Wishing You a Happy 2018!

It's amazing that today is New Year's Eve. We spend it with my in-laws each year and we'll have a Roger Moore movie marathon. They pick a movie start who has passed away during the year to feature. I don't remember Roger Moore's James Bond movies, so it should be amusing.

Thanks to tax reform, it's been a wild ride through year end. I hope I was helpful to my boss while she was on vacation. I feel like I might have made some things more complicated. My desire for a vacation has kicked in and I'm glad to have a week or so off. There are still some work things to take care of and I'll need the time to get ready for busy season.

I didn't share that I received some lovely yarn for Christmas. My mother-in-law wanted to take my older son to a local alpaca farm and have them pick out some alpaca yarn together. She found out that tours are only done during a specific time of the year so she ordered yarn off of my wish list instead. I have enough yarn for a lovely sweater and some great accessories. There was an alpaca themed bag and magnet.

There is plenty to knit with, so without question...I ordered yarn this week.

There are two major patterns that I'd like to make for the boys this year and I have lots of yarn for the first design that I've started to knit. It's a great mindless pattern for most of it and ti will be scrap happy. The second is the a pattern from the special Heart on My Sleeve collection of sweaters. Here is a project image (not my own) of Crazyheart.

I ordered some cotton acrylic blend so that I could make some lovely sweaters for the boys that are not too warm or scratchy. If I have enough yarn left over, I'm hoping to make a coordinating sweaters for Gilly, my sister-in-law, and me. We'll see what time allows as well.

I'm excited to share 2018 with you and hope every day is a bit better than the last.

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

We're in that interesting gap between Christmas and the New Year. I'll be working tomorrow through Friday, and will be happy to have a quieter office. If things refreeze tonight, I might work from home. My little car doesn't do well on icy roads.

I hope you all had a nice holiday weekend. I chose not to blog until more was settled after Christmas and with the cleaning at our old place. Part of me is still bummed about moving, but it could be worse to have to move during busy season.

Aside from the holidays, it was a busy week dealing with tax reform. I'm a tax accountant so I had to dig into the law right when it came out. Our clients asked so many questions and we needed to think about how best to communicate to clients.

Getting past the work part it was a frantic jump to Christmas. Thankfully, we live near my in-laws and my family has been very flexible. I didn't churn out much in the way of handcrafted gifts. The sweater I finished a couple of weeks ago definitely got in the way. It's completion felt like quite a triumph. There is a knit along for Aroha knits that I skipped last week, but I will contribute to it this week. I'm working on a shawl with some stash yarn. It's for the Giver issue, and the pattern hasn't been released. I love several of the patterns from the issue. It's a great reminder that a scarf or shawl can be a long distance hug.

As part of the knit-along, I won a free skein of yarn in the first week! Still can't believe it. Her shop is Yarnovernewyork and she is based of of Harlem. For my free skein I requested the "I <3 Snow in NY" and then temptation overtook me and I ordered two skeins of "My Favorite Drummer." The inspiration for the second yarn is Animal from the Muppets. Here is a lovely pic. I'm so excited to play with the yarn.

I think 2018 will be the year of sweater making. I'm really excited to make little semi-matching sweaters for my sons and my nephew. I'm also hoping to make a few for myself. That would be a great way to get through my stash. I found the cutest slipper pattern for the boys too...hoping to make some monster feet :).

I went through and put 20 items on my knit/crochet queue. I'm hoping that will help focus my efforts. As new patterns and other items pop up, I'm certain to be distracted.

If I'm lucky enough have the old apartment ready by the end of the week, here's hoping I'll be blogging before the start of 2018. Maybe a little shopping over the weekend too (I have some rewards stocked up).

Have a great rest of your week and I hope you enjoy the last few days of 2017.

Quick Update

I hope your holiday season is off to a great start. I don't  have much time and my use of Internet is limited this weekend.

Tomorrow is my little guy's third birthday. He isn't quite into it yet, but he does like birthday parties and birthday cake. We asked him who's birthday is tomorrow and he claimed it was mine. Thankfully, I have Ia couple of months before I'm considered another year older. I always like to look at this day in history for family birthdays. In 1903 on December 17, the Wright brothers made their first flight.

I've caught the nasty upper respiratory bug that my little guy had. It's knocked me out more than I had expected it to. Work and moving have been a bit tough. I'm glad we chose to hire a company to help us move the big stuff. Our new place has stairs and tight corners.

I'm so happy to have this lovely sweater done and I'm hoping to get some better pictures for the designer.

I hope everyone has a great week. Wishing you all the happiest of holidays.

Frantically finishing projects...

It's December...a time of great joy and great stress.

I've finished knitting and sewing together the test knit. Thank goodness!!!

It definitely need some blocking. I think it turned out great. Thank you Fiona for letting me test. I still need to do the blocking, take some better pictures, and complete a survey. I want to make a throw pillow in this lovely color work pattern.

This week has been very busy dealing with a sick Ethan, doing lots of tax planning, readying for the move, and crafting. I've also been doing a lot of purging which is both good and bad. Letting go of old things can be so tough, especially when they have a lot of sentimental value.

The new place is beginning to take shape. The big move is Friday with the movers taking the furniture. 

Here is the living room. It's looking much smaller with all of the boxes. 

I also have a rare selfie of my husband and me after his firm's Christmas party.

We're both tired messes, but we had a blast.

I'm frantically crafting for Christmas this week, in between moving and work. There is a knit along that I'm trying to participate in. I have to get the project started and photograph the start tonight. There is still time...right?

I might be restarting my nephew's jacket. I found a cooler pattern and the one I was working on was in my purse too long. The yarn got all tangled. My boys might not be getting any hand crafted presents this year, but that's OK. My little Ethan will be three years old in a week...crazy!!!

Have a great week and happy holidays.

Moving and Holidays

So...to say that this week did not go to plan feels somehow like an understatement. After my son finally started feeling better we caught the flu and and a cold. I didn't expect us to all feel so under the weather. Work is very busy along with the preparation to move. We picked up our keys on Friday and now have to get our almost 1200 square feet of stuff into a 1,000 square foot space without much in the way of storage.

Due to the unscheduled sick day I did some knitting, which helped me to finish the first sleeve on the test knit. The second sleeve is much slower, but I can start on the collar and other things.

I'm super excited about the PomPom 2017 winter issue. It's been out for a while, but I think I need to make five patterns about of the magazine. Here is the issue link: Winter 2017. This link is not to Ravelry so you can see the lovely pictures without logging into an account. I was disappointed by the Fall issue, so I wasn't expecting to enjoy so many patterns in this issue. From the winter issue, I love the cover sweater and almost all of the accessories.

We adopted a new pet for our new apartment. It's a Bobi Pet robot vacuum. It might  not sound fun, but it will be quite entertaining for us. Our new place is interesting...still a work in progress. We're hoping to save some money over the next 12 - 24 months to buy a home. I'm hoping not to regret this move. It won't be easy.

I'm keeping this short, but hope to have progress and photos for next week.

Have a wonderful week and happy crafting.