The Scottish Lamb

A Few Good Links

The Norwegian Baby Sweater is coming along.  Almost  finished with the second sleeve.  I've completely reinvented the wheel with this one so I'll post my pattern when I'm done so you won't have to do the same thing.

Meanwhile, here are some links to checkout.  One knitting, one blogging and one just for giggles:

Fabulous Knitting Journal sheets to download (Have I really been out of the loop this much?  This is awesome).  Check out the rest of her site while you're there.  I just don't get how this one has escaped me.

When Norma and I met the other day we were talking about blogging and what if Typepad crashed or sold out....  one of the biggest reasons that I haven't given in to the many bouts of, "should I or shouldn't I stop blogging..." is because it's my history.  I love going back and reading early posts.  It's like a diary.  I'd hate to lose all that.  Anyway... not everyone knows that you can backup your blog.  There's an excellent tutorial for Typepad bloggers here.  Blogger bloggers (ha - that's funny) can go here.

And just for fun.....  Check out this video.  Don't torture yourself and watch the whole thing though.  He says the same thing over and over again which is funny because he ends up saying nothing at all.  All I can say is that I pray that TC is driving by if I ever get in an accident because no one... and I mean *no one* will be able to help me but him.   Wow.  I don't know how he got that turtle neck over that HUGE head of his.  Wowee-wow-wow.... WOW!  Tommy, it's okay.  Go on a vacation.  I'll watch things until you get back....  I think you really need it.

And just because I can't post without a picture... This is Briscoe.  Our neighbors adopted him the weekend before Christmas.  He's a year old and was from an Amish mill in Ohio.  Unlike Lucky, he's in excellent health.  He was filthy and most of his coat was stained yellow from urine but that's an easy fix.  He's just a year old and sweet as can be.  Aggie and Lucky love him.  Lucky actually whines a little when they have to part:

Wintery Knitting

Here's a work-in-progress post for Kim.  This is the little Norwegian sweater I cast on for my cousin's mountain man baby.  Good thing it's a quick knit or he'll outgrow it before I even get it done.  Good incentive.   I totally screwed up my math so when I got to the patterning I had to completely change it and come up with my own.  I pulled out the graph paper and started fiddling.  I learned something.  Norwegian patterns are much easier to do on and odd number of stitches.  Of course I had an even number.  Grrr.   I'll share the chart I did in a future post.  You can just make out the column of green on the upper left that will serve as my stitching line when it comes time to cut.

I was supposed to meet an Elann friend for lunch yesterday but they closed the roads down on post and the boys got yet another snow day home from school.  I would really have liked to go meet T but I have to admit... our backyard is beautiful as a winter wonderland.  You can't even see the houses behind us.

Yesterday was a perfect morning for fresh warm muffins.  These blueberry muffins are FABULOUS!  I just beat the butter and sugar by hand instead of pulling out the Kitchen Aid and they were light and airy and perfect.  I happen to have the book and love it.  It's chock full of excellent recipes.  You can also find the recipe here.

Meet Me at the Eveready

Living in New York has been vera vera good to me as far as getting to meet other bloggers in person.   

Back in June, when we were still living in the hotel waiting for housing, I saw an episode on Food Network about a diner in Hyde Park called the Eveready.  It looked so awesome that we took the 45 min. drive that night to eat there.  Awesome food, lots of it and a great, fun atmosphere.  I didn't realize then how close it was to Rhinebeck and Morehouse Merino.  That location makes it a perfect spot to meet other knitters.  I got to introduce Jennifer to the eatery in September and yesterday I got to meet Norma there!  Yeah!   Who knew a diner in a little town in the Hudson Valley would be the source of knitterly fun?!

Norma volunteered to drive 1 1/2 hours out of her way to meet me there.  Don't tell Norman I said this, but I think she used me as an excuse because she's addicted to the place.  We had so much fun talking the waitress must have come to our table four times to take our order before we were actually ready and we were only ready then for fear she wouldn't come back again.

You think you know someone by their blog but there's still that little anxiety when you go to meet them in person for the first time.  I've been lucky so far.  No phsyco-killer maniacs yet.  Norma was exactly what I expected... I knew she'd be fun (have you *read* her blog?  the woman is a hoot for cryin' out loud) except nicer.  She's a great conversationalist and there wasn't a boring moment during the whole two hours we were there.  I hope we can meet up again.

Not only did Norma drive all that extra mileage, she gifted me with some gorgeous roving from Handspun by Stefania.  Hard to catch the colors on camera but it's naturally dyed with indigo and osage with a little Angelina to give it sparkle.  Softer than a baby's bottom. 

My cousin, after four girls, finally had her toddler baby boy on New Year's Day. They got a ride home from the hospital in a Limo because he was the first baby of the New Year.  I think she deserved the ride home because... are you sitting down???.... he was 11lbs 12 oz and 24 inches!!  I cast on a Norwegian pullover from EZ's Knitting Around .  This should be a quickie with all the playoff games going on this weekend (Go Cowboys!).

Be sure to check out the new post on Lucky's progress.  There's a cute video of him barking. He doesn't do that very often so it's a great sound to us.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

Two Little Red Mittens

After Norma's post the other day I used our TV time this weekend (which was a lot due to the storms that blew through) to knit a couple pairs of mittens for The Soaring Eagle's Project.  I had some Gjestal Naturgarn in a beautiful bright red left over from this sweater I knit for Joe.  Funny... for Joseph's sweater I toned down the color with some brown dye but it was a perfect bright red for mittens.  They'll be winging their way to Rachel later today if the ice melts a bit.  I used the patterns from Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. After knitting the larger pair I knew it was going to be close to get another pair out of the skein so I cast on a small pair.  Here's what I had left:

Also started pulling out old UFO's.  This is the back and one front part of Chick Knits Ribby Cardi in Elann's Highland Wool.  Pretty boring picture in gray but, for Kim, there it is.

Due to the ice, the boys have another day off of school today.  Joseph, however, will be spending the day doing a book report that was supposed to be due today.   He never brought the book home so we made him pick out one he finished recently so that he had something to turn in when they go back to school tomorrow (hopefully!).  Trust me, he's only smiling because he knows I was taking his picture.  Hoping to nip procrastination in the butt by Junior High.

Jeremy is supposed to fly here on Thursday.   I'm a little worried because it looks like another big storm is going to hit Indiana that day.  Ugh.  We'll all be SO disappointed if he doesn't make that flight.  We're all dying to get our arms around him and have him home for a couple of weeks.

Ice, Ice, Baby

We got hit by quite an ice storm last night here in New York.  The boys had a two-hour delay.  Too bad we didn't know about it before everyone was up and ready.  Lucky slipped when Dan took him outside this morning so that's how we knew to check the roads.  It was some nasty stuff but made for some pretty pictures!  Of course the rest of the week calls for rain.  blech.

I keep forgetting to post the picture of  the socks I finished with Kim's yarns.  I think this colorway was called Boysenberry?  Kim??  I know it was some kind of berry.  Gorgeous stuff all the way around.

Also finished another gift for my grandfather.  A nice warm hat.  I used Elann's Uros and that same sock yarn that I used in his socks (trying to be thrifty, couldn't use the sock yarn for anything else). You can get the free pattern by clicking here.  It's very basic but I figured I'd save someone else doing the math.  I did the decreases at the crown by alternating ssk and K2tog so that there wouldn't be swirls.  My grandfather just doesn't strike me as a swirly kinda guy.

Jeremy comes for Christmas in a couple of weeks.  I CAN'T WAIT!!  We haven't seen him since he came home on R&R from Iraq almost three years ago.  He's doing so great in colleg that we're treating him to a night at a great B&B in the Catskills and two days of lift tickets.  I can't wait to see his face when he opens his stocking on Christmas morning.  He loves to snowboard and I told him I didn't know if we'd be able to make it up there or not but to bring his snowboard because there's actually a small slope right on West Point.  Bwahahaha.  I love surprising people.   Just hate being surprised.

Mountain Man Socks

Need a quick Christmas gift?  I have an idea for you.

This is a very basic, simple pattern that I came up with for my grandfather that I'm calling Quick & Thick Mountain Man Socks.  You can download the pattern by clicking here.

I used two strands of yarn together.  One strand of Elann's Peruvian Pure Alpaca in Black and one strand of a very fine German sock yarn.  It came out to 5.5 sts per inch.

We put our tree up on the first and I forgot to share my favorite ornament with you:

It's my little knitting lady from my favorite Christmas Store in Germany.

Joe is quite the crafter.  It was his favorite part of German Kindergarten.  He's always coming and asking me for the stapler and tape.  Last night I found this on the tree:

For as ornery as that kid can be... I think he just may be the one of my four boys that ends up a priest.  He can be very sweet when he wants to be and he's always the one that says grace at meals and worries about what time it is when it's almost time to go to Mass.  I found these pictures on an old website I used to keep.  This was Joe at about six months old in late 1999.  I knit it from Debbie Bliss' Nursery Knits.  I found the teddy bear buttons in a shop in Germany.

Knitter's Advent Calendar

A friend, Kelly, from the Elann chat site passed this gem on. THANK YOU, KELLY!

You've GOT to check it out:

Very Cool Knitter's Advent Calendar CLICK HERE

I just updated Lucky's progress website with new photos and a new video for the Rescue Group:
http://scottishlamb.typepad.com/casa_flores

Color Me Softly

About 12 minutes cost me the color I wanted in today's offering at Elann.

I've been on such a fiber diet since we moved back to the States due to the storage situation... or lack of... in this house.  I couldn't pass up on Jaeger Roma though.  I tried.  I really did but I love this sweater and the yarn is such a bargain I just couldn't resist.

The same thing that makes me walk away from bread while it's in the oven made me walk away from the computer just minutes before the bell went off.  Six minutes too late I ran back to the computer only to find that there already wasn't enough Fern left to make the lace sweater sample that's up with the yarn.  Bummer.  I also was bogged up because my credit card had expired and my mailing address was still the one in Germany!  Let this be a lesson for us all.  If I hadn't stopped buying yarn, my information on Elann would have been correct and maybe, just maybe, I'd have Fern.

That said, all is not lost.  After about five minutes of trying to decide between Denim and Sage I went for the Denim before I lost out completely.   I walked away completely drained and decided after all of that I deserved the Sage just in case I liked it better.  After all, Sage is my favorite color and not much different than the Fern.  I can never really picture stuff in my head so I played around in Photoshop.  Here's what I came up with:

Original in Fern:

in Sage:

in Denim:

I think I won either way, don't you?

No Place Better than New England for Tday

Lots to catch up on!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We made the six-hour trek to New Hampshire.  We did pretty good traffic-wise.  Hit it in a few spots in Connecticut on the way there but pretty much smooth sailing other than that.

As if getting to live this close to my family isn't great enough already, it's even better because I get to visit with Kim and her hubby who live a very short drive from my family.   I was especially looking forward to her meeting Lucky since we both have a love for the Cavalier breed.  We met them for dinner on Friday night and she surprised me with this:

Gorgeous, no?  The pattern is Delicato Mitts from Anne Hanson at KnitSpot and the yarn is Kim's.  I'm telling you, the girl's got an eye for color and she seems to have my favorites down pat.

I've been working on socks with the yarn Kim gave me when we went up over Labor Day.  I guess it's only fitting that I show them in progress... I wasn't hiding them, Kim, I promise!

I tried the Sherman Heel on the heel and toe.  I love the way it looks but...  Dear. God!  If I don't have my mind completely on it I lose track and have to rip back.  I am getting the hang of it though and getting better at figuring out where I am without counting.  I've never had to rip back so many times.  I think it was worth it though.  NO GAPS!!!  Can I hear an AMEN?!

And then when we got home I found this little gem from Claudia in my mailbox:

Thank you so much, Claudia.  It was a fun little challenge.  And thanks, La, for telling me about it!

My grandparents gave me a great gift as well.  A photo album put together by my great-grandmother on Gram's side.  I've promised to scan every page and photo and make CD's for everyone.  I couldn't wait to get it home to compare to my family history notes.  This is my great-grandmother x3, Christiana Lewis (Soule) Chick (left). 

Her sister, Judith Thomas Soule, is on the right.  Christiana is my favorite person in our history because through census reports I've been able to get the most information on her.  She is my link to all my Mayflower ancestors.

It's getting very cold and grey here in the Hudson Valley.  This is the view my boys have on their way to/from school each day and every weekend when we attend Mass.  This is taken from the Catholic Chapel here at West Point.