Lily and Lila's Room

Radical rug

Felt flowers

Many pictures of the tree

So it isn't all put together yet, but the tree is painted and most of the flowers are cut. I also took a picture of the rad rug my friend Danyelle made for us. I'm going to use this by the base of the tree if there is room with the second crib built. Otherwise it will go to the left of the tree by the window. This is just a picture of those things. The bird mobiles made of old jeans aren't pictured, neither are the adorable hooks but that's just because they're not hung yet- due to the impending placement of the second crib.
I still haven't found curtains that I like, so the windows are bare. By Sunday I want the flowers nailed to the wall and the room to look more set up. My mom is making the leaves for the tree and I need to get a couple wall shelves to paint brown and get hung. This is a lot of work, but it's so much fun to have everything handmade.

Christmas Holly

I made these knitted Holly Pins for my BSF co-leaders using the free pattern on a blog titled Little Cotton Rabbits. I've linked to it before and I absolutely love the site. The pin backs are a little fiddly so getting them sewn together and on the card stock was rough. However, these were a lot of fun and I think they came out looking nice.

All packaged up and ready to go!

Proof I Live With a Man

Okay so what I want to know is what happened here?

Did Justin eat three cookies and then that little last lonely one was just WAY too much? Like does he just instinctively know that one more cookie would be trouble?

Boys are crazy. God forbid they just eat that last one!!

Insane Sandwich

This is a recipe from the NY Times. It was rad and totally gross at the same time. So what I did was make a pocket in a slice of challah bread and stuff it with grated swiss cheese- the recipe called for Gruyere but I can't eat raw milk since I'm pregnant. Then I soaked the stuffed bread in an egg, milk and salt and pepper mixture while I slowly fried thinly sliced apple pieces in olive oil. After that you place the bread in the pan, cover the top with more apple slices and cook it through. You've got to flip it a couple times to get everything golden brown.

I kind of liked it, but it was pretty sick. It felt really gluttonous. I've never eaten a Monte Cristo before, but once my brother did before we went looking at houses he wanted to buy and he completely exploded. It's a shame because he was such a nice brother. Needless to say he didn't buy a house and I never ate a Monte Cristo sandwich!

Gifts

This years gifts aren't as silly as last year

So I finished bagging up all the Christmas gifts I'm delivering to my family this week. I am pretty proud of myself, everything is made by me! Well, mostly everything. One brother won't use anything I knit so he got jams and an awesome antique store find. Everyone else- homespun!! When I was washing everything and had it laying out to dry Justin wanted me to take a picture and I never got around to it...arg! Oh well, I'll post pictures of the new stuff I'm working on when I get back from California. I still have four more hedgehogs to make, but those will get done on the drive down.

Fran- you're gift is finally done (yeah)!! It's up to Justin to get it sent out while I'm gone. I hope you enjoy it!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Unraveled

This is the glove I finished last weekend. It was way too big. I dropped a needle size, but the gauge is still off, so this weekend I will rework it using #1's. I knew I was in trouble when the glove comfortably fit Justin's hand!

Hand in Glove

What a clever title! So my latest project is to knit a pair of gloves for a birthday present. I bought a beautiful Noro- Silk Garden sock yarn. The blend is 40% Lamb's Wool, 25% Silk, 25% Nylon and 10% Kid Mohair. I think the left glove is turning out wonderfully. I just have to knit 7 more rows for the pinky and stitch it all up! Then it's off to the right glove. The finger lengths are long for my hand, but I've been told I have very small hands! It's a little freakish!
Work is good but creations in the kitchen are a little lacking. I haven't been motivated to really cook or bake. I'm hoping this comes back in the next couple of weeks. I'm just sort of getting by with making the bare minimum for Justin. Poor guy...

*oh, this is my last weekend being under 30!!

Conquering the World One Saltine at a Time

Phew, this week's been rough. Lot's of new adjustments for me and Justin. It's good though and I have to keep reminding myself- I'm not sick. So since cooking is not really my strong point right now, I've found a lot of comfort in knitting. I tried to start the wool bowl for my brother, but the smell of the lanolin made me super nauseous. So I started making a scarf with the beautiful skein I bought from Blonde Chicken, but I kind of hate it now. I always forget the yarn will turn out 'stripe-y'. I don't know who will wear this that I know and I figured a scarf would be a safe thing to make.
The other item is from a pair of socks. I was thinking of making several pairs and mailing them to my cousin Melissa. However, with our own coming around I just may snag it for myself and make another pair for her. I don't know, maybe that's a jerk thing to do!
Work is going okay, it's hard teaching entirely new subjects to completely different students than I'm used to. I'll live though, we've been having fun so far!

Pictures of the sock and scarf in question:

Last Day of Summer~Beginning of the Fall

This weekend has been very appropriate in the Northwest, we have been drenched with rain showers to snap us out of summer and get the school year rolling. Today is the last day of this summer blog and I'll probably only post once a week (maximum) now that the school year is starting and autumn is coming.

A lot got accomplished with my little experiment of staying home and not working for the summer break. It was nice. I cooked, read and knit. I have two Christmas gifts finished and only 3 more to knit. The dog doesn't really come, but he does fetch better~he'll let go of his ball now. The garden kept us with a steady supply of tomatoes, zucchini and broccoli, as well as green beans and a single blueberry! The potatoes are still growing and the garlic has all been picked, the apples look awful but the cherries (in retrospect) were great!

To welcome autumn I purchased an acorn squash this Friday. They store really well, so I suggest you invest in several winter squash to eat during the cold months. In celebration of our storm, I'll leave you with a recipe for potato and broccoli soup that we just love around here.

Potato and Broccoli Soup
Melt 2Tbsp butter in a large soup pot
Add 1 chopped shallot, leek or onion
3 Russet potatoes cubed
1-2 cups of broccoli
Saute all of these for 10 minutes
Add 2 Cups of vegetable or chicken stock
Bring to a boil and then reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes
Afterwards, using a potato masher- or anything you have, mash down the liquid mixture
Add 1 Cup milk
1 Cup cubed cheddar cheese
Heat all through until cheese is melted and serve.

We put chives on top, but in the winter when these aren't available you can top with whatever you prefer- crumbled bacon, sour cream and/or grated cheese.

Enjoy!

Sunflowers, Granola and Rabbits!

These are my awesome and totally not too healthy granola bars. They are flavored with honey, walnuts and homemade jam and some organic dark chocolate chips as well as a little almond butter. They're super good and at least I can pronounce the ingredients! The secret with homemade granola bars is that they're only good if you over flavor them. Just the basics and they're really not edible or worth making.

I just think this is beautiful. I harvested my sunflower thank you gift and I shook out a few seeds for my lunch today. The rest of the head is drying out so the rest of the seeds can catch up.

Funny (looking) Bunny!! This little guy is to be tucked away into one of the pockets in the cabled cardigan I finished yesterday. I might make a few more as I was shocked how small these guys really are. This is a free pattern from the Little Cotton Rabbits blog/site I wrote about. There are also patterns for bears and tiny 'iced buns'. I totally need to work on the ears. Justin wants an elephant and I think I can knit a trunk in i-cord like the legs. I'll experiment this weekend.

5am Productivity

Front of sweater (obviously). Sorry there is no fancy styling

This morning I could not sleep at all. I was up at 4:30 but managed to stay in bed until 5am. I decided if I was getting up then I was going to finish the sweater for my cousin's baby.
I posted the pictures here. I am crummy at finishing so I opted to not put buttons on this Debbie Bliss pattern. We don't know the gender yet so it's kind of mint ice cream color. Not baby mint and not grey but a nice middle shade. The yarn is Sublime from England but is spun and dyed in Germany from organic cotton.

All that's left is washing and blocking. I really hope they like it.

Breakfast Baby

How could I have gone 29 years without one of these bad boys!! I was hungry for something substantial but not just scrambled eggs or oatmeal this morning. I turned to a recipe book a friend of ours made and made a Dutch Baby. These are radical!! They do deflate quickly and I will use WAY less butter next time, but they are so super good. I am eating mine with powder sugar and cinnamon, but they can go savory as well.

All you do is preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Melt butter in a pie pan (the original calls for 3 tbs, but next time I'll only do 1)
Meantime mix 3/4 C flour, 3/4 C milk, 2 beaten eggs and 1/2 Tbs sugar
Pour the batter over the melted butter in the pie pan and bake 15-18 minutes.

This is a quick and simple recipe that really tastes great.

Triceratops Adventures!

One of my favorite little people in the world got hurt pretty bad yesterday so we talked and I promised her a triceratops. This is her favorite dinosaur and was mine as a kid also (phonetically my name is in there)!
I went downtown today to shop for one of the little guys, but came up with nothing. There is a real lack of dinosaurs in Olympia. Well, I had an idea to make her a cute card at least and this transformed into me making a great activity book, which really backfired and now it is a weird folder kind of thing. I like how rough it looks, but I know it doesn't really measure up. It contains some coloring pages, a maze and dot to dot as well as a word search- all dinosaur themed of course!
We'll see what she thinks!

The Best Way to Waste Time

Through reading the blog My Black Cardigan, I stumbled upon another blog called Little Cotton Rabbits. I am so addicted! Everything is gorgeous, there are free patterns and just a ton of nice things to look at. The author lives in the UK and raises chickens, has beautiful gardens and knits. She writes about her son with Autism and drinking tea in nice mugs. Seriously, it's adorable and everyone will know what their knitted gifts from me will look like during the next year!

I have no pictures to post, just a serious recommendation!

...oh and she has no ads on her site, just her own stuff and great links to other crafty blogs.

Super Awesome Fun Day!!

I dislike clowns but I LOVE Fremont!

Be afraid...
Look he got me.

I guess you are supposed to poke out his eye... Poke his eye, pick his nose- it's all the same!


Justin doesn't like his face on the internet, so this is the best I could do!

Comrades Unite! Go eat gelato and pizza bagels today!
This guy is on sale for $250,000.00 I want to buy him.
What they should really do is break him up into 6 billion little pieces and disperse it evenly among the masses.

Fremont, WA is crazy. These sculptures and statues abound. It was wicked fun!!

I love this dog!!

Check out these cute pictures of Ulysses! I took them yesterday when we were playing some sort of game with a soccer ball! I don't think it can really be called soccer, but this dog would be a rad goalie!!

Cables

This is driving me nuts! What you are seeing is a sneak peek of a project I am working on for my cousins baby. The whole thing is cable knit- body, sleeves, hood and pockets. It's way cute, but I'm doing the finishing now and it's SO hard. I am really lousy at finishing. It will be done this week and mailed off. I want to make her a project every month.

Not Too Much to Report

As the school year gets closer (two weeks away) it seems like I have less and less to write. I made it through two books on tape and watched a lot of movies. I finished four (it'll be five soon) knitting projects, grew and cooked a ton of food and did my canning for the summer. I don't think I'm going to undertake any new endeavors for the summer. Winter will bring it's own projects.

This passage has brought me a lot of comfort lately with an ill family member:

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are not seen are eternal."
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
NKJV

Good Food and Summer Crops!

So I know it doesn't seem like much- but it is! Daily I've been able to pick one tomato or one squash. Yesterday it was one tomato and one little broccoli head. However today of all days I got three tomatoes, a zucchini and a yellow squash!! Hooray!

Last nights homemade pizza- this one was great (sometimes I make the crust too thick). I love my pizza stone!!

Sisyphus

This adorable sprawled dog is quite crafty and stubborn! Yesterday Justin and I lined 50 feet of our fence that we share with a neighbor with two dogs Ulysses absolutely loves. We lined it with 48" chicken wire and had about 30" on the ground and 18" up. We sealed it with zip ties and covered all of the ground with a heavy layer of dirt. This we assumed, would keep Ulysses from digging under the fence, their dogs from digging under the fence and their five year old from digging under the fence! So we let the dog out and left him unsupervised to see what would happen. The little guy had, with the help of the two dogs- ripped a hole in the chicken wire and pushed his head through! It's completely insane, but we saw that where they had dug deep on the neighbor side, we needed to reinforce with cement blocks. Today is a new day and an improved system. I just hope it holds (who ever heard of a dog digging through chicken wire).This is his buddy he's trying to get to!

What a Day,aka Why I Should Just Stick to Knitting

So today was insane. This morning started well, I got up early did some chores and walked the dog and left the house. I had to get some final things for canning and some old wool sweaters for the latest craft obsession! I bought a pattern at Canvas Works (my local and wonderful yarn store) for felted wool dogs. I don't know why and I don't know for whom, but it was an obsession. So I set out to three different thrift shops until I found the perfect women's Pendleton sweater made out of 100% virgin wool. It was a beautiful cardigan and I felt a little bad, but this was my new obsession!
I came home and totally not thinking straight, I set to canning my blackberries and blueberries, felting the wool and keeping Ulysses entertained all within two hours (I had to get Justin's lunch together by 2pm)! It was nuts because the dog got under the fence again so I had to rescue him from a German Shepherd biting him, a Rottweiler barking in his ear and a five-year old running around and hanging on my arm! But guess what- I got it done and the kitchen cleaned!! We have 8 jars of blackberry jam and 9 of the blueberry.
Once Justin left for work, I got the felt dog made and kept Ulysses entertained!! I need to sew on the hind legs again, but today I can't even think about the stupid project. I'll fix it up tomorrow and give it to the neighbor girl. Knitting is definitely the only hobby I need!