merry belated christmas

hi friends,

here's hoping you had as awesome a christmas eve and christmas as i did! this is truly my favorite time of the year, especially when i'm on vacation :-) i've really been enjoying spending time with my family and friends and sharing all of the joy, love and cheer of the christmas season. settling in for some 2-fisted eating doesn't hurt either!

anyway, i've also been spending time thinking about projects for 2008. in addition to working on some of my UFOs, i'm going to make an effort to actually START the projects that i've already bought the yarn for! i have a baby blanket to make for a friend who is expecting in late 2008, some baby blankets to add to my baby stash even though i'm nowhere near pregnant, a block "O" afghan that i've started making squares for but stopped in august sometime...just a whole long list of stuff. and i've already chosen the theme for momma's dishcloths for next christmas...they will be all white (like this year) but they will be star and snowflake patterns. i think she'll love them. i'm aiming to make her at least six of them. here are links to some that i've chosen already:

• snowflake by norah gaughan
• snowflake by susan mrenna
• snowflake star by judy gibson
• 8 point star cloth by sandi marshall
  

i'm really happy that momma looks forward to her knitted and crocheted dishcloths every year. i love making them and she loves using them so it's a perfect combination!

so those are some of my plans for 2008. i hope to be a lot more productive with my knitting and crocheting, and i'd like to try some more challenging projects as well. we'll see how it goes. right now my challenge is to get off my butt and start the laundry!

talk to y'all soon,
~mz

adding to my stash

IMG_0261
Originally uploaded by mzundercover

okay. so last week i went over to elmore-pisgah and bought 5 of their grab bags. these are 1-pound minimum assortments of various yarns...cottons, threads, etc. some are mill ends, some are "first quality" products.

UPS tried to deliver yesterday and today...and instead of waiting for them to try to deliver again, i went ahead and drove the 10 miles to the UPS distribution center to pick it up. yay! i got a bunch of cotton that is destined to be turned into dishcloths, some thread that i'm not sure what it's gonna be yet, and some weird-feeling yarn stuff that i'm not sure what it even IS let alone what it's gonna be. it feels like maybe it's rug yarn or something (it's the 3 skeins in the pic on the right). and there's not enough of it to actually -do- anything with so maybe i'll give it to my neighbor across the hall who is an art student. maybe she can think of something to do with it.

in any case, i'm happy and that's all that counts, right?

that's my story and i'm stickin' with it!

~mz

you got the right one, baby...uh huh!

i dunno if i mentioned this before or not, but one of mz's friends recently found out she is pregnant. of course, as soon as i heard this i started itching to start a baby gift for her. i picked up some yarn at my LYS the other day, and decided that it wasn't quite the right thing, so i went back yesterday. i learned how to use my drop spindle (and that reminds me, i have to practice for at least 15 mins today!), and bought some more baby-appropriate yarn. ever since, i have been looking for patterns, swatching, frogging, and looking for more patterns. i wasn't entirely sure what i was looking for, but i knew i wanted it to be crochet, all one piece (no stitching squares together for me!), easy to memorize, not too difficult and definitely nothing that started from the center and worked outward. should be easy to find something like that, right? as my high school chemistry teacher used to say, "WRONG-O!" but finally this morning i found just the right pattern and started crocheting a swatch:


this is the pound of love hooded baby blanket from lion brand and it is JUST what i was looking for! i will keep the swatch for my knitting journal. i probably won't work on this too much until after christmas but i was determined to find the right pattern so that when i AM ready to work on it, i can just get started.

oh yeah, check out my new bamboo crochet hook. it's fabulous. now i need to get a bunch more ;-)

~mz

SCORE!!!!

the other night while i was exploring ravelry, i saw a post from someone in one of my groups that said one of the local yarn shops was having a holiday open house last night. so, i grabbed up one of my friends after work yesterday and we went. how fun! this is a shop that i haven't been to in a few years and now it's under new ownership. everyone is very nice and helpful. there were a bunch of women sitting in the comfy cozy sitting area knitting and chatting, and best of all, everything in the store was 20% off. so.......i bought a few things! can't take good pix right now because my camera is at canon being fixed (but it should be back to me next week). i will tell you that i bought about $99 worth of goodies...for only $79! most of what i bought is yarn to make some sort of baby gift for a friend who recently found out she is pregnant. not sure exactly what that gift will be yet. shame on me for buying yarn before i had a project in mind!

later today i'm going back to that same yarn shop for a "spin in" event. it's been ages since i've spun any yarn and i have completely forgotten how to use my spindles (one top whorl, one bottom whorl). so i'm going to go re-learn. and maybe buy some more stuff, who knows. i also have to do a bit more christmas shopping, run some errands (pharmacy & hardware store) then it's all about sitting at home and working on finishing some knitting projects.

hope y'all have a great saturday, too!

~mz