A day at the beach

I had the best weekend! The boys and I had a day at the beach. We went to Lewes DE and spent the day at Broadkill beach - a dog friendly beach that was mostly deserted and beautiful.



Hurley especially loved the beach! He got to run after his ball and jump in the waves. He is still mama's boy though and wasn't happy until he was sitting on my lap!





I guess it was the best vantage point to watch the people and dogs walk by.

Bailey had the entire beach blanket to himself. Although he didn't like the water as much as Hurley he still enjoyed sniffing the shells, sand, crabs, water, rocks, seagulls, seaweed,....




After the beach - a quick drive over to Rehobeth for dinner was followed up by a sunset walk on the boardwalk. It was a beautiful evening.








I'm so glad I got to go to the beach! I hope to make it back there again soon!

Olympic knitting update!

I'm keeping up with my Olympics knitting so far! I'm so close to being done with the body. Out of 7 different handspun skeins I'm on number 6! I really hope I have enough - I don't want to have to spin more. I think I'll just make it!

Here it is so far:




In other knitting news - I participated in a sock swap on Sarah's blog. I got mine from Michelle and they are so great! She sent a sweet package of goodies too:



I was knitting for Jake - and here are the awesome socks I made for him:


Pattern: Guitar Man socks by Rebecca Mercier
Yarn: Happy Feet
Needles: Size 2US
Mods: I only did 5 repeats instead of 8 - because man these would have been huge!


It was also time for the doggies to get their haircuts! I love freshly cut doggies - and they are so exhausted after they get back from their haircuts they sleep the rest of the day! They both look kind of annoyed here because I woke them up to take their pictures!

Blizzard of 2010!!

WOW is all I can say. We got about 3 feet - YES 3 FEET!!! and it's just now stopped... What a crazy day!

Here's my neighborhood.











It was actually kind of fun today - I hung out with my neighbors and even got to go sledding!

The sun came out a little bit ago and I hope the snow is done for the day!




Hope you all are safe and warm wherever you are!

Knitting in the snow

It snowed again yesterday and it snowed ALL DAY! I woke up to find a gentle dusting and it just kept going and going like the energizer bunny!

Luckily it was a dry snow and easy to shovel! We woke up this morning to find it melting and forming icicles on my bay window.



Just look at that blue sky today!


Hurley, as usual, thinks the entire outside has turned into his own personal snow cone and just eats and walks all around.



Bailey doesn't eat the snow - he actually tries to stay on the shoveled areas!



Since I was snowed in - I decided it was a perfect time to cast on for a new project! I grabbed some Handmaiden Sea Silk and cast on for Kernel from Knitty.



This is the first time I've ever put beads in my knitting and I have to say it's pretty cool! I may have to do this more often :)


This picture of my knitting is the last picure for January in my Project 365. I finished a complete month!!



I'm both excited and surprised that I was able to keep it up. I'm posting pictures on flickr and on this cool site called 365Project.

More snow!

But this time it's managable and beautiful!

We woke up to this winter wonderful this morning!



The dogs had fun... Hurley thinks the entire outside is a giant ice cube - just for him!



Bailey just likes to root around and sniff - acheiving this lovely white beard :)



I love how my daisy pods looks covered in snow - just like little white hats!



Perfect weather to enjoy my new tea kettle!



I bought myself a new green tea kettle and I love it! I was hoping to get one for Christmas but I didn't - so I treated myself to one yesterday. Gotta love green tea! hehe

Christmas Musings

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! We had several Christmas celebrations with family and friends this year.




Christmas Eve was spent at our house with both sets of our parents. A few years ago we started a tradition of opening Christmas crackers with our meal - it's always a fun time! Inside each is a paper crown and a small prize. I got a skull and crossbones tattoo - score!




We opened gifts that evening and Santa's helpers were there to make sure it went smoothly :)



On Christmas morning - we headed over to John's sister's place to open gifts and have breakfast with Simon. He was decked out in his finest Christmas PJ's and had fun tearing the paper off the presents. John gave Simon the sock monkey he made a few weeks ago.



I knit Simon an R2D2 hat - I love how it came out!! The pattern is here and more details are on my Ravelry page here. His dad and uncle are huge Star Wars fans - so I thought this was only fitting!



I also knit Simon these cute mittens. I made up the pattern as I went along and will probably write up the directions if anyone wants to make a pair for the little one in their life.



After breakfast - we headed to our friends Tara and Tien's annual Christmas open house. We had fun catching up and eating more good food!



After the open house - it was off to our third stop that day - Christmas dinner at my sister in law's husband's parents house. We had yet another wonderful meal, opened more presents and were entertained by Simon playing the piano!



I gave William the hat I made for him while we were there too. I told him I made this three different ways. I couldn't find any roving to match the colors I wanted so I used Jolene's drum carder and made a batt, then spun it up with little coils and bumps and then knit it. I think it suits him!



How was your holiday? I hope you had fun with family and friends.

A new hat!

Everyone needs a new hat when the weather turns cold. I bought a skein of Madeline Tosh worsted weight yarn at Webs and after living with it for a while I decided it wanted to be a hat! It's a lovely orangey red shade and the color looks awesome with this pattern.




Pattern: Ballard Slouch hat by Felicia Lo
Yarn: Madeline Tosh worsted
Needles: Size 7 - 16 inch circ

I didn't do the extra repeat for "extra slouchiness" and I think if someone wanted a slouchy beret style hat they should do the extra repeat. I like how mine came out, but it's not as slouchy as I would have liked.








Everytime I go outside to take pictures - my dogs try to get in on the action... so here they are! Hurley and Bailey!

B is for...

There are so many good things for this letter I couldn't do just one. If I had to pick just one though - it would definitley be my Bailey dog!



My best buddy Bailey has been my boy for 8 years now. He just had a birthday too on January 21st - Happy Birthday Bailey buddy! (like my B alliteration?!)

I also have some more B's for you...

All these photos were taken with a new Nikon lense that John rented for me. Did you know you could rent lenses? I sure didn't. It's a great way to try out a new lense and see if you like before you invest an obscene amount of money in actually purchasing one! He got it from rentglass.com. They have both Nikon and Canon lenses. I got a Nikon 105mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Micro for those of you who may be interested. It's basically for taking really close up and personal pictures.

Here are some B inspired photos:

A closeup of the Brick on my house:



I love how you can see every grain of sand in the grout.

My favorite summertime flower, Black-eyed susans, still look pretty cool in the winter:



Even the shadows look great:



These shadows have bee on my mind recently. I keep thinking about how great a black and white drawing of them would look. Now I just have to actually sit down and try to draw it!

Another B in my life is Baltimore.

Last weekend my friends Erin and her cowboy, Jen (jeekeehoo) and I went to Baltimore's Visionary Arts Museum. It was a fun day spent looking at sculptures, paintings and mosaics. There was even an exhibition of some of the secrets sent to Post Secret.

Outside there was a crazy tree made up of crystals and mirrors. I like to call it the Bling Bling tree:



It was a great day spent in a great city.





And for those of you here for the knitting... I have a Beginning shot of my Diamond Fantasty Shawl (ok that B was cheating just a bit!):



I'm using my own handspun for this baby and I love the way it's coming out so far.
Have a great week!

O Christmas Tree!

This year we didn't get a big Christmas tree. We didn't even bring down our ornaments or decorate much of anything actually. With John being weak and unable to lift heavy things, there was no way I was going to be able to bring all the boxes down from our high storage units by myself. So we were going to make do without a Christmas tree this year.

But... it's not Christmas without a tree!!!

So I went to Lowes and bought a little blue spruce tree that you can plant in the yard! It was very cute :)

Here it is all decorated for Christmas. John and I had fun making paper origami cranes to hang on it along with the dollar store box 'o ornaments :)



I think it came out looking pretty good for a last minute purchase! I finally got around to planting it this past weekend.

Can you see it?



No?

Let me help - here's a closeup:



It's soooo tiny! I think it may only 2 feet tall.

I hope it actually grows :)

Bailey and Hurley were very excited at the prospect of digging in the dirt. Here they are waiting patiently (yeah right!) for me to hook them up to their leashes.



I tied them up to a tree near where I was working and they did surprisingly well!

Here's Hurley at full alert:




Have a great day!

PS - I finished my Koolhaas hat - but I still need to take pictures. I LOVE it!!!