOLEST Etsy store! It's called KNotes for KNitters and Maggie, the owner, has some of the greatest knitting accessories I've ever seen.

My very favourite is her Pirate Knitting Bags!! These totally made me crack up laughing:


I think these bags are an absolute Hoot for $12.95! She also carries some great hand lotions, bookmarks, magnets, and fiber care tags:

Girl Riding Sheep, Set of 8 for $3.95

On top of this great sense of humour and wonderful creativity, she also happens to be a super nice person. Here's what she had to say about her store:

"Making the art I do pleases me because I can rescue the antique & vintage
photos I love and breathe a second life into them, sending them back out into
the world again. And, even better, my husband no longer complains about
my ever-growing collection!"

Always with those pesky husbands, huh? ;) Check back for Holiday designs coming soon in her shop! Oh, and certainly don't forget to check in with Darcy's Knotty Knitter, where you can enter a give away for some of Maggie's proprietary "Happy Hands" lotion!

Christmas Knitting Update

Oh my gosh, so much going on with my Christmas knitting! I'm excited to show you... Dum Da Duuuummm! ... Another Christmas present knitted and done!

stacked eyelet cowl

This super cute cowl is made from my hand dyed wool from a while back and I'm super happy with it. It could have maybe been a tad smaller and it really REALLY needs to be blocked so it'll hold its shape... and maybe it could use a button? or a pin? to hold it folded like that around the neck. Hmmmmm....

I've cast on another hat in the mean time. This time the Beanie by Sue Blacker, which has this awesome "braided" look to it all the way around! Oh, here's the pic:


and here's what I have so far...

(Shameless Canada Promotion provided by my laptop cover)

Isn't it awesome?? I'm knitting it with a knit picks City Tweed DK in chipmunk that I've been saving for just the right project, and I think this one will be perfect! I think it'll use pretty much the entire ball which always makes me really happy. hehe The only part I'm not loving about this pattern is that I'm going to have to pick up and knit after I've finished the braid and I hope I don't get mad and this just turns in to a headband. LOL

Ooo! Speaking of Knit Picks! My overseas Blogger friend (if she's like to be named, leave a comment for me!) and I went in together and made a SUPER huge knit picks order that I am so excited about! She even got some friends in on it! HEHE! I'll ship it over to her once her stuff arrives at my door and I was able to slip in a few different yarns for me! I bought some Palette in red, green and white to make little christmas ornaments, and I bought a ball of chunky yarn to make a big ear-flap hat for another friend for Christmas. (As an aside: do you see a pattern here?) Totally cool, right?? I can't wait!

More House Rearranging

It feels like we're getting the house ready for the holidays or something, even though we rarely have a bunch of company over. lol

Today we moved around furniture. Previously (and again I have no before photos! argh!) we had a credenza in the long hallway and a chest in the dining room. Then, one day last week I was brushing my teeth and it just struck me that I needed to switch them around! The hallway needs a few more tweaks but MAN does the dining room look nice!

A great days work, if I do say so myself. Well... it really only took about an hour or so. Doesn't it look to you guys like those mini-blinds need updating? hehehe!

Does it count as a Finished Object?

As a break from knitting, and because I've made substantial progress on my Hand Dyed Cowl, I decided to try something new. I found this amazing tutorial from Little Green Notebook on how to transform mini-blinds in to roman shades and immediate thought of the broken blinds in my front window.

For the record: I am not a seamstress. I can whip stitch and maybe get a button back on, but beyond that is beyond me. This project requires no more tools than a measuring tape, scissors and some fabric glue. My kind of project!!

I won't go in to instructions because she does it so beautifully on her site, but there's the photos of my first attempt, taken over the course of about a half hour:

cutting the shades apart

making sure to only cut the *little* thread,
not the big pulley one

laying the fabric below, figuring out
how many slats to have


gluing everything down


finished and hanging!


pulled up and after it dried

Isn't it gorgeous!? I think it has a beautiful kind of stained glass effect with the light streaming in from the other side. I wish I had taken a before picture, because I can guarantee it wasn't this cute! Total cost was about $8.00 for one yard of fabric, which I had technically bought for another project and didn't use so it was just around the house.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled. :)

Happy Tinker Day!

No, not like "tinking" some knitting! Tinker Day is an annual celebration at Hollins, my school. It's a surprise every year and no one (except the President of the university) knows when it's going to be until 6am when seniors run through the hallways banging pots and pans. It's tradition to wear a funky get up and hike Tinker Mountain, where at the top there will be Krispy Kreme doughnuts waiting as well as lots of festivities.

Here's President Gray this morning:


So as you may have guessed, since I'm here to post this today, I'm not on a mountain. hehe I decided to stay home this morning instead after the killer week I've had. I'll be at this school for another two years, so I'll catch it next year. :)

Instead I've spent the day catching up on the cleaning of the house. Mr. Pie and I decided to hose down the shutter doors in our kitchen by laying them in the yard. They were seriously gross because our house is so old that it doesn't have a fan above the stove. Seriously yuk. lol Then we cleaned the spinning fan ( for the same reason), vacuumed and got some laundry on. I feel as if I've accomplished something today. :)

I had a big midterm in Anthropology yesterday and feel GREAT about how it went! I can't wait to get it back and see how I did. I also got my first big grade in that class back and I got an A on the paper! YAY! I'm keeping my A in Calculus still, and am pretty sure I have an A in Business class too. Leadership is the only one I'm uncertain about because we haven't received a whole lot of concrete grades just yet. But I'm feeling good about my first term. :)

We've already grabbed a sneak peak at the schedule next semester and I'm thinking I'll be doing Calculus 2, Math Lab, Business Organization, Ethical Leadership and maybe the next Leadership skills class. Crazy enough, I think it's going to work out to fewer credits than I'm taking now.

So yeah, on to knitting updates. hehe Mr. Pie has expressed numerous times how he'd like for me to make him a pair of slippers. His requests: that I use scrap yarn so they're in funky colours, and that they're tall enough that he can tuck in the hem of his pajama pants. This was my first attempt...


.. and he couldn't even get his foot in the top. ARGH!! I even undid some of the seaming up the back! They're knit in garder stitch so they are SUPER stretchy, but that dang cast off screwed me! LOL I have no idea how to cast off in a stretchier way, but I'm seriously going to have to learn 'cause this was terrible. They are so tightly knit too (double worsted weight yarns on a 7), which makes them super warm but hard on the hands when knitting. This one fits me (again) but I'm going to have to make a second one eventually. lol

My second project on the needles is the cowl, which I have't spent much time with as evidenced here:


Hopefully school will calm down for a little while and I'll be able to bang out a few more christmas gifts, but I'm not counting on it. How is your Christmas knitting coming along?

New Cast Ons

So after finishing two hats this week (scroll down to see pics) I had nothing left on the needles, so I cast on TWO projects yesterday.

Number one, and of the highest priority, is a pair of slippers for Mr. Pie. I made myself a pair a while back and have been enjoying them. I have not been enjoying the guilt trip every time I finish another project that isn't his slippers! hehehe It's getting very very cold in my part of Virginia these mornings, so I figured it's time to get cracking on these:

Knitting Moccasin Slippers

They aren't much to look at but I like that they're knit flat and then seamed. Mr. Pie wants them to be tall enough that he can tuck his pajamas in to them and I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to make that happen yet. He's also expressed that he wants "crazy slippers", meaning I use whatever yarn I don't have enough of to make something else. Since it's knitted with two strands of worsted held together, I've started out with some Lion Brand Wool Ease in burgundy and blue put together. I'm hoping I can at least get the bottoms of them to match. lol

Do you remember this yarn that was to become socks, but got frogged?

Well, I decided to search for a project that this would be suited for. With someone in mind for a Christmas gift, I chose this project here:

Stacked Eyelet Cowl

I don't even have the first rows done, but it should be pretty mindless and I hope it turns out pretty with all the striping!

So with both going at once, of course I won't have a finished project quite as quickly. I'll let you guys know how they're comoin'! :)