Knitting Circle Day (and yet another giveaway!)

It was the third Saturday of the month.  Time for knitting and crochet time at my local library!  Let me share some of my progress.

This is my Flag Afghan, a free pattern from Lion Brand.
I finished my second red stripe today and started my second white, Then I get to add blue! (It's an American Flag)
The yarn is Lion Brand Heartland

My Mom requested a vest for Christmas.  I found a pattern in a back issue of Crochet World.
The yarn is also Lion Brand Heartland.

An Afghan Shawl using Lion Brand Homespun

Also, check out Nancy's newest giveaway of boxed floss at her blog.  The drawing is Sept 1.

New Projects

I'm now going on Week 4 of being a stay at home Mommy.  I'm keeping my sanity by picking up a little stitching.  Still dangling on the fate of graduate school which will start in June if all gets approved.  I went through my stash again this weekend and did a bit of organizing.  If you read my guest post on Stitching the Night Away, you might remember me talking about inventorying your stash.  I did that awhile back but I went through it again and weeded out some stuff I didn't need. I also labeled all my fabric so that I know which piece is which.  I managed to find a few pieces on my "to do" list that I have the correct fabric for AND I also have a frame that will fit the finished piece.  These are the two I'm adding to my list:

I'm doing the bottom one first, which is "Quaker Sampler."  The stitching on it has been going fairly quickly.

Since I now have several projects that I'm rotating through because they're large, I have a new tab devoted to my "large projects" where you can see the finished item and where I stand progress wise.  No pic up yet on the Quaker Sampler.  Hope to have one tomorrow.

I should probably work some more ornaments, but I'm not in the mood sadly.

Ornaments!

One thing that I decided before the birth of Zoé was that I was going to make an ornament for her each Christmas and then cross stitch a lid of a wooden box to keep all of them in and then when she leaves the nest, she can take them with her.  Then I had Adèle and then I found I had no time to make them with a 40 hour work week.  So, I owe Zoé ornaments from Christmas 2009, 2010, 2011 and for this year 2012 and Adèle ornaments from 2011 and 2012.

I decided on these for sure:

This is going to be Zoé's 2009 ornament.  It's going to be finished as a pillow with her name and year and "1st Christmas" on the other side

Here is my progress on it so far.  I think I may substitute in metallics for the stars.

This is going to be Adèle's 2011 ornament.  Like Zoé's, it's going to be a pillow with her name and stuff on the back.

I chose nativities for the first Christmas ornaments for both girls because I want to stress that Christ is the true meaning of Christmas and always comes first.

I am thinking of doing these guys for ornaments too.  Zoé loved Tigger when she was younger and Adèle loves Pooh right now.

Zoé got so excited this morning when I brought out this book:

She absolutely LOVES Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  I think I will make this as her 2012 ornament:

My goal is to make ornaments that reflect things they liked during the year or an event.  Hopefully they'll have a nice mix by the time they're 18 or so.

Pattern on Ravelry!

I have the pattern up on Ravelry!  Here's the link: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sock-puppet-on-the-loom

Progress on Stocking

I don't think the stocking will be done by Christmas, but I continue to work on it.

A Finish!

So I finally finished "Texas Christmas" today

Here's what it looks like finished with buttons to hold the stitching in place.



Another piece of good news: I fit into my prepregnancy jeans yesterday. Yay!

Progress on the WIP

I made even more progress this weekend on the Texas Christmas. Once I find some fresh batteries for the camera, I will take another picture and post it.

Good news for today: My wedding ring fits again!

Bad news for today: The baby was on a feeding spree that started somewhere around 6 pm and went until 3:30 am. She would not sleep. She was HUNGRY!

Current WIP

I'd say I've made decent progress since I only started this last night.

I finally finished the hat today. Zoé did not sleep well for Mommy today and Mommy got a bit frustrated. But knitting the hat and watching Boston Legal cheered her up a bit. I've posted a picture of the finished project (the TLC Baby Amore did turn out nicely but I'm still not thrilled with working with it). I've also posted my laugh for today brought to you by Jerry Espenson singing along to the Boston Legal Theme.


Boston Legal Theme sung by Jerry

Stocking progress

It's been a busy week. My mother and mother-in-law are coming for Thanksgiving so there has been a cleaning frenzy. Got more baby stuff today handed down from one of the mothers at school.

The bassinet was looking a bit empty, so I thought I'd improve it.



Then I decided that he looked a little cold.




I'm not getting anxious at all. No, not at all.

Oh, here's the current progress on the stocking. We had 10-20 minutes between calls so I got a bit done.

On a sad note, my beta, Mario, died today. I think the water here has something fish-toxic in it. I use Start Right in the water which I've used for 20 years and had great success (we kept a goldfish in a bowl for 16 years). I noticed that his fins were getting raggedy. I didn't realize that betas don't shed their fins like my goldfish did and didn't realize until it was too late that he was sick until he turned whitish and we changed the water with bottled spring water but I think it was too late and even though he seemed to have perked up, he died today.

Another project done!

Yay! Today I finished the hat.





Working on Season 5 of Stargate Atlantis. Can't wait to see how they ended it. Only took me about 5 episodes to get the hat done :)

Hoorah for new projects!

Well, I was able to successfully remove my partially finished Ruana from the yellow round loom so I could start my woven-top hat. I'm 100 rows in. I think it's looking good. The mock cables are looking good. I'm using Bernat Softee Chunky New Denim Heather.





Now for the woven-top hat....

I'm using Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick Fisherman's Wool on the large yellow round loom. Finished the woven top part. Kind of reminds me of a pie crust





Grr....did the top of the hat not quite correctly, fortunately, it didn't take that much time to fix the problem

I'm waiting...

...for Ken to get home from work. Meanwhile, more progress has been made on the stocking as I watched the other 2 episodes of Stargate Universe on Hulu (it's improving slightly but I'm still not sure I'm going to be a steadfast fan, way too serious and not a lot of the light-heartedness that the other two series had).

Anyway, back to the stocking. I've got most of the detail areas done. Moving onto the large areas next. At this rate, it should be ready to go by Christmas. :)