Tie It On

And the first aprons are finished! When I got the "A is for Apron" book I was telling yall about how I knew that I was going to like making them...but I didn't know I'd like it this much! They're so fun and girlie, which is pretty coincidental since we found out this weekend that we're having a GIRL! Woohoo!! (I was secretly hoping it was a girl.)

These first FOs were pretty simple, quick and painless. Just how I like it. I did get pretty annoyed with the rick rack on the pink one and would swear off rick rack forever if it didn't look so cute. The other great thing about these is that the amount of fabric it takes to make one is barely a yard of the main color and 1/2 a yard for the coordinating color! Woohoo = cheap! I found this material at our Local Sewing Store on the sale rack since there was only a tiny bit of it left. This is also a great thing to use extra material for from clothes made! (I'm one of those that likes to use every last shred of material.) I think next time I'll try one of the more complicated ones that goes across the chest and around the neck since when I cook/clean...that's usually where I get the messiest.

I really wish I had an embroidery machine though...I think the pockets need something. Maybe a big curly initial of the first name of whoever I give them to. I dug through the Mimi box of old timey sewing stuff from my grandmother's house and found some appliqués but they were all pretty corny...apples, daisies, bananas, eyeballs with one winking?? mushrooms? Definitely too 70's for these flirty aprons. I'm sure I'll find something to use them on. My favorite part is the pink apron has long ties that tie into a big pretty bow, but you can't tell from the pics!

New Projects On the Horizon

Good News! I've finally started feeling better lately and have been trying to get back into the swing of things. The cooking is slowly starting again, clothes are getting washed and our house doesn't look like a train wreck with Jayber hairball, tumbleweeds all over the place anymore. Tweedy is so thankful.

So! With all of that comes new projects for me. Woohoo! I've really been into sewing lately and with that have learned how to smock. Smock You Some! It's pretty fun...kind of like knitting in that it's very addicting/portable and I think children in smocked clothes are so cute! But for some reason I feel like more of a grandma when I take my smocking places rather than my knitting. Not sure why. Maybe it's because it's obvious that I'm pregnant and I'm making baby clothes...too cliche? I don't know. I usually just do it at home since I've been embarrassed by it for some reason. But here's one little day gown I did. It's not quite finished in this picture. I lost my camera cord and can't upload a recent one. It's also not put together yet. Learning how to construct it is another class I'm signed up to take in Sept.


Sweet little baby day gown


I just bought this book on my lunch break. I loooove girlie frilly aprons and this book is packed with them. I thought making them for friends would be a good birthday/shower present or something like that. Some of the patterns in here are sooo old timey and perfect. I haven't tried one yet but I'll let yall know if the directions are good/bad.



The Jenny Cloche from Julia is my current knitting project. I'm working on it like a crazy woman trying to get it finished for my friend's birthday this weekend. I'm doing mine in a creme Jiffy yarn color and will post some pictures of it when finished. I thought it was cute and not your typical beanie with fluff ball on top knitted hat. I think she's going to love it.



Also...because Tweedy and I are so environmental lately, we're joining the bandwagon on the bring your own bags to the grocery store thing. But I keep losing/not bringing enough bags to the store! So I want to whip out a couple of these knitted ones but I can't decide which one I want to to do. Right now it's between these:

Elisa's Nest Tote (no i did not pick this one because the girl and i have something in common)


String Bag


"I want, I want, I want, I want, me, me, me, me, mine, mine, mine, mine, now, now, now ,now"......this pattern. (10 points to whoever knows where that quote is from. HA!) Not crazy about the girlie goo fabric used in this picture but I found some material this weekend at a hole in the wall fabric store that's going to be soooo cute. First I have to purchase the pattern. More updates on this one later.



Woo...I have a lot of stuff I want to do!! So why do I have to sit here at work in front of the computer all day and respond to emails? Boo! It has been raining all day today too..perfect project weather!

Christmas in July!

So...my mom came in town this weekend and after 4 hours of going through my grandmother's house brought me all kinds of goodies!! You have to know that my grandmother, who has 5 children...all with children, doesn't like to throw away anything!! They have lived in the same house for over 50 years so you can imagine all the fun stuff there is to find there. She still has all clothes from her lifetime (prom dress), her mothers clothes, old hats, shoes, my mom and all of her sibling's clothes and of course of all her grandchildren's clothes. Needless to say she likes to be the keeper of things. My mom went on a hunt through the rooms full of boxes in search of any salvageable baby clothes she could find...and boy did she ever find some good stuff.

These are a couple of my favorites that I've already hung in the closet:







My great grandmother was a very accomplished "Do it yourselfer" and she made most of my grandmother and mother's clothes all the way until they were adults! She was a knitter too! And while going through the baby clothes we found some of her FOs that I can't wait to use on our baby. They're in great shape too!

these are the tiniest little sweaters...


i love this baby blanket...


AND...even more fun stuff that mom found in the Mimi museum were all of my great grandmother's old patterns!! I had the best time going through these and making my own box with the ones that were still in style that I would like to try. Most of them were for adult clothes and luckily in my size, but there were some baby day gown patterns and toddler clothes too!!

thats' my keeper box on the left..woohoo!!


just a couple of my favorites...

The Word Is OUT!!

And we're back! Again sorry for the delay but I promise I have a good excuse this time. Tweedy and I are expecting a baby due Feb. 5th!! We weren't quite planning on babies this soon but it's such a welcome surprise and we're pretty excited. The bad news...I've been super sick from all this pregnant stuff. I haven't been able to do anything fun without getting sick...can't cook, take Jayber on walks and haven't felt like knitting or sewing in a while. All I want to do is take naps, drink milk shakes and go to work (don't always want to do the last one..but you gotta do what you gotta do). Smells are killing me...yesterday I got sick in the shower after smelling my shampoo while I was washing my hair. It doesn't help that I can smell every little thing now like a superhero or something with my super powerful smellers.

But the good news is that I'm almost finished with my first trimester now...so 12 weeks along and it's getting better slowly but surely. Supposedly it should end early into week 14. So how did this happen you say?!? Well....Tweedy's family took us on a trip to France and Italy for 2 weeks at the end of May and it was such a great vacation and just so damn romantic over there that....as Tweedy says "We went over there with two of us and came back with three of us." (That's what he said to his parents to tell them our news...so embarrassing!)

We all know where this picture was taken...


Notre Dame was one of my favorite things...


Lake Como, Italy - Where George Clooney and Brad Pitt have villas. I looked for them everywhere but unfortunately they came the week after we left. Boo.


So now that I'm finally feeling a little better I'm gearing up my crafting into overdrive. Especially the baby stuff as you can imagine. I've signed up for a smocking class and am into week two with it. It's pretty fun! Kind of like knitting in that it's county, portable and incredibly addicting. My first project is going to be a baby blue day gown with a geometric smocking pattern at the top. I'll put up some pictures one I finish it. On the knitting front...I've been working on a top secret project for one of my friends who's also having a baby but I can't talk about it until I give it to her since she reads Knit You Some...so more on that later.

We've also been super busy after moving into our new house doing yard stuff. Tweedy has made an amazing garden and now we have eggplants, tons of cantelope, tomatoes, basil and other fun veggies all over the place.

This is from a couple of weeks ago so now the plants are overflowing the raised beds..but Tweedy made these raised beds all by himself!


Also...my dad came to visit a couple of weeks ago with plans to put a storage house in our backyard for Tweedy's yard tools and stuff. So I'm thinking a tiny little 6 ft. tall house big enough for maybe a lawn mower and some shovels, but oh no...3 days later...it turns out this "storage shed" has a front porch and is looking more like a guest house with a greenhouse attached to the side of it. Errr I was tricked!! But Tweedy's pretty pumped about it and our backyard is big so oh well. His office may have to be moved out there now that there's a baby on the way.

What a proud helper...haha!


Almost finished product...

Blah Blah Blah

So...I know I have done a terrible job lately updating the blog! But Tweedy and I have been crazy busy moving to a new city and into a new house. This house moving thing is super hard and so stressful and was really an ordeal! Our first mistake was picking a Tuesday to be our move out day, which made it where it was just the two of us and our usual helpers: his parents and brothers or my parents and brothers, were all working or in school! Boo! So we ended up having to do the whole thing alone, which was really a test on our marriage, but we made it through. We are completely ridiculous and ended up finally packing everything into a 26 ft Penske truck that Tweedy drove, which could probably be considered an 18-wheeler type truck because it was so huge, and I had to pull a 16 foot Uhaul behind Tweedy's mom's fancy Mercedes SUV. We were a sight! We packed all day and finally left for our 4 hour trip at around 9 p.m. We drove 60 mph down the Interstate and talked to each other through walkie talkies using lots of "10-4. Over and out. Good buddy." the entire time. We finally get to our new hometown and crash before our big closing the next morning. We wake up and realize...ugh oh, we packed our clothes in the back of the Penske and can't get to them through all of our other stuff....so we had to wear our dirty moving clothes to the closing. We looked like such a pair of rednecks. Even with all of that moving space (the Penske we used is supposed to be able to hold a 6 bedroom house...ours was only 3 and still it wouldn't hold all of our stuff!!) We also had to make another trip to the old house for all of Tweedy's plants!! We ended up having to rent another Uhaul just for the plants, drive embarrassingly slow down the interstate again as well as stop a couple of times along the way to "open the trailer and let the plants breath." But it was all worth it because now we have all of our plants in and around the house and Tweedy's garden has already gotten started producing veggies! Long story short...we are finally moved in and I have just now, a week later, gotten everything out of boxes and into its places in the house. I think it looks pretty good around here but doesn't quite feel like home yet...maybe I need to start a new knitting project and spend some time in our den or something. I think we've been working in the house so much lately we haven't had time to enjoy it!

And while I'm giving out excuses for not updating the blog here's another one for ya...lately we've been living in the stone age around here. I think our old house was struck by lightning or something because in a span of 2 weeks: Our TV won't turn on and is being fixed so we don't have a TV, BOTH of our computers stopped working, our phones won't hold their charges anymore and then Tweedy's callers can't hear him (he's getting a new one), our Ipod has been messing up....and we don't have a microwave. Are you kidding me. If one more electronic thing in our life breaks I'm going to get rid of them all together. We finally got our computer back (the Dell customer service is wonderful) so I'll be sure to post some new pictures soon.

In knitting news...I recently found out that a couple of my girlfriends are having babies so I may start getting into knitting for babies again! I can just see the hats and blankets being whipped out! Updates soon on some good baby patterns I come across!

Oriental Knitting

Now I admit that I am one of those known to exaggerate and stretch the truth a teeny weeny bit just to make the story a little better. BUT believe me when I tell you...no exaggeration involved that knitting was EVERYWHERE in China!

It was extremely popular in the smaller villages, where the women spent their days relaxing in the shade of their booths full of fake designer purses, Buddha souvenirs and weird children's toys waiting on the unsuspecting tourist to walk by so they could pounce on you screaming the contents of their booth and how they would give you a good price. You have to pass by them again and again and repeat..."No thank you. No I don't want postcards but thank you. Zai Jian. NO THANK YOU. Quit following me! I said no. RUN!" after you passed they would sit down and continue knitting like crazy. I spoke to a few of them about their knitting, most of whom were doing sweaters for children or hats for themselves, and all of whom were using double pointed needles. I told them about how I preferred to use circulars and they looked at me like I was crazy. I guess those aren't popular over there. Here's some proof below. I was embarrassed to ask these ladies if I could take their picture so I got Tweedy to sneak around and do it while they weren't looking. Hehe!







I also managed to do some knitting of my own while over there and finished my big huge cowl. Pattern courtesy of Knit Lit. I used the same hip hop berrocco yarn as Kate did, but in Justus and I am really happy with how it came out! Too bad it's 80 degrees now. I did most of the knitting on our 15 hour plane ride over, but also fit it in during our 12 hour sleeper train and during the trip home. My question is why the heckoo do people keep taking pictures of me knitting? It happened 3 times over there! Is it because I'm a young adult knitter and they think knitting is only for grandmas? Or maybe I make a funny face while knitting? It's surely not because it's complicated because this cowl was so easy...knit one row and pearl one row! Great for a plane ride.



Jayber wanted to model it too.


I also accidentally walked by a Local Yarn Store while cruising through the streets of Beijing and was so excited that I bought some. I'm not sure now why I picked out this color and style. I think I was too rushed by Tweedy and our two other travel buddies...both boys too. The store owner didn't speak English either so that complicated things when I wanted to chat about the world of knitting. But the yarn is really soft!



Anyway...I thought it was pretty cool that they are obsessed with knitting in China just like we are here! (or maybe it's just me) The difference is that they knit for necessity. They have to do it or winter clothes will be scarce. All of the women know how and learn it from a young age. Maybe I'm just old school but I thought that was awesome and maybe we should take the hint too.....That clothes made by your own hands are special and always made with love.

Back in the USA!

Ni hao! We made it! All the way over to the Orient and back safely! It was a great trip but I'm so glad to be home...in my own bed, eating my own American food and using my own shower!! Things are so different over there, it's crazy. We started out in Hong Kong, flew to over to Yangshou, then to Beijing, over to Xi'an, through Shanghai and then back to Hong Kong. We spent about 3 days in each place. Total trip time = 3 weeks.

Best thing we did? Definitely the 10 K hike along the Great Wall of China. There are a lot of different places to get to it since it's 30,000 KM long. Some areas are a little touristy, but we found an entrance to it about an hour outside of Beijing that was perfect. The view from the top was amazing and it was definitely the coolest thing I've ever done. It took about 4 hours to do the total hike which was down stairs, up stairs, over some of the renovated parts and through the forgotten areas.







Other cool things we did....Riding bikes all through the country was amazing! We were in a small village called Yangshou for a couple of days and would rent bikes during the day, explore the countryside, visit the local markets and try out some local food! The rice fields are amazing as well as the karsts mountains, which surround this area. I got pretty tired from riding a bike for 2 days straight and on day 3 I told Tweedy that I could ride no more, then I requested a scooter!! So he came back with a tandem for us instead that he pedaled all day and I just cruised on the back. It was one of my favorite days.







Another fun thing to do over there is to shop till you drop in the black markets...which are everywhere! The best ones are in Beijing and you can get some pretty cheap stuff from them. We went to one of the big ones, The Pearl Market, which is 10 floors of fake designer purses, jackets and clothes, Chinese souvenirs and....REAL PEARLS! Tweedy came out with two good looking fake North Face jackets, our friend John bought some "Tom Cruise" Ray Ban sunglasses, and I came out with many Buddha souvenirs, a long pearl necklace, short pearl necklace for my mom and some pearl earrings. My mom had prepared me with all of the tricks to be sure that the pearls were real, which I tried on everything and then spent a couple of minutes haggling the price down with the dealer. If you're persistent, you can usually get them down 60% from what their starting price was. That's the fun part! Just to give you an idea of how cheap it can get...Tweedy got his North Face down to $14 US dollars and she'd started at $70. Pretty good!

Worst thing about China: Definitely the "squatters"....the toilets. Squatters + no toilet paper anywhere = not fun. Enough said.

One of Tweedy's favorite things was the Farmer's Market. It was this huge area where the locals would come to bring their home grown, picked, or raised goods to sell. They had everything from huge veggies, nuts, noodles, frogs and all kinds of meat to...DOG MEAT! I couldn't look at that part. I'm sure you all know about how they eat dogs over there...very sad. I will spare you the picture of the dead dogs for sale hanging from stations in the market.





We also visited a lot of educational and historical places such as Tienneman Square in Beijing where Chairman Mao's body is on display, The Forbidden City - Home of the Ming Dynasty, The Temple of Heaven, Hiked Mt. Hua Shan and visited the World's Largest Bronzed Seated Buddha.





About the food...it wasn't so bad. The menus were of course all in Chinese so we had to just guess what we were ordering, although they all came with pictures of the dish. Sometimes you would get something that was really really good (like peking duck or chicken curry) but sometimes you would get something that was really really bad...goose trachea or intestines. Stir fried dog was on every single menu as well as snake and sharks fin? We saw someone order the snake once which was brought out alive so the customer could hold it, then it was killed in front of their eyes and drained so you could drink it's blood (gross) then they would take it to the back to cook it. Nobody in our group wanted to get that. Sick. The places where we stayed weren't so bad but they weren't nice either. They were all hostels and about $15 a night at the most. I liked how all the hostels had a community room where all of the guests could hang out, drink Tsingtao (their huge beers) and discuss their travels. Most of the people we met were traveling alone and for months at a time! I could not be away that long. But that's just me. All in all....it was a great trip. I probably wouldn't do it again but it was a lot of fun! More to come later about the knitting over there. I'll leave you with the Hong Kong skyline....gorgeous!!



Zai Jian!