It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

Everywhere you look.

And this is days after the storm. You can't really see in the picture but there's a 7 foot drift in front of the cars. It's like Christmas weather before Christmas.

It's been an amazing December for ski resort season pass holders in VT. It's really too bad I have had this pesky grad school application hanging over my head so that I have not been able to enjoy it. But despite not being able to do much skiing (or snow plowing, in my case) Being surrounded by snow just put me in the Christmas spirit. As does managing to have all but avoided shopping at the box top stores. This past weekend, we had a most gorgeous blizzard. Any excuse to avoid Christmas shopping with crowds of angry, pushy people is quite lovely, and so much more so with some knitting and coffee and a nice view of the storm. I was not as excited on Monday morning, when I was plowed in, but the 2 1/2 foot snow drifts I had to dig my car out of are still enjoyable in December.

Gift Number 1:
Though this coffee cozy looks decent from this angle, it's got a HUGE seam on the other side. I'm considering cutting the seam, sewing without a seam and felting it together. The yarn is some random rough wool scraps I was given years ago, so I think it would felt well, and that would get rid of the unseemly seam (hehe) that I couldn't even bear to take a picture of.

Gift Number 2:

I really love the way the snowflakes came out. I ended up going with silver paint instead of plain old white, and I think it makes up for the imperfections of my micro-painting skills :)

My Hand Dyed Yarn Swap Package

My hand dyed yarn package came in the other day and look how pretty! It also came with swedish fish, but those didn't last long enough to make it into the picture. Hattie dyed it for me and called the colorway grapevine. It's fingering weight superwash, so I can knit the prettiest socks ever.

You can't really tell from the pictures, but the colors are green and deep purple with some browns and sky blues thrown in there. It's gorgeous. The picture below shows the different colors, albeit darker and less vivid than they actually appear, the light is not so amazing in the computer room...

I don't think she possibly could have realized how perfect the yarn matches this year. My wedding was purple and green, with purple bridesmaid dresses and the hall decorated in green. And we've frequented more vineyards this year between the trip to San Francisco this spring and taking visitors to local VT vineyards this summer than I have in all my former years combined :)

Coffee Swap Package

I actually received this package a few weeks ago, but between losing my camera battery charger and a massive final paper for class, I just haven't had the time to post about it.

Joy sent me yummy biscotti cookies (half gone already), a cute ceramic travel mug, and a skein of lamb's pride worsted and directions for making felted roses. She also sent a 2008 postcard calendar, two different kinds of coffee: Starbucks Sumatra which is nice and strong and an Artisan Coffee Roasters Jamaican Butter Rum, which tasted as good as it sounds! The card is even adorable; it's paper cut to look like a boutique window. Thanks Joy!

Sneezing Panda

No knitting picures today, but here's my favorite youtube video. I watch it when I'm having a bad day, nothing cheers me up better....except perhaps, chocolate :)

All boring words

I received my coffeeswap package last friday and have been trying depserately to find my digital camera battery so I can take pictures, but, alas, it seems to have gone the way of my sunglasses...and all my missing socks :) So maybe I'll be brave and try husband's camera in the next few days...after I finish the 20 page paper that's due this thursday. I cast on for a scarf Christams present for Matt, and in between writing and researching the paper and reading Book Five of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series...which Matt was not supposed to let me start until this paper and my physical therapy grad school application were both done. I've managed to make some progress in all directions, except Christmas knitting :)

Look at the New Swap I Found

When the days grow shorter and it becomes too cold and dark for me to consider running outside on weekdays and I enter and leave work in total darkness, I tend to get a touch of SADs (is anyone else as amused as I that seasonal depression is called SAD? Is it wrong to be amused by that?)
I have found an excellent form of amelioration (I might have made the form of the word up)
Mmmm....Hot Cocoa*
*a swap for knitters to beat away their winter blahs

Long swap title, excellent idea. As if getting packages in the mail are not an incredible pick-me-up in themselves, this swap is designed to make you happier in the seemingly longest part of winter.
Sign-ups start December 16th :)

Kids love to jump on beds

I can't even stand how cute this is :)

These are a few of my favorite things

Here's an idea from Celena, from The Hand-Dyed Yarn Swap I'm in to list five of your favorite things.
Here are five I came up with, in no particular order:

1. Runner's high. I don't know if that's a "technical" term, but after running hard, usually after 5+ miles there's this feeling of euphoria where your legs are moving themselves effortlessly, and you're never been so happy to be alive, just running and living in the moment you are in.

2. Random wildlife sightings. No matter how often I see random wildlife, whether it's a raccoon or a skunk or deer or porcupines, when you are so quiet to observe them unnoticed, it's like being in the Discovery channel.

3. Couch time. In the winter in Vermont, when the days are both short on sunlight and the air is bitter cold, there is nothing I like better than watching a movie, under a blanket, with a mug of coffee, hot tea, or hot chocolate.

4. Horses. Had to be on the list :) My earliest memories of being obsessed with horses are in my preschool days. Yes, I have memories from preschool, but I can't seem to remember anything I learned in college. Being that my parents were both not rich and feared that riding horses would be the death of me, I didn't start riding until late in high school, and I, to this day have generous horse owning benefactors who let me ride their horses. My pony exposure would be severely limited otherwise.

5. Apple season. I love apple picking. Apple cider. Apple dumplings. Anything relating to fresh apples and fall weather. Painted leaves on trees and sweatshirt weather. I don't think I could ever leave New England permanently.

Stash Amassed...

I have been browsing the projects section of Ravelry lately, you know, instead of knitting or catalouging my own projects....and I found this gorgeous, not to big for me too handle piece of fair isle. And because I am no longer afraid of charts and colorwork, I was pretty excited about a yarn choosing expedition.
I got more than enough fingering weight yarn and a few other gorgeous hand-dyed pretties (the big gorgeous skeins are Great Adirondack Company yarn made with Texas Bighorn) and went on my way.


I got home and looked at my choices for the wrist warmers and I was just not happy with the colors I had chosen. Purple and green? And in those shades? I guess my critical thinking skills are hampered by the yarn euphoria of a yarn store.

So I went off to a different LYS (I don't want to give just one all my business) and bought two different colors which I was much happier with. Then I went home and saw that my new selections looked closer to laceweight than fingering weight. Sigh. I don't have enough of the new colors to hold the yarn double, and I don't particularly want this project to cost $30, so I'm not sure what to do. Maybe move up a needle size? Make the large size? I don't know, I guess wristwarmers are a small enough project where I can just keep trying different things. Or I'll buy more yarn.....

Wordless Wednesday

Getting there...

Look! It's my first attempt at stranded knitting. And reading off charts. And it looks kinda pretty anyways.

This is the yarn/pattern from my tea swap. It's a pattern I would not have picked myself because of the scary chart and multi-colors, so I'm glad Heather sent it to me. It's really not so scary reading off a chart or using multiple colors. Who would have thought? I'm wicked lazy and my gauge swatch doesn't get laundered (or cut, for that matter), but I think it will fit the intended recipient pretty well.

Pictures from Greece

I was going to write a commentary on the pictures below, but I think they speak for themselves.

Just a comment on the bell tower sunset. This was in Oia, Santorini. We watched this sunset with about 200 other people and one cat. When the sun sank below the horizon, there was applause! That might the only time I experience sunset applause :)

If you have any questions about the pictures feel free to ask about them. We went to three different islands and on a classical tour of southern Greece.

Enjoy.