I think its done!

I've been working on an idea for a dishcloth, a knit dishcloth, and i think that I have it finally done.

I've charted out a design for a New Years cloth with a champagne bottle, 2 glasses & 2009 on the chart.

I just need to print off the instructions and go back through the written details versus the charted details to make sure everything is in alignment as I made changes to the chart several times as I went along.

Fingers crossed, it will be ready to be published by the time I return from Zürich on Wednesday night!

I've had several ideas for charted dishcloths floating in my head - its a nice feeling to get one onto paper. I charted it out using my handy dandy excel and then pasted the chart as a picture into my document, so hopefully all is readable! My only fear is that now every time I open Excel for work I will start thinking of knitting charts......not going to make my new boss that happy if my productivity goes down!

Okay, I need to finish doing dishes from the cookie making experience! Great fun was had - my french is getting better as I was able to converse with the 5 year olds with no problem, although a few times they laughed after I said something....must have said it really wrong, but none the less they understood - yay!

Cheers!

Today is cookie baking day!

I am so excited to be making cookies today! Yummmmmyyyy!!!

My co-worker Marjorie and her two children are coming over. Will be interesting to see how my apartment handles two 5 year old twins! I am figuring that the boy will not last that long with cookie making, so its a good thing I have the PacMan game and the Wii to keep him entertained afterward! I also pulled out all of my kid movies so those are also a fall back, but I think the Wii should keep him well entertained!

Pictures of the event will be coming along with pictures of the finished cookies!

I am going to Zurich tomorrow morning for 3 days. Some issues came up on Thursday and Friday last week so I am going to Zürich to straighten them out as best as I can. Or at least attempt to. It all depends on my new boss and the VP being behind my way of thinking which is at least more rationale than my colleagues in the US who started the issues.

Okay, must go get all the ingredients ready for the cookie making! I hope everyone is having a GREAT weekend!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

To all my fellow Americans, I wish to you a very happy and joyful Thanksgiving! I hope that everyone is able to spend this day with family and friends as we give thanks to what & who we have in our lives.

I will be spending today working as it is not a holiday here in Belgium and then tonight I will do a big dinner with my fellow Americans who are here - it should be fun.

I am preparing a ham, and lets just say it will be interesting! It is a raw ham from a freshly butchered pig, no pre-cooking or curing done on it. I've never cooked a ham this way, so I am taking the butchers advice on this one and preparing it the way he told me to! Thankfully one of the other girls is preparing a Turkey, so we will have that as a fall back if only not really enough meat since there are 10 of us and the Turkey is 10 pounds.

I've been busy crafting. My Argentinian yarn hat is about 3/4 of the way done, my Santa Cloth is about 1/4 of the way done, and I am making some snowflake type things from a pattern in a French magazine a colleague gave to me. The flakes are charted and I've never seen a chart like this before so it is interesting. I've hit a point where I am a bit stumped by the chart and what it wants me to do, but I will figure it out I am sure!

Pictures are coming - I'm just too lazy to get them posted lately it seems....At least I am doing better on posting, so that is half the battle!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!!!!!!!

Snowflakes keep a coming!

Everything melted that we got yesterday but its finally started back up again.  Nice big fat snowflakes are drifting past my window here at work.  Really pretty if you overlook the view of the wet train yard.  It will not stick though since it's too warm out still. =(   Being in the Christmas mood I cast on yesterday for a Santa face dishcloth in bright Christmas red.  The pattern is really cute and can be found here on Ravelry:   http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/the-santa-cloth   and here on the web:   http://krisknits.blogspot.com/2007/12/that-one-last-gift.html   This should be a fairly quick knit for me, but since I am working on 10 other things at the same time, who knows!   I'm planning a big thanksgiving dinner on Thursday with my fellow Americans here in Brussels.  My friend Te-Keisha has her mom coming in to visit this week and she's volunteered to make the Turkey which will help since we all have to work so dinner will be around 7 at night I think.  I'm bringing salad and desert.....still trying to decide what desert to make - perhaps apple pie, but I'll have to think about it.....if I had know I would have picked up premade crust and pumpkin at the Commissary last time I was there and made Pumpkin Pie!    Okay, I must finish up a few things and then I am heading home!  Have a great week everyone!

Snow flakes are falling....

And not a one is sticking. I love watching the snow come down, I only wish it would stick around!

It is super cold here in Belgium this weekend, low in the 30s which is almost as rare as the snowflakes we have seen on and off all weekend. I'm not complaining though -I love the snow in any form. I even wish that we would have more than a few days of snowfall every year.

The hat I've been working on is coming along well. I still have not decided on how big I am going to make it.....I would like something that fully covers my ears as several of the hats I've made are a little too short for super cold days.

Meti has asked for another hat, so I need to get busy making that one. Not idea which pattern I am going to use. He looked through several of my patterns and picked out one that I already made him. Not going to re-do that one so I need to think about it. I'm thinking something rather simple - ribbed collar and then basic stockinette, but I've been in the mood for cables lately.....will wait until I finish my hat to decide so I have several days to think about it!

I am off to snuggle into a blanket and get warm - my apartment is freezing today as the 2 working heaters are not enough to warm the apartment the whole way through it seems.

Have a great Sunday!

I do believe she is on a diet....

Otherwise the knit skirt I made for my niece's Cabbage Patch Kid would fit mine perfectly right????   I finished the skirt last night, grabbed my CPK doll to check the sizing out, and its seriously falling off her!    My doll is fairly old...about 25 years old, so I am going to live in hope that my doll has just merely lost her figure over time and slimmed down a little bit.....okay, a whole lot of bits!  I'll take the skirt to the US with me and see if it will fit, otherwise I'll tear out the decrease rounds and do them over on smaller needles with a tighter gauge in hopes of modifying it to fit.  The bright side is that I don't need to sew anything then this week - yay!!!  =)   Having this come out so huge has put questions into my mind on the sweater.....I don't want to spend the time on that and then have it be way too big as well....I'll need to think about this one a little bit!   Oh well, I'll work some on my hat then and get some progress / pics of that going.   Have a great weekend!!

Wow! Two days in a row! *grin*

I spent some time during my lunch to update my Ravelry projects with the few items I snapped pictures of last night -   A Purple Cabbage Patch Kid skirt and an Off-white Cabled CPK Cardigan for my niece for Christmas are on the needles - going rather slow, but progress is being made!  I bought a pattern book off of E-bay for these designs and when I received it I realized that several of the patterns were for sweaters that a neighbor made for my Cabbage Patch kid when I was little!   I'm working on a dinosaur from a Jean Greenhowe pattern.  I was to the assembly stage when I realized that the head just did not look right.....I misread the instructions and made it too small - that will need to be frogged and redone.   I'm also trying to figure out what to make with a few "one-skeins" that I have lying around the house include a skein of Malabrigo and some of the individual skeins I bought in Argentina a few years ago.   Speaking of, I leave for Argentina in 3 weeks from tomorrow - yay!  I was told today that several of my friends there are taking the week off of work while I am in town!  Yippeee!  I get in on Saturday and we are going to Celebrate Vik's birthday that night, and then on Mon-Wed I will be at the beach.  I'm back in BsAs then until I leave on Saturday. I need to work on the Thursday though as my boss is new and we have our monthly conference call with the US that I usually lead so I'll have to call in for that one for an hour or so.    Okay, speaking of the monthly call, November's is today so I had best finish preparing myself for that one!

35 days and counting.....

Goodness yet another year flying by with only 35 days until Christmas.....And I have yet to start the majority of my originally intended holiday knitting or crocheting - oops!! I seem to do the same thing every year and wait and wait and wait and then Wham!  Not enough time to get anything done.....a plot you ask to get out of spending time and energy into crafting something big......you got that right!   I did start a hat recently with some of the yarn I bought the last time I was in Argentina - it is turning out pretty so far!  Will see if I can actually finish it this year!   I also have a few other small projects on the hooks and needles which are close to being done and could become Christmas gifts if needed.    A few dishcloths and potholders should be put together along with perhaps some coffee cup sleeves or mug warmers!  Quick and easy is what I need this year, and a scarf is never quick or easy for me regardless of what others say - I have trouble staying focused on one project I think so multiple seem to be the way to go as long as they are small and fairly simple!   What are you planing for your holiday crafting?

Pattern Testing Photo Shots

I've been testing several patterns for the Yahoo Holiday Mystery Gift group. Here are two that have been published recently so I can finally show my pictures!

First up is a Lace Cap in Rowan Kidsilk Haze. It came out larger than planned as I knit with kidsilk really loose.

Next up was a Mystery Knit which turned out to be a holder for Chapstick / Lipstick. I made up several and even added a keychain holder to one of them.


I was kinda busy this weekend - spent the time baking some - a yellow butter cake with Chocolate frosting and some Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - yummmy! I also found time to clean and pick up most of the apartment as well as going to dinner and drinks with friends.

I hope that everyone has a great week - I am in Belgium all this week so I should be able to find some time to blog more!