My little reader

Lilly has been quite taken with books lately. It's quite often the she'll have wandered off only for me to find the she has piled all her books in the rocking chair and she is happily chatting and giggling away. I hope she always likes books this much.

Projects

Here are a couple photos of a few of the things I have been working on lately.



The scarf: Mike bought me the yarn (100% mohair) for my birthday last year. I just now got to making it. He also bought me a pattern but I didn't have the needles for it so I found this pattern online. It turned out ok, I would have liked it to be longer and I had the yarn but I thought it would be a lot longer once I blocked it. I think I might make a knitted flower with the left over to close it so I don't have to wrap it and lose the lace pattern.

before I blocked it

after, not a lot longer but much smoother

I made mike help me get a close up of the pattern. 

This was my first lace knitting and all in all it turned out ok, I'm definitely going to try more lace. 

The poncho:

  Mike found this on Etsy and wanted to buy it for Lilly for Christmas. He sent me the link and I looked and figured I could make it. I started my hunt for the pattern and yarn and well it wasn't much of a hunt. You can find the pattern here, and it's FREE! I also ordered the yarn from them, great quality and pretty cheap! The pattern was a bit tricky as I think English is the third translation but it worked out well I think. Lillian isn't super thrilled with it yet, she wears it for a few minutes and then is pretty pleased with herself when she pulls it off. 

It's supposed to have a tie at the top but I'm afraid that due to the weight of the hood it will just choke her so for now I'm leaving it off. 

It's kind of challenging to get a 1 year old to pose. 

Christmas Stockings

Both Mike and Lilly needed stockings this year. My mom made me and all of my siblings one years ago,  it's the only one I've ever had and I plan to keep it that way. 

Isn't it lovely? Way too much embroidery for me!

Really I shouldn't say that it's too much embroidery, you should see the ones my sister does. (Lydia that's a hint to take photos and post so that I can insert a link here to your amazing stockings) Thanks for posting Lyd

You see I just don't have the patience to do what she does her's look something like this.

Except all are appropriate according to the recipient. All of those little details are done by hand. AMAZING!

Ok anyways. I wanted one for Mike and one for Lilly but was not willing to do all that work and for a while I felt guilty. Then I remembered that such projects are supposed to be fun and if it's not going to be fun, don't do it. (Ask my mom about this theory) 

I wanted Mike's and Lilly's to match mine in size but I didn't care about actually matching fabric or anything like that. So I went to one of the blogs I follow and found these directions. click here to see This was a bit more complicated because I used cotton instead of felt like my mom did. I had to use batting and then line them and ugh, hand sew the binding as well as the embroidery for the names (I don't enjoy using a needle and thread though I am getting better) With the directions from Anna and my stocking as a pattern, so they'd be about the same size, here's what I ended up with.

I love, love, love, this fabric.

I think Mike was pleased with his reindeer.

I should have turned the flash on on my camera but oh well. I'm quite pleased with them. They aren't perfect and maybe some day I will make fancy-shmancy ones like what Lydia does but then again, maybe not. 

Merry Christmas...

Oh Christmas Tree..

I am so excited for Christmas this year. Last year was Lillian's first Christmas but she was only a few months old and didn't really have any clue what was going on. We were also preparing to move to Alaska a week post Christmas and it was really hard for me to relax and enjoy the holidays. So I wanted this year to be different.
We got our Christmas tree last night and got it put up and decorated. Lilly helped at the beginning but it was about bedtime. She did really well until I tried to help her put her ornament on the tree, I think she would have slept with it had I let her.
I'm still working on stockings for Mike and Lilly, I'll be sure to post those in a couple days when I get them done.

Helping Daddy with lights.

This was right after she had a mini melt down. 

Our lovely tree.