Smoke Ring

My mother saw my smoke ring at Thanksgiving, and wanted me to make her one. She picked out the yarn and bought it, and I knit it up for her. She loves it! (yeah!)

Pattern: Wavy Feathers Wimple
Yarn: Blue Sky Alpacas - Alpaca and Silk in Flax color.
(I used about 1.8 skeins)
Needles: US 5

Took me about a week to knit this up. The lace blocks just beautifully.

No mods to the pattern - I followed it pretty much to the letter. It's a very nice item to knit on - the yarn is lovely to work with, the pattern isn't too complex, and it goes pretty quickly. To top it off, when you're done you have this very useful item - it's so soft, and it keeps you toasty warm without the bulk of a scarf.

Busy, Busy, Busy

So if you can't tell by the title, we've been really busy here the last few weeks! The weekend before Christmas we visited our families for an early Christmas. The DSs made out on presents from the grandparents! Which made me happy, since we had gone rather sparse by way of presents this year, so the grandparents more than made up for it.



Immediately after Christmas we started installing laminate flooring to replace our carpet on the first floor of our house. We've been in our house nearly 10 years, and the carpet was sure showing it's age! Here's what our dining room looked like before and after (still minus the baseboards, but whatever!):

All told, it took us about 3.5 days to tear out the old carpet and install the new flooring. Maybe 20 hours total. It was much easier than I thought it was going to be. We had two rows of complicated cuts that we saved until the last day (thankfully we worked from the easy wall to the harder walls!). It completely changes how the first floor looks, and I wish we had done it sooner! I'll post some better picks of the living room and such once I have the house clean! ;-)



I was frantically knitting away prior to Christmas on gifts for lots of people! Now I can finally post some of my finished objects!



My favorite:
This is a Dalek from Dr. Who, knit from the Extermiknit! pattern. I made this for my dad, who's a fan of Dr. Who. We used to watch the original Dr. Who on the PBS station every week while I was growing up - it's one of my favorite shows! (I love the new one too!) I know, it's a completely silly gift, but I think he got a bang out of it! :-)

Here are some of my other knitted gifts:

Lots of fingerless gloves, and a tea cozy. I'll all gift-knitted out!

My mom saw my Alpaca Silk Smoke ring over thanksgiving, and wanted me to make her one, so she bought the yarn for it, and I'm knitting it up right now. She picked a camel color, and it's turning out very nicely!

I'm still working on William's sweater - I'm just about done with the back. I'll tell you, it's all I can do to keep myself from casting on the Wrapigan for myself! I got the yarn in the mail the day after Christmas, and it is seriously calling my name! Here's a pic of the yarn, but pictures cannot show how deliciously and luxuriously soft this yarn is!

This is Joseph Galler's Prime Alpaca yarn - 100% alpaca in a sport weight. The color is Musk. 2 skeins is a whopping 1 pound and 1330 yards! I highly doubt I will be able to resist casting this puppy on in the next day or two. I think William will have to wait a little bit for his finished sweater!! ;-P

Oh, and one more note, my FIL's doctors have told him that he is now in remission!!! Thank you so much for your continued thoughts and prayers! He'll have three more months of chemo to be sure, but it was fantastic news to end the year on!

Happy New Year everybody!

I met The Yarn Harlot!!!

Yipee! I met her at the Charlotte book signing:

What a funny gal! I had a blast! And The Charlotte Purls were out in force!

I walked in the JDRF Walk for a Cure this morning. (I ended up raising $200 - yeah! Thanks to everybody who donated!) The rain held out till we were done walking, which was great! Here's the crowd (pic taken by Team member Denise):

I recently finished the hat I was knitting for my son with the handspun yarns I spun on my wheel:

He loves it, even though it is big enough for his Daddy to wear it if he wanted to. That just means it'll fit him for forever, right?

And we picked up our new camper this afternoon (I know we were supposed to get it last weekend - long story). We'll probably pop it up tomorrow and load all the crap we took out of our old camper into the new one. ;-) (You know, all the crap that is currently sitting in our foyer, that has been sitting there for 2 weeks.... that crap.) To be honest, it's not really crap, I just can't stand to have stuff blocking our foyer, KWIM?

I went to Atlanta with the boys to see my Mom, whose on spring break (my Grandma was visiting as well, so I got to see her too). The boys always love seeing Grandma and "Papa". Here's a cute pic of my Mom with William:

Well, that's it for now - I'm still exhausted from my Atlanta trip, so I'm for bed early again tonight.