Random thought of the day

Because I drive a lot (I'm a supercommuter) I ride along on my husbands Audible account. Which I love. And I'm really dull, which you might expect (Austin, Brontes, books on the NSA) but I did want to mention my favorite podcasts. Along with Knitpicks, I'd recommend Mile Duncan's The History of Rome, Kevin Stroud's History of English and any of the Naked Science podcasts - Naked Genetics is my favorite.
Thoughts for the weekend.
And here's our tree - now the house smells nice.

So, it doesn't look like much

And I'm going to put fewer beads on it than the first version (Goddess Nut) but its coming along. For whatever reason all my Christmas knitting this year was in neutrals and I'm dying to rip out my Kauni and redo it in this vest (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/trellis-waistcoat) maybe or the Kauni sweater (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/kauni-rainbow-cardigan) which would be simpler but I'd want to fit it a bit. Just anything with color!
I also really love the Veyla mitts and want to try them in Chroma - maybe with a matching hat? I have some leftovers from the second Stained Glass sweater I made for Elaine, maybe she can be my guinea pig.

Soccer and number 5 of 5

Our final soccer tournament of the year. So, I got some work done one the last knitting present. Our parents also got so rowdy that the ref lodged a complaint with the tournament officials. Nice.

Blocking and buttons

Here are the Veyla blocked, with buttons for our niece. The little wants a pair in dark blue now. Here are Pipet and Hallett's drying too.

Finishing things

Well, I'm down to the last knitted present. Not sure if I want to do a shawl or a sweater. I suspect my issue is I think pearlescent is ugly, and I'd be happy making either with another color. Sigh.

Pre-Thanksgiving tradition

I hope everyone is gearing up for a fun and safe holiday. Every year for Thanksgiving eve we have baked Brie in puff pastry for dinner and chocolate mousse. And we watch Charlie Brown. I also made cornbread for stuffing tomorrow.

Oh yeah

Here's number 3 - Pipit again in Sugarbunny. It's nice, very soft and works wonderfully for this pattern. I like that our kitty is in this picture because the way you knit the pattern, it makes me think of the Cheshire Cat appearing.

Those pictures

Here are my first couple Xmas presents. We had soccer all weekend so I got more done on number 3 and started number 4 as well.

It's been a long time, sorry

It's been a long time, sorry.  But if you haven't abandoned me, I can say I've been knitting Christmas presents.  I have 3.5 out of 5 done and I only started in October, so I feel pretty good about my chances of getting this done and still having time to ship them.  I'll post some pictures tonight.

Today at work, I noticed I have these 2 birds outside my window, they look like they're playing chess.  Watch the video here.  Then they fight, one leaves, the other sits in the tree outside my window looking all hunchy and territorial until the first one comes back, then they play chess again and fight more.  It's sort of fascinating, so I filmed it and I'm posting it here.

Hopefully everyone is getting ready to have a relaxing holiday - we're going to make this stuffing (it's totally awesome, we tried it last weekend) and some of the usual fun stuff - like white chocolate mousse and pecan pie.  I'll have Wednesday at least partially to myself to go grocery shopping and clean, which is always kind of fun.  We don't go anywhere or see anyone for Thanksgiving, usually, so it's quiet and nice.  Which of course is making us flirt with getting a dog, because too little chaos just isn't allowed in our world.

I've been trying to get back to abandoned projects this year, and I have on thing I need to take out and do over.  My Kauni jacket isn't gong to fit, so I need to to repurpose the yarn - I've seen a really cool vest pattern on Ravelry . . . .  but if you do a pattern search for Kauni vest you get some pretty awesome stuff.

Okay, lunch is over, back to work!

Pipit is done!

Needs to be washed, but I like this reuse of this yarn.

Pipet

So, last night I ripped out the whole body of Pipet. I seem to have mismatched shoulder and torso sizes. So, I'm going to end up reknitting every part of this freakin thing at least twice. I think I'll really like it, and the cotton linen blend will be great for fall down south. I also like being a grown up and learning to just rip when I need to.
I'm also starting to be really annoyed that I'm not using up this lovely old silk I've had for 20 years. I've hauled it out to the living room so ill be annoyed - I mean inspired. I'm thinking maybe a diagonal stripe like this this?

All official and everything

My new car and its new plate. Both supporting a nice cause and its sort of work humor. Get it?

Mmmm

Dinner - http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2012/10/pimenton-roast-chickens-with-crispy-potatoes and I'm nearly done with the top of Pipit. Looks like a Thneed.

This is nice

I was hanging on to some Full Circle in Robin (http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/Full_Circle_Worsted_Yarn__D5420221.html) and not sure what it would work for. Maybe something like this? http://www.knittingdaily.com/media/p/101736.aspx.

Back

So, awhile back, my life went nuts. My work life, my real life is fine. Not bad, just busy to the point of not remembering to use the restroom all day. Then my phone went into decline (failing battery) and then died. It was kind of a drag and killed blogging for me.
Any how, new staff, new budget year and new phone.
I've been doing lots of knitting - lots of it kind of dull. I made some mittens for the annual horse barn event:

And I started Pipet - twice. First time was with Galileo which was lovely but the gauge was off and then I pulled out the Green Mtn Spinnery tunic I'd stalled out in Cotlin to use for it. Some I'll learn that stalling out means I hate it
I also made some socks for a coworker who retired, but I have all this awesome yarn I have to use. Thinking of doing Rosa Rugosa in the Galileo with long sleeves. The bamboo makes it wearable next to the skin.

Mittens!

Sent from my iPodMy annual charity donation for my coworker ...

Stained glass pullover again

Yes, again.
Or how my knitting brain finally got a break and came up with something to journal here again.

So, my iPhone died.  Which is whatever I guess (I do need to get a cheap replacement for a little while so my child can call me when he gets home from school), but it meant that I had no music to run to tonight.
Now, a year ago, this would have s*cked, big time.  But I'm now enough in the groove of running 3 miles that I no longer NEED music to get my pace set and jolly me through it.  So I was running and looking at the clouds, which were all pink and red and purple, and thinking about knitting (duh) and thought how pretty they looked.  How nice it would be in a fair isle, except Alice Starmore already did that one and it's honestly not really my palette anyway.  Hmmm, palette - knitpicks, mmmmm, that idea I had for using an Islamic mosaic tile pattern for color inspiration last winter - I really like the idea of the blues and yellow golds with little shots of turquoise and lavender.  But coming up with a whole fair isle design and placing all that?  Oof, exhausting.  But wait - that could be PERFECT for another stained glass pullover - work it at the original gauge with 2 sets of palette stranded together, background would be blues and the panes would be golds.

In other news, I finished Vitamin D and LOVE IT, but I need to wash it again because my handdyed wants to bleed on me.  Yuck.  I also am making some dull mittens to take a brain rest and use up some yarn and have a comfy fingering swatch in the dryer right now so I can see about making a lightweight cotton cardigan, like the Featherweight by Hannah Fetig.

No pics, well, no phone.  Yes, we have a camera, but I don't know where it is.

Deer

In our back yard - she had twins but you can only see one very well here.
Spent the day taking the little one to meet the teacher day at middle school (he's starting 6th grade!) and then to Walmart. Walmart sucks. But we're ready. Or we have supplies - I guess that doesn't really equate, does it?
I'm almost done with Vitamin D which I love - the hand dyed is awesome and it's forced me to learn to felt graft as I go because you really have to alternate balls as you go with hand dyed, even from the same pot. But it is a boatload of straight stitch. And I hope to get a snap of Tumbleweed this week at knitting. I could use to go to our knitting group.

Cake

Note the theme animal print candles. The clerk at Publix thought I was a sad, crazy cat lady buying my cat a cake. He seemed relieved when I explained that I was just lame.

Again, a long gap

July has been pretty busy and I've been working on things - I started Vitamin D in some hand dyed I made and I'm working on my cotton tumbleweed - and I started these new socks; Zoknis. The pattern isn't as leafy as I was hoping for. Between Ravelry as a place to log projects and having less (read no) time to design, I feel like my posting isn't all that interesting the last year or so. And man, if there aren't already a metric ton of knitting blogs out there.
I finally gave up on listening to Knitpicks podcasts - they got repetitive all in a row, even for me. I've moved on to the Naked Science podcasts. I aspire to be smart enough to understand genetics for the layperson.