Happy New Year!

I know I'm a little late, but this is my first post of the new year! New Year's celebrations around here were rather low key this year. We did have an open house last Sunday and welcomed friends, family and some knitting buds. New Year's Eve, DH and myself ended up eating at Cosi's then headed home for an evening of movies. It was so low key, in fact, that I don't even remember which movies we watched! Of course New Year's morning meant this:

The Washington Post In and Out list! It's always an amusing read!

New Year's Day, we took Ems to the movies to see Sweeney Todd. The score was wonderful as can be expected from Stephen Sondheim, however it was rather bloody for a musical! I can excuse that fact since the cause of the bloodiness was this:

It's amazing what we are willing to overlook where Johnny Depp is concerned!

I also had my first FO on New Years Day. I don't know if it counts since it was actually started before Christmas. I made Hannah for Ems. She wanted something in Cashmere so I used a Laines du Nord Cashmere that I had gotten at Webs. The yarn was supposed to be bulky and knit to the proper gauge, but it appeared more like worsted to me so the hat was a loose knit. Ems liked it though.


I ended up starting another one out of Malabrigo Chunky on New Years and finished it Wednesday night so I guess that one is really my first FO of the year!


This one turned out much better in my opinion. I'm sorry Sylvia's hair is too short to wear the hat properly! It has a place in the back to pull your hair through.

It was tough getting back into the groove of school on Wednesday. I was dragging the rest of the week. I finally went to Massage Envy for a deep tissue massage. I used to get them weekly but my therapist moved. I hadn't been since July. It was like starting over and I had forgotten how excruciating it is. I wanted to jump off the table! I know regular massages will fix my shoulder and neck because it did before.

Yesterday, I started one of two small knitting projects. I am making the Pea Pod Baby Set for my nephew's baby which is due in March. I got some Reynolds Cottontail which is a cotton/ acrylic blend. It it knitting up nicely and shows the stitches well, but it is very splitty so I have to pay attention to what I'm doing.

You may notice all my notes on the pattern. All the leaf motifs are graphed for this pattern and I hate reading graphs so I wrote all the directions out. I should just suck it up and get used to reading the graphs.

I am also hoping to start a scarf from my stash. I found this online:

So I am using this gorgeous skein of Art Yarns Silk Rhapsody that I got from my Secret Pal 10 pal:

It is less yardage than called for but I want a shorter scarf anyway so it will be perfect. This scarf will go great with the coat I hope to make in a couple of weeks. I had this gorgeous gold-orange wool/mohair coating in my fabric stash that I had bought a couple of years ago when Hancock went out of business. I really need something decent to wear with nice slacks so I am making the hip length version of this pattern:

I have to go to G-Street to get the velvet, lining, shoulder pads and such. I think I will do bound buttonholes and make the buttons functional even though the pattern has snap closures.

This week I have to get my dress done for my niece's wedding next Saturday! Today, the big project was Elvis. Poor Elvis has been living in sludge for some time now. His water was completely brown since I had to turn off the filter some time ago. We got an aquarium cabinet and some new live plants. I put Elvis in a small tank we have and set it on the kitchen floor with his basking light on while we cleaned the big one. It was something most foul! Turtles are great pets, but it would appear that their main purpose in life is to produce copious amounts of poop! Elvis certainly lives up to all expectations! I took a several hours, but he is as good as new!


I have to go cut out my muslin for my dress.

Bushism of the day:
"They didn't think we were a nation that could conceivably sacrifice for something greater than our self; that we were soft, that we were so self-absorbed and so materialistic that we wouldn't defend anything we believed in. My, were they wrong. They just were reading the wrong magazine or watching the wrong Springer show." —George W. Bush. Washington, D.C., March 12, 2002

Kitty cam: The kitties enjoyed watching Elvis while we cleaned the tank! To them it was like watching TV!