Busy Knitting weekend & Matt's B-day!

This has been the busiest long weekend ever!! The best is, it was all good things! My school district was closed from the snow on Thursday and Friday. As promised to Jeanna, I made the poncho for her niece. I used one skein of Lion Brand Boucle and a few yards of Plymouth Wildflower for the flower. Here is a pic of the poncho - it's on my free pattern page and the link for the crochet flower is here:
http://crochet-mania.blogspot.com/2009/07/slinky-crochet-flower.html




Bandi was exhausted from all my knitting, LOL!!






On Friday, the boys all had school but I was off so I ran around food shopping. When I got home, I made Matt gluten free brownies and cookies for his birthday - 16!!!! WOW!!!



On Saturday, we got a shock - Bandit learned to like the snow!! We couldn't believe it - there he was, running around!! He really surprised us all!




I then had time to finish my scarf. I used scrap yarn and mixed up the colors and did some stockinette and some garter just for texture. It came out like this:




During all of this, Matt went for his permit test and passed on the first try!! We went to dinner with his grandparents and his aunt and celebrated his 16th. We promised to take him driving in the daylight so today we took Matt to an empty parking lot and let him practice. He drove around for about an hour! He has to log in 50 hrs for his official driving test in July. Of course we will have him take classes, but it was fun for Bryan and me to take him for this special milestone!! Later on today, Jr Demo practice!

Snow Day!!!!

The world looks like Narnia!!! What a beautiful winter wonderland. As much as I hate snow, I do have admit how pretty it is. I can admire it from of the warmth of my house looking out the window with a cup of tea!







I didn't realize how high it was until we went to let Bandit outside. I had to tape two rulers together to see how high it was!

Wow - we got 16 inches!!!!! Craziness!!! Check it out:



Poor Bandit didn't want to be out in it... look how sad he looks!!! By the way, at this point, I didn't have the two rulers I had taped together all the way down in the snow so it doesn't look like it's a high as it is...

I will be spending this gift of a day knitting! One of my co-workers asked me knit a poncho for her niece. She's 1 month old and has two older brothers. How could I resist making a super girly gift?! I'll post pics of it later... I already know what yarn I'm using and I may do a crochet flower on it too... we'll see.... she wants it to be for her for next year so I'll make it a little big - maybe 9-12 month size. This will definitely be super cute!!!

Urban Jungle

For some reason I have been very into crochet hats.... so, here is Urban Jungle from Vickie Howell. The linky link is:
http://caron.com/vickiehowell/patterns/urban_jungle/urban_jungle.html

Bro Hat pattern is up

The Bro Hats pattern is up on the Free Pattern page! http://witchyknits4ewe.blogspot.com/p/free-patterns.html

Snow Day spent knitting

I'm a little late getting this post up, but I had a wonderful snow Wednesday spent knitting!! Both boys wanted hats so this is what I did:

I used Chunky Ragg Yarn in Ragg grey by Phentex yarns on size US 10 DPN's. For Matt's hat, I casted on 64 sts and did a K2P2 rib for about an inch, then switched over to stockinette for about 6 inches and then began the decrease (K6, K2tog across, knit next row, etc). For Jarett's I casted on 60 and decreased at 5 inches with a K8, K2tog.








Matt in his guitar stance:




Jarett being "cool":



And the two brothers together:



How do you like Bandit trying to get in the action?! This was after they were fooling around and Jarett was blowing his "onion breath" on Matt - check out the love:

Charity Hats to Israel arrived

Channah e-mailed me that the hats arrived and were given out to the soldiers. See the great "thank you" pics on her blog: http://www.hatsforisraelisoldiers.blogspot.com/

and here is Matt again, modeling the hat I made:

The Juicer and a healthy meal!

My juicer finally arrived!! It's the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Pro model and I love it!!! Isn't it pretty?!




So far, I've done a blend of greens such as cucumber, celery, parsley, spinach and lettuces. I don't think I'll do the lettuces anymore - they were very delicate and didn't go through as well as I had thought... The parsley, celery and cucumber went through great. It's very surprising though how little juice it actually makes. One celery stalk, a handful of spinach, a small bunch of parsley and a 1/4 of a cucumber only made about 4 oz of juice... I plan on doubling the recipe for the next time!!

For dinner, I made sauteed onions, garlic, red pepper and added spinach leaves at the end to wilt. I topped it with salmon that I cooked with olive oil, salt and fresh garlic. It was so pretty on the plate:




Even Matt ate it up while watching some TV!!




I am so proud of him - he is really trying hard to keep up with his healthy eating. Isn't he turning into a handsome young man? Now, if only I could get him to knit...

New Year Knitting

I've been working on a KAL for Citron from Knitty - pattern here: http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter09/PATTcitron.php

Of course, me being me, and working of gifts http://witchyknits4ewe.blogspot.com/2010/12/jeanettes-scarf.html

and

http://witchyknits4ewe.blogspot.com/2010/12/hat-for-baby.html

I didn't get much knitting done on it and am the last one to finish... Here is what I have so far:




I'm going to add beads to the bind off (hopefully I have enough!). As much as this is such a pretty shawl, it gets very boring to knit. That is probably why I did other projects in between! Another one I did on New Year's Eve day was this crochet hat:




Here is a close up so you can see the beads above the brim:




The pattern is here: http://www.caron.com/projects/ss/ss19_visor_hat.html

All in all, it was a great knitting and crochet holiday season !!! Happy New Year, everyone!!