As I only had 1 skein I knew they would be mismatched for color, but that's OK as now I will easily know which is right or left and probably will only wear around house when using the computer.
Got to use my new animal mug (Christmas gift) for the first time this morning, it's a cute and yet elegant penguin. I just love these type of mugs, so far I've collected a tiger and zebra as well.
12/25/08 finished most of the left hand mitt on the 7 hour drive to LA, whew! I’m not quite sure how to pick up and knit for the thumb stitches, so I think I will save this and ask my knitting mentor later and just start on the right mitt for the long drive home. So far, I am loving the color and feel. Now that they have seen some of my FO’s my sister-inlaw and mom-inlaw want some knitted stuff too!
garter stitch edge, very easy and I think it looks nice too.
I knit the right hand mitt on the way home and finished that one to the same point. Now, I only need to finish the thumbs.
Christmas 2008 at Mom & Dad's place. A good time was had by all.
Mom & Dad (mostly Mom) prepared a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings.
Tex was a bad dog, this was his first time alone (for days) in his new home and he took out his worry and frustration on our old couch! Oh well, it was time for a new one anyway and if you look closely you can see that this couch is actually made of cardboard!
So, on Wednesday I spent a good hour in the dark snatching all 12 of the current aviary residents out of mid air and stuffing them into our much smaller indoor flight cages.
I forgot what a mess these guys can make. With 10 little finches in the bottom cage dancing in the food dish and flapping their wings we had quite a lot of seeds and feathers surrounding the cage and on the floor in no time. Although the dogs valiantly tried to keep it clean by:
although they gave it their best shot the dogs just couldn't keep up with the generation of mess! Myself not wanting to sweep every day (or possibly more than once daily) had to come up with some kind of seed catcher. Thus, the "bird skirt" was born.
The bird skirt creation process:
Step 1. Tex carefully inspected an old ripped sheet to see if it was fit for use.
Step 2: Although Tex really wanted to help, I insisted that he let me do the cutting of a 14" width of the bottom (elastic portion of the fitted sheet) to a length of 100" (and a shout out to my favorite helper, Craig) and then sew another piece of elastic to the cut edge.
Step 3: apply the newly fashioned "bird skirt" to the indoor cage and Voila, no more mess!
Things I wish came out better:
Things I like about it:
The tools of the trade : ) I used old file folders to make very stiff "interfacing" for the border fabric. Originally I was going to glue the fabric to the interfacing, the glue it to the board, but that began to seem quite messy and I thought it might lead to unfixable mistakes, so I went a different way.
I carefully folded and ironed the fabric to wrap around the interfacing,
then sewed it along the edge with metallic gold thread. Then I glued the strips onto the pegboard to form an inner, decorative border to tie it in with the rest of the deco.
I put up all kinds of fun hooks, mounted everything I could find that had holes to hang and even managed to mount my cute little Bernina accessory holder box. I also cut up a used, giant ibuprofen bottle, covered it in the trim fabric and mounted it as a pen holder. I love it!
The theme is "world travel", based on this giant map we got at IKEA ages ago. All the wall and deco fabric colors are derived from the map, with a silver/white/birch furniture scheme we were able to cobble together from existing and some new stuff from IKEA (my new favorite furniture store as it's cheap and I won't cry if we have to get rid of it in the next move).
So, with Craig's room looking so awesome (in my humble opinion), I have been burning the brain cells trying to make my own sewing room at least as good if not better. I found some great fabric to make curtain for the window and as replacements for the closet doors (this works great as I can open the whole closet area all at one time to stuff multiple storage boxes on the big rack that replaced the single hanger bar).
still has a ways to go, but I finally got the bulletin board and thread racks up.
next up on the opposite wall is the giant pegboard (6' x 3') that Craig helped me mount this weekend.
It was looking sort of blah, so I painted a lovely chocolate brown (to match the brown fabric in the curtains) "frame" around it.
Actually this was more frustrating than I anticipated as our walls have some texture which always seems to let the paint bleed underneath the painters tape I use to mask out a line.
Luckily I still had some leftover beige wall paint and painstakingly fixed this with a teeny tiny brush to make a nice straight edge. I think the next step will be an inner border with the orange flower fabric.
This is what I hope it looks like in a couple of years:
Jack made absolutely delicious pumpkin soup and pumpkin pie from actual pumpkins (Cinderella type, I believe) as well as mashed potatoes.
Mary prepared stuffing and green beans, I made roasted Brussels sprouts (the crowd was divided about those), cranberry sauce, apple pie and rolls (OK, the rolls were store bought) and Craig prepared a couple of juicy bone-in turkey breasts with gravy.
Another great gathering of friends for the annual Pumpkin Carving, which we missed last year because we were in Africa.
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proof that Blair does indulge in something other than Budweiser.
Once again Giacamo wowed us all "The best free hand design", clearly inspired by Mary's beehive.
Witty Diane took the "Cleverest design" category hands down with her Pumpkin Pi carving.
Christian's children (ok, really Christian himself) did a great job carving not one, but two pumpkins and won the "Happiest design" category.
We had to create a new category (truth be told the categories are always completely random anyway) for Sean's amazing alien creation, the "Best Indoor design"
The full line-up