So if you can’t tell by the title, we’ve been really busy here the last few weeks! The weekend before Christmas we visited our families for an early Christmas. The DSs made out on presents from the grandparents! Which made me happy, since we had gone rather sparse by way of presents this year, so the grandparents more than made up for it.
Immediately after Christmas we started installing laminate flooring to replace our carpet on the first floor of our house. We’ve been in our house nearly 10 years, and the carpet was sure showing it’s age! Here’s what our dining room looked like before and after (still minus the baseboards, but whatever!):
All told, it took us about 3.5 days to tear out the old carpet and install the new flooring. Maybe 20 hours total. It was much easier than I thought it was going to be. We had two rows of complicated cuts that we saved until the last day (thankfully we worked from the easy wall to the harder walls!). It completely changes how the first floor looks, and I wish we had done it sooner! I’ll post some better picks of the living room and such once I have the house clean! 😉
I was frantically knitting away prior to Christmas on gifts for lots of people! Now I can finally post some of my finished objects!
My favorite:
This is a Dalek from Dr. Who, knit from the Extermiknit! pattern. I made this for my dad, who’s a fan of Dr. Who. We used to watch the original Dr. Who on the PBS station every week while I was growing up – it’s one of my favorite shows! (I love the new one too!) I know, it’s a completely silly gift, but I think he got a bang out of it! 🙂
Here are some of my other knitted gifts:
Lots of fingerless gloves, and a tea cozy. I’ll all gift-knitted out!
My mom saw my Alpaca Silk Smoke ring over thanksgiving, and wanted me to make her one, so she bought the yarn for it, and I’m knitting it up right now. She picked a camel color, and it’s turning out very nicely!
I’m still working on William’s sweater – I’m just about done with the back. I’ll tell you, it’s all I can do to keep myself from casting on the Wrapigan for myself! I got the yarn in the mail the day after Christmas, and it is seriously calling my name! Here’s a pic of the yarn, but pictures cannot show how deliciously and luxuriously soft this yarn is!
This is Joseph Galler’s Prime Alpaca yarn – 100% alpaca in a sport weight. The color is Musk. 2 skeins is a whopping 1 pound and 1330 yards! I highly doubt I will be able to resist casting this puppy on in the next day or two. I think William will have to wait a little bit for his finished sweater!! ;-P
Oh, and one more note, my FIL’s doctors have told him that he is now in remission!!! Thank you so much for your continued thoughts and prayers! He’ll have three more months of chemo to be sure, but it was fantastic news to end the year on!
Happy New Year everybody!
WOAH! just the blog I was looking for. lol How do you make those hand glove things? I forgot what they were called sorry. But I’m trying to start knitting. Let me rephrase that: I do know how to knit just trying to find some projects… Here are some questions for you. ahem:1) What are those glovey thingies called? (an obvious question)2) how do you make them?3) What size needles do you need?4) What type of yarn do you use?5) How many skeins do you need?6) (If none of this is to much trouble) HOW DO YOU MAKE THEM???Well I guess you can tell I’m obsessed huh? sorry I just get excited about stuff I like. Didn’t mean to scare you or anything… lol
hehe! They’re called fingerless gloves (or fingerless mitts)! 🙂 The two different ones above are both from free patterns at Knitty.com. The smaller women’s ones are Fetchings and the longer men’s versions are Dashings. The yarns I used were Knit Picks Andean Silk yarn (1 skein) for each pair of the Fetchings, and 2 skeins of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes yarn for each pair of the Dashings. Just follow the patterns! They’re really not too difficult. 🙂 Hope that helps!
Hi Heather!Nice to find your blog by way of Ravelry – I am just COVETING your Wrapigan which I have had in my favorites for months! I am having trouble finding 1) the yarn, and 2) the pattern, but I did finally find an on-line store that has the yarn in stock. Can you tell me if the color musk is # 113, like the original Wrapigan? Also, did you buy your pattern on-line or in a store? All the links from the Stitch Poet’s site are not working – argh! Did you end up using 2 or 3 skeins? All these questions…I know…sorry!Glad to hear your FIL is in remission, I will keep him in my thoughts.I’ll be back to visit your blog again, thanks for sharing!Take care,Ann
Hi Ann! Thanks for stopping by!I bought my yarn online, from Village Spinning and Weaving in CA. They had a good price on the Prime Alpaca, which is what I got instead of the Peruvian Tweed it calls for. The color seems pretty close to the color of the one on the pattern – mine’s maybe not quite as dark. And mine isn’t as tweedy, since the yarn isn’t the tweed.I’m almost done with it, and I’m using maybe 1/4-1/3 of the third skein to finish, so unforunately, I would say you need the three skeins. I have detailed notes in my Ravelry project page, and I’ll post a detailed blog post for it once I’ve finished it.I don’t think the pattern is available online (unfortunately – I happen to think she would sell ever so many more patterns if she had them available online)- I bought mine at Close Knit Knittery and Press in Gastonia NC.Hope all that helps! It’s a wonderful pattern, and the yarn is just yummy!~Heather