Christmas Baking and Knitting

This weekend Deborah and I had our 2nd Annual Christmas Cookie Baking Day. This year we made Oatmeal Raisin, Chocolate Chip and Chocolate Chunk, ...mmm. They were delicious. Well, you know we had to taste test the cookies before we could give them away to our co-workers, friends and family right? We started bright and early in the morning and finished baking and packaging around 5 or 6pm. In between baking we were knitting. It was a long day, but we had fun.

Here I am in the hat I Knitted for my niece. It's not completely done. Deborah still has to help me seam it up and weave in the ends. I just pinned it in the back so I could take a picture in it. I actually adjusted this cap a bit. This cap is knitted flat so as I was knitting it, I wrapped it around my head to see how it fit. It was about 5" in length from bottom to top. The instructions said to work the 8 row pattern stitch for a total of 6 repeats until the piece measures approx. 5 1/2" . I had completed four full pattern repeats and 6 rows of the 5th repeat when I wrapped the cap around my head and it measured 5". The cap came up to almost the top of my head. I didn't want the cap to have alot of room at the top. I wanted it to fit snug and since my neice is smaller than me I made the decision (without my teacher's knowledge...sorry Deb :0)) to skip pattern repeat 5 and 6 and start the decreases. It turned out fine I think. I photoshop'ed the picture to blur out the background crap in my apt.

Weekend FO

For those of you who are not knitters, FO means finished object. I just recently learned that myself. Anyway, yes I do finally have my first ever FO as you can see from the pictures below.

This is my very first hat. I made it for my youngest niece Mia. Hopefully it will fit her. If not I can always make her another hat. Here is the hat when I switched to the double-sided needles. It took me a while to wrap my mind around how I was actually going to do this but, I was patient and figered it out in the end.

This weekend I visited my friend who lives upstate in Willow, NY and we went to a Christmas Tree Farm where you pick and cut your own chistmas tree. We were in the holiday spirt as we walked around to find the perfect christmas tree. We both picked the same christmas tree at the same time. It sure didn't take as long as I thought it would. Another thing that did not take as long as I thought it would was cutting that tree down with a hacksaw. I did however, have experience with a hacksaw...remember Debrorah? Anyway we cut the tree down and carried it to the area where they wrap it up for you, then we carried it all the way back to the car to tie it to the top of the car. Boy did we both wake up sore the next day...lol. Anyway I had a great weekend.

Here is Pat after we spotted the perfect tree.

Me with the Hacksaw...

Here is the tree once we set it up in her house. Unfortunately we did not have time to decorate it. We were pooped...plus I was busy knitting and she was busy making us dinner.

Some Christmas Knitting

My knitting teacher, Deborah had the great idea of knitting christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews this year since money is tight. She was so kind to donate some yarn from her stash for these projects as well so all I have to do is knit, knit, knit so I can complete everything before christmas. Thank you Deb your the best! I don't know how I'm going to do it all but she seems to have faith in me. We will see how it goes. As you can see from the pictures below this is my progress so far. Iam working on a ribbed scarf for one of my nephews and a hat for my niece. I have a long way to go but with Deb's help I'm sure I will get there. We are meeting up on Thursdays after work for knitting.

Pay It Forward

I read about "Pay It Forward" on Mary Beth's blog. I think this is a great idea so I signed up on her blog. So here is how it works, and I am just going to take the description from Mary Beth's blog:

“The idea of the exchange is I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on this blog post requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet, and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.”So here you are guys. An opportunity to get something homemade from me. The first 3 people to comment to this "Pay It Forward" post saying that they are participating will get an item from me. If for some reason I don't get 3 responses (because you know, I don't know alot of people who read my blog), I will randomly pick 3 people in my life to receive something from me when they least expect it and I know in my heart they will follow through with the PIF. As I fufill each PIF, I will write a post about it once that person has received their item.