2013 - Week 50

Hello from Week 50 :)

More power yoga for me this week, and I definitely needed it for all of the treats that I'll be eating in the coming weeks ;)

Happy (and warm) knitter

The biggest news this week is: My Scarf Is FINISHED :) Yay :) I like it a lot and I hope that you do too. This is the pattern that I used: Bella Lana scarf. I thought 32 stitches was a bit wide though, so I dropped it down to 24 and it still worked out great. I used almost 3 complete skeins of yarn because I like my scarves a bit longer. I ended up repeating the pattern of 18 rows sixteen and a half times I believe. I didn't do the best bind off because I didn't know how to do a rib bind off, but if you make this, I would recommend figuring that out because my bound edge looks a little flared. Oh well, I still love it :)

Isn't it cool?

Yay sparkly :) 

Since I loved my scarf so much, I decided to try my hand at a new cable knitting pattern, this time a headband though, for a few of my friends' Christmas presents. I used this pattern: Fraga Headband. It was interesting trying to learn a few new knitting skills, the crochet provisional cast on, and the kitchener stitch bind off, but I think I did okay for my first attempts. Luckily the yarn was a bit forgiving and any mistakes easily blend in :) Both the the recipients loved them I think.

Cozy

Lovely lady in a lovely headband :) 

I did try two of the crock pot meals this week too. The beef stew was just okay, but the black bean taco soup, which I will dub "Nacho Soup" was really yummy (especially after the addition of some sour cream and cheese and scooped up with chips . . . mmm). Sorry there aren't any pictures . . . we ate it too fast ;)

One more thing to share this week . . . cornmeal tree cookies. You may remember from earlier this year (see blog post here) when I made these cute cornmeal sugar cookies for Valentine's Day and I'm pretty sure that mine were prettier than Martha Stewarts (although she gets all the credit for this awesome recipe). I wanted something relatively easy that still looked impressive for some cookie exchanges that I was a part of. My cousin Sara also made these for her Christmas cookie exchange . . . great minds think alike :) I decided to change it up a bit though and turn them into glazed trees. Here are the results:

Mmm . . . glazed trees :) 

I think they turned out nice, and they really do taste good. I hope all of my fellow cookie exchangers enjoyed them :)

I hope you are all having a wonderful time preparing for Christmas. Stay warm, and I'll talk to you next week :)