Post Christmas Post

Time to bring down the ornaments after the Christmas holiday.  And don't you know Amazon and FedEx employees are about fed up with their jobs by today?

A little catch up: lunch with the ladies in an uptown restaurant on Monday.

We lost Maureen, one of our original set of coffee/lunch cancer support group members, to breast cancer in November.  She really did not want to leave us.  We mourned her passing, prayed for her family, and are trying to reconfigure our group without her.   But we gained her daughter and daughter-in-law as new friends in a younger generation.  We toasted Maureen and remembered her with fondness and love.

Linking with Tami for a Finished Object Friday and with Fiber Arts Friday is the Derecho Shawl (the small size is a big shawl).

 

Forget that dopey facial expression and concentrate on the shawl.  Pattern and details here.

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Click on the link/picture above to see what others are up to this Friday.

 

A thought to ponder:

See you Monday!

Week in Review

December 7-14, 2013

• Weather

Record low temperatures this week here on the western slope of Colorado with -15 degrees!  Also we had 8 + inches of snow here.

• Something New (to me)

Audible.  Love listening to books.  I've never bought more than a dozen audible book downloads, and usually from iTunes or Amazon.  But after listening to one of my favorite podcasts (The KnitGirllls), I was convinced to try an Audible subscription, with the first book free and twelve credits thereafter for a reasonable price.  As of yesterday, I'm listening to Life after Life, thanks Jean, and just purchased The Winter Sea by Suzanne Kearsley, thanks  to Woolythyme.

• Knitting

on the Derecho shawl:

• Food and recipes

Especially enjoyed root vegetable stew by the husband, Martha Stewart's cornbread and sausage dressing WITHOUT garlic and served with Cornish hens (thank you, Steph at KnitspiringOdyssey), spritz sugar cookies, and new coffee creamers (Mexican Cinnamon Chocolate by Lucerne is my favorite this week)

I may make cakes adapted from Gretchen's Nativity Cake recipe for the neighbors who so graciously shared their bountiful pumpkins, tomatoes and squash with us during harvest time.

• Reading

finished The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani.  Giving it a grade of A-.

finished Amy Tan's Valley of Amazement.  Lots of reviews of the book out there.  Here is one recent review.  I would give it a grade of  B- for overall enjoyment.

 

still picking up Fredrick Beuchner's digital book Secrets in the Dark

• Mailed

Cookies for Julie and a few little gifts

completed fairy for the fairy ornament swap.

• Apps:

plugging along on "Flow Free" and  compulsively playing "Words with Friends".  Invite me to play under the name "templeton7" and we can compete on this sorta' Scrabble app.  Also using the new Audible app for listening to books and doing the daily word puzzle on "7 Words"

• Christmas decorations

Set up Madonna and Child icons and votive candles

 

• TV

the never ending funeral of Nelson Mandela, incredulous at the sign interpreter (did you see Jimmy Kemmel's take on the schitzoid interpreter?  I laughed.)

Enjoying some of the sweet little Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel, and movies from the books Diary of a Wimpy Kid (thanks, Charlotte).

"Magic of the Snowy Owl" (Nature), available through Dec. 25 on PBS Roku Channel

• New blog friends I am stalking:

 barefootcrofter in Scotland
 Gladsome Lights in CA
 The Ellen Report

• Linking to

Yarn Along with Small Things

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A Deep Freeze

It is beginning to look a little like Christmas around here.  I'll have some pictures to show you on Sunday, along with a post about Advent.  Floss in the UK sponsors a blog-along relating to Advent, and I have been reading up in anticipation of remembering the Baby's birth during Advent. 

For today, some cooking, perhaps.

 

 

It is -5 degrees outside and could almost look like this if we got on our snow clothes and took a picture! But we have not had nearly as much snow as my friends in the North, nor have we experienced those dangerous icy conditions on the roads.  Friends, remember to drive safely!



It is pretty outside since we had eight inches of snow in the past few days.  But I'm in my jammies (yes, still), perusing Pinterest and about to continue reading Amy Tan's The Valley of Amazement.  Finished another pair of ballet slippers and linking to Finished Objects Friday and Fiber Arts Friday.

 

How about you?  What's cookin' ?  Scones or cookies in this kitchen...

PS: you MUST see this Life Sized Nativity (Knit-tivity) Scene !  (and you thought YOU knit excessively?)

Fair Isle Slouch Hat Finished

Taking the Hydrangea Fair Isle Slouch Hat:

Modifying the colors with these Jamieson wools:

And one wool hank dyed with marigolds:

This is the finished tam:

It is a bit slouchy on the manny head.  I played around with colors using the color wheel, and it proved to be a good exercise in knitting with differing strands of colored yarn.  It will be a warm hat and a labor of love.

Linking with Fiber Arts Friday and Finished Objects Friday.

Best Scottish Shortbread Recipe Since Robert Redford

Friend Natalie served Lavender Shortbread cookies last week.  She had tried several recipes using lavender, and declared this was the best one, first published in Sunset Magazine in the 1970's.  Credit goes not only to Nat for finding it, but also to a person named M.C. from East Palo Alto, California for having it published in the magazine.

Daughter Julie's birthday is next week, so I'll be sending her some lavender cookies and some zucchini bread, along with trinkets to open.  For those of you who have followed Julie's progress with her surgeries and her chemo and radiation, she is doing pretty well, all things considered.  She has an aide who comes in twice a day, and great doctors.  Her champion husband Jack takes her to appointments and occasionally they go to Fatz, their favorite restaurant in Rock Hill, SC.

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Here is some culinary lavender purchased in Colorado that I used for the cookies:

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Happy Birthday, Julie!



And linking with Fiber Arts Friday, here is my more than half way completed Seriously Simple Shawl by Wendy Johnson.  Details on Ravelry are here.

Lavender Shortbread Recipe:

A Knitted Sweater for Baby

There is a niece in the family who is ALL THINGS BRONCO. 

Not only is she a Bronco fan, but she is also in her third trimester of pregnancy with a BOY.

Bronco colors of orange and blue are pretty common in Colorado, home of the Broncos, but not so much elsewhere.  You would not think it so difficult to find orange and blue yarn, but it was.  I found some sock yarn from the Stray Cat Etsy store and it came in a cute orange box with a cat on it.
 

That baby boy, Jackson, will need a sweater next winter, so this pattern was the one chosen; got busy knitting with that self striping yarn from Stray Cat in New Zealand.

Accessories include grosgrain ribbon and buttons in coordinating colors:

Using the ribbon both behind the buttons on the button band and behind the button holes makes the knitted fabric more sturdy, stabilizing the buttons.

 This video explains in detail how to apply the ribbon.  It is on Vimeo, courtesy of Jasmin and Gigi of the Knitmore Girls.

Visual Featurette- Grosgrain Ribbon Tutorial from Jasmin & Gigi on Vimeo.

The top buttons, the ones that you actually see when looking at the garment buttoned up, are orange.

And the buttons on the bottom of the orange buttons, making the top buttons more secure, are blue:

 

 

Finished!

 

 

Enjoy, Baby Jackson, due June 5!

 

Linking to Finished Objects Friday.  And linking to Fiber Arts Friday.