Pumpkin Sunrise

  I started wrapping gifts this week and I'm almost done with the task. Yesterday, my husband and I went out for a little shopping and walking around a tiny town nearby. I bought some yarn (from Santa, how does he know what I want??). We had an early lunch at a tiny cafe and I ordered FANCY avocado toast. Honestly it's made me rethink how I make my plain avocado toast at home. I am also surprised at the price I paid for this simple yet delicious food. However, when you eat out you are paying for the luxury of sitting in a dining space to relax and enjoy your food, while people watching. The endless blue skies and sunshine on our outing brought me such joy in my heart.  My son and his family return to us on Christmas day for almost a week. I'm excited to see the kids again and I hope this visit that no one is ill and I get to sleep. What brings me comfort and joy: - the Advent season - Frodo's haircut - easing back into knitting cautiously - avocado toast amplified - det

  Good morning! How are you doing on this fine morning?  I've been happily knitting on two projects. I started a Christmas stocking for my grandson for my house a few days ago. It's wonderful to be knitting again without pain, but I am still limiting the amount of time I am knitting to make sure I don't return to any arthritis flare ups. The other project is a simple rib hat for me.  What are you working on this week?

  How was your weekend? Mine was so great that I only have one photo. The best news of the day is that I can knit and my hands are healed. I know, you are wondering if I learned my lesson. Yes I have. I will not marathon knit gnomes while having an arthritis flare up. Over the weekend I was able to knit and enjoy my knitting. I started a Christmas stocking for my house for our grandson. I'd like to knit one for our granddaughter but I am taking the knitting slow and easy. I've been reading mostly if I'm not knitting. My current read is Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano which is so good I cannot stop reading. I will be sad when this book is finished.  The rest of the weekend was socializing with my family, doing the laundry and weekly cleaning like I always do. I have a lofty goal of being 'done done' with the holiday shopping by the end of the week. I need to start wrapping gifts soon.

  Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I started an easy cowl  project for a Christmas gift and one that was gentle on my sore hands (my hands are mostly recovered from the manic gnome knitting). This simple, yet elegant cowl was perfect! My hands are happiest with circular needles and wool yarn. The wool is from deep stash and I am lucky to have another skein of this pretty yellow colorway to knit something for myself if I choose to do so.  What are you working on this week?

  Good morning! I have finished the gnomes !  Of course, this achievement came with great sufferings. My hands and wrists are painful and I'm waiting out the healing process. I am knitting limitedly and trying to be patient with myself. I have shelved all other holiday knitting and probably will not do it. I have always listened to my body and when it screams rest, I rest. I'm confident that this wrist/hand pain is autoimmune related and so it will go away eventually. In the mean time, I casted on a little 1x1 rib hat for myself to keep me busy. Aren't these little gnomes adorable? This time around I used double knitting and sport weight left over wools to create these little wonders. 

  Good morning! How are you? I am tired from the time change even though the time change was to my benefit. Sadly I am waking up at strange times and then having trouble going back to sleep. Also one of the many smoke alarms decided to chirp at 3:30 a.m. (grrr) I have FIVE gnomes completed and would like to make two more. I had to take a knitting break yesterday due to hand and wrist pain as well as neck pain. Too much of a good thing ends up being a problem. I feel a lot better. What are you working on this week?

  Good morning!! For a few weeks now, I've been working on my gnomes for this year. My plan is to make eight of them, all of them gifts for Christmas except for one to keep at my home. I'm using up scrap yarns in sport weight and in DK weight wools. I do love pairing colors and eeking out as much yardage as possible from the scrap yarn bag.  What are you working on this week?

  My weekend was nice and a beautiful change from the chaos of getting new appliances. The chaos was worth every single minute. The temperature has been dropping, finally. I am all in for some chilly weather. Those little ones on Halloween will be freezing!  I've been working on gnomes, making steady progress but slow process. So far I have two completed. I have found my rhythm though and that makes the knitting feel fast.  Can you believe it'll be three weeks until Thanksgiving? I will have a full house and I am hosting dinner this year. My lists are detailed - the more I write down the less overwhelmed I feel about the time together with family. How was your weekend?

  Good morning! How are you?  I've had a full week with classes and yesterday our fridge and dishwasher arrived. Of course it was stressful, beginning with the fridge not fitting through the kitchen door. The team really wanted to call it quits but we pleaded that they try the back door which goes through the family room which doesn't have a doorway. Thankfully one of the men said yes and my husband was scrambling to remove the back door and unhook the screen door. Bless sweet Frodo, he cannot hear anything and just sleeps through it all. So the fridge was installed but then there was a water leak (of course), we have a plumber today coming to fix that. Apparently it's our end of the plumbing and not the fridge. Every single fridge we have bought and installed we have had waterline leaks for the water dispenser hookup, it must be a rite of passage. I am grateful that I saw it early and no permanent damage was done. The dishwasher installation needed a new shut off valve bec

  How was your weekend? My weekend was rainy but I managed to do a daily walk in between the raindrops. I have officially started my mad gnome knitting. Last year my schedule was wide opened for knitting. This year I'm taking non credit classes and feel like my time is limited but truly it is not. It's a state of mind. I've got a big bag a scraps and just knit. That is all there is to it. I am so glad we did our country drive north on Thursday because I believe that was peak colors. The rain over the weekend has brought most of the leaves down. It's the last full week of October already - time is flying by. On Saturday my sister and brother in law came over for dinner and we had a nice time catching up with them since they did a little trip to see their fall foliage as well. My Sunday was the usual chores after Mass. I do love a regular weekend. My house will be full for the Thanksgiving weekend and I'm already plotting what I need to do from now until then. The lis

  Well lookie see, I finished the last hitchhiker shawl last night. This is the third hitchhiker shawl from my summer knitting series and it is the last one for quite some time to come. I enjoyed this knit as all the other shawl knits but I am looking forward to not knitting a shawl for quite some time. It's time to start knitting for the grands for Christmas. What are you working on this week?

  I whipped up a pair of mitts for my daughter in law, super quick. I used acrylic yarn and after I bought the yarn I discovered that it was aran weight instead of worsted weight, rookie mistake on my part. So I dropped down 2 needle sizes to make the size that I wanted. What are you working on this week?

  I did some fast knitting in the last few days. I started and finished this Christmas Stocking for our granddaughter and now my hands are sore. I know that my hands are the happiest when I knit with wool. When I knit with plant fibers or some acrylic yarns, I have sad hands. The stockings that I have made thus far for my son's house were made with cherry red wool that has since been discontinued. I faced the dilemma of ordering a replacement wool online knowing that red (and purple!) are two colors that computer screens can mislead as true colors.  A while ago, I spied redheart supersaver in THE red that I know is very close to the discontinued wool color so I bought lots knowing that my hands would take a beating. I cannot wait to see how close I  matched the reds. (My hands recovered quickly!) What are you working on this week?

  Can you believe that we have arrived to the glorious month of September? I know that summer is still blazing away and fall is inching slowly towards us but flipping the calendar page to September brings me joy. My mom would demand a Christmas list by September first believing she could knit all the things and have them wrapped up for the holidays. She would start asking for the list in August. As a young adult, I thought she was crazy and a bit over reacting. September? Christmas? Jeez! And here I am, starting a Christmas stocking for our granddaughter. My mother is looking down from heaven with an 'I told you so' smirk on her face. However, I am smirking back at her and telling her that I have started knitting for the holidays at the start of this year.  I do not ask for a knitting wish list from my family. I knit what I want when I want and give the items freely away, if I don't meet my virtual 'to knit' demands, no one knows but me. My self-imposed timeline is

  This week I've been working on this last hitchhiker shawl of the summer. I have been enjoying the ease of this project, so simple for me to pick up and knit a little bit and put down. I have not tested this with talking at the same time, I'm sure I would make mistakes under those test conditions, ha ha. The sock yarn for this shawl was F R E E. Yup! my sister asked me if I would like the yarn that was given to her by someone who didn't want the yarn. Lucky for me I thought it would make a great shawl. What are you working on this week?

  Good morning! Phew, all that baby knitting is behind me and I've been focusing on a super simple knit - the Hitchhiker . According to Ravelry, this is my third one but it definitely will not be my last. I usually work on this shawl in the evenings when I'm watching TV. During the day I've been cross stitching a baby birth sampler.  What are you working on this week?

  How are all of you? Around here everything is great. I finished the little baby blanket and didn't have enough yarn to make the small size that I chose. But fear not! I just did what I could with the yarn that I did have and the blanket is still a nice little size to through over a baby carrier. I have officially finished baby knitting for now! I will resume baby knitting and little boy knitting near the end of summer early fall.  What are you working on this week?

  Miracle of miracles! I finished the baby blanket yesterday afternoon. I am so pleased with how the blanket turned out. However, knitting with cotton yarn is problematic for my arthritic hands. I have to pace my knitting and not do too much at one sitting. My hands prefer wool.  I wrote a long list of what I'd like to knit for the granddaughter-to-be and the grandson from now until the end of the year. I need to focus and knit! I ordered more yarn that should be here by the end of the week to make a baby sweater and hat. Also I want to make a smaller blanket that is perfect for the baby carrier in the car.  What are you working on this week?

  Finally I can tell you all about the 'super secret project'. I was on a walk with my sister before Christmas and I was commenting on how warm my mittens were. My sister said she'd like a pair for her birthday which is in mid-January then added well maybe the next year since it was so close. Being the knitter that I am, I went home dug around my 'stash' of yarn and immediately started the mitts . Right before my son and his family arrived for a six day visit, I realized I did not have enough white yarn (I wasn't using full skeins). So I ordered more and waited for yarn to arrive and entertained family. Our family left on January 4th and that is when I picked up the project and knitted like a demon. Last weekend, we celebrated her birthday and she was somewhat surprised with the gift! She reads my blog and when I even mentioned 'super secret knitting' she was guessing in the right direction.

  Good morning to you!! How has your week been? Have you been crafting away? There's been a ton of knitting here but it's behind the scenes knitting - you know hush hush knitting.  So I finished my husband's socks just in time for Christmas Day! I tucked them into his stocking and he loves them so. I usually pick a green color way since it's his favorite color but his back up favorite is purple. I could knit socks every day if given a chance. My knitting goals are to knit for me (us) until February or March then go back to knitting for others. What are you working on this week?