Oh Baby Baby

Miss K's 6th grade teacher from last year had a baby in July and we have been meaning to visit her ever since. I made the pink sweater and hat for her baby shower. I realize it is pathetic that we haven't seen the baby until now but at last we got a chance to meet her today. She is absolutely gorgeous. Big blue eyes, a bit of blonde fuzz on her head and a smile that could melt a glacier. I took a break from knitting hats to make these adorable mary jane sock/shoes for her. I made the 6-12 month size but unfortunately they came out fairly large. Oh well, she can hopefully wear them when she is about 1 year old. I found these cute litte flower buttons at Joann's fabrics. Aren't they perfect? While we were visiting Mrs. R I saw this fabulous throw on her chair. Her MIL made it for her and I just loved it. The color combination was fantastic but I don't know how to crochet. Makes me want to learn! Does anyone know what stitch this is?

I spent a good part of the day driving the kids hither and yon and enjoying all the flowering trees letting me know that spring is in the air. I just had to stop and take a photo of this gorgeous pink tree which was surrounded by daffodils along the bottom. When I got home I finally planted the bulbs that have been sitting in my garage. Yes bulbs! They should have been planted in October but I never got around to it. They have started to grow in the bag so I figured I'll stick them in the ground and see what happens. I'll keep you posted!

Hanging at the Lake

The kids had the entire week off so we headed up to Tahoe on Thursday night. We have some friends who bought a cabin in south shore over a year ago and they have invited us up many times. Unfortunately we have never been able to make it - until now. I must admit the drive on windy Highway 50 was a bit scary at night but it was well worth the trip. The weather was amazing - crystal clear and 47 degrees! The snow was piles of powder and a fabulous time was had by all. The girls snow boarded with their friends and the Little Man took two days of ski school. It really helped and now he is making pizza (snow plowing) down the slopes.

I did not end up skiing on this trip. I had to take a conference call for several hours on Friday and Saturday I decided to hang out with my friend (the cabin Mom). She can't ski because she tore her knee last year. Instead we managed to find an adorable little yarn store called the Wool Tree where I bought yarn to make hats for her kids. We also found a great little scrapbook store where I bought stickers to add to my piles of unfinished scrapbooks! Someday, someday.

I found a little time to knit and I finished up my Calorimetry. (That's Horsey Girl's dirty hair in the photo - not mine :-) I had searched around on Ravelry beforehand and found that many people had said it was too long and too wide so I cast on only 100 stitches instead of 120 and didn't do as many repeats. I still need to find a button but I'm very happy with how it turned out. Now I have to go back to the cold so I can wear my matching headband/scarf set. The really weird thing about this pattern is that when I first came across the pattern on Knitty.com about a year ago I realized it was designed by the girls old swim coach. What a small world!

I also made another hat for myself, with some black feathery novelty yarn at the base and I used some gorgeous red yarn from the stash. The color doesn't show well at all in the photos. It is really more of a deep claret color. Then since I still had some of the red left I decided to make another Robin Egg Hat. Of course I ran out of the red so I had to mix in a little black to be able to finish. This hat currently is homeless but I think it will find a home soon.

I did find a little bit of time to read so I started the new book for my book club. It is called Bel Canto and I am really enjoying it. I highly recommend it and for the first time since this book club began it's a book that is less than 500 pages!

Also THANK YOU so much to Bonnie and Wendy for the Kreativ Blogger award. I'll do that in the next post so stay tuned . . .

Bon Ami Scarf

I finished my scarf and I'm naming it the Bon Ami scarf. Why? Well this is the scarf I made with the yarn Bonnie and I bought when she was visiting San Francisco. She finished her scarf recently (check it out - it is so cute!) and named it the friendship scarf. However she said she wasn't that happy with the name. So I thought about it some more and since her blog is "Tres Bon Babble" I came up with the Bon Ami scarf. Sort of a play on words. I'm thrilled with how it turned out. It is so soft and I'm happy to have an off white scarf since it's not a color I normally pick. I cast on 27 stitches, used a size 9 needle and knit in mistake rib until it was along as I wanted. Then I decided it needed a little somethin somethin on the end so I added a slight ruffle. I knit in to the front and back of each stitch doubling it to 54 stitches, knit one more row and then bound off. In the photo you'll see the cast on edge is still straight but I later went back and picked up stitches on that and added a similar ruffle.


I finished it last weekend when we went to Ojai for a horse show. We really got lucky. The weather here has been extremely rainy lately and I was worried that we'd have to drive down the 5.5 hours in pouring rain and then spend the horse show slogging through the mud and trying to hide under whatever cover we could find. But the heavens smiled on us. The weather was glorious on the drive down. Blue skies with rolling white cotton clouds. The drive is spectacular as you pass rolling green hills, golden fields of mustard flowers, horses, cows and ultimately find yourself driving along the ocean on the Santa Barbara coast. I wanted to stop every mile and take a photo (but I restrained myslef)!


We stayed at a cute place called the Blue Iguana Inn which has lizards and iguanas all over the place and is decorated in south western style. It was Mom, Horsey Girl, the Little Man and me. Hubby was in New York and Miss K was smart enough to find a friend to stay with for the weekend. We had a 2 bedroom unit with a cute little family room. It was great. Saturday night the Equestrian team all met for dinner and when we arrived we were shocked to seem them all sitting on the patio of the restaurant - in 35 degree weather! However there were some heaters, I went back to the car and got every jacket I could find and we ended up having a lovely dinner.
The horse show went well. Except for the fact Horsey Girl had to be there at 6 a.m. and it was only 30 degrees. By the time she had her first ride (around 9:30 a.m.) she was shaking so hard she couldn't stop. But by the end of the day she had earned enough points to go back for the regional finals at the end of March.

Now that my Bon Ami scarf is done I'm again working on my "re-do" scarf from the yarn I frogged in Oregon. I'm much happier with it this time.

Spring is Springing

We are starting to see many signs of Spring in California. I think it is because we had some warm spells in January but I fear that now that we are having a normal winter with rain and cold it will knock all the buds off the trees. Here is a picture of my cymbidium orchid which always thrills me when it decides to bloom.

I have been knitting several scarves which I hope to finish and show you soon. In addition, I made this Robin Egg hat for my friend. She has invited us to her house in Tahoe next weekend to go skiing so I thought it would be nice to show up with a gift. Not only will it keep her warm in the snow but I made it in the colors of the San Jose Sharks hockey team because she is a big fan. I love this pattern. It is quick and really makes an unique hat. Funny thing is my friend Jennifer also made one and we hadn't even mentioned it to one another! Hopefully she will like it. Horsey Girl gave it the nod of approval so I think that's a good sign. She even said my friend's teenage daughter my steal it - I take that as the ultimate complient.

Here's a hat I made for the Little Man when we were in Oregon over New Year's but I forgot to post. When we got up there I realized he didn't have any hats made by me - only store bought ones! I couldn't let that be the case so I found this great Diva yarn and whipped up this little diddy. It went perfectly with his olive green jacket (not planned but a happy coincidence) and he loved it.

Tote*ally Awesome

Here is my favorite Christmas present. A gorgeous tote that Mom made for me. Isn't it awesome? You may wonder why I am showing it to you now but it took a little while to find it's way to my home. It wasn't quite done for Christmas but Mom did finish it early January. However after all the work she just had to show it to her friends at the guild. Wouldn't you want to show it off? Then it did find it's way to me about a week ago but I finally had a chance to photograph it this weekend. I wanted to be sure to have a bright sunny day so I could show it in all it's glory.



The story starts even earlier than that. You see Mom and her freind went to a PFQ (PQF?) Well a big quilt show that is like Stitches and there they found this really cool tool to make cords. They were so enamoured with it they decided to buy one to share. My Mom's friend had it first so she brought me a magazine that had a photo in it and a bag where the handles were made with the cord maker. I of course fell in love with the bag! Mom looked around and found fabric that looked almost exactly like the bag in the photo and viola! I got my favorite present. Look at the cool dragonfly lining!!!

In knitting news, I made this yummy purple scarf. I got this yarn when we were in Oregon for New Years. It was just one skein of about 150 yards. I think they had made it with odds and ends of fabulous purple yarn. Since it was three strands together I decided to make a scarf the long way using size 17 needles. I've rarely made anything using needles that big and it was so cool how fast it goes! The scarf was done in a jiff and it is long and snuggly. In fact so snuggly I must send it somewhere cold so it can get the wear it deserves. I'm sending it off to my mother-in-law in Delaware for Valentine's Day. Hopefully she will enjoy it.