Knit happens!

Even though I have been extremely busy with our home makeover, there has still been some knitting going on. Yes, my friends, I cast on for hat number four for Halos of Hope, who provides chemo hats for cancer patients, young, old, and in between. I have so much yarn in my stash that needs to be used, so I can't think of a better way than to contribute to this wonderful organization! I have even challenged my knitsibs in my Wednesday night knitting group to knit or crochet at least two hats a month until the end of February. If they bring me two hats, they get one entry into my month end drawing for some awesome (or at least I think they are!) prizes. I'm hoping to have at least one skein of some of my handspun yarn in the goodie box each month. We've already had one drawing for the month of August and it was quite fun watching Patty get excited! The bowl she is holding was filled with yummy yarn, including a skein of handspun by me, and what's knitting without chocolate?!

 

 

The hat I have begun for Halos of Hope (link above), is from the pattern called Bus Hat (Ravelry link), by Kylie McDonnell-Wade, and I'm knitting it out of Lion Brand Vanna's Choice, a worsted weight, and in the color silver heather. I sometimes feel like I don't knit enough hats for guys, so I think this one will fit the bill. This will be my second one for the month of September, which is my own personal challenge of at least two hats per month. I have some other designs I would like to knit for myself and some of my family members for the upcoming fall and winter months. I will post finished pics of this one in a few days, so you can see what it actually looks like.

 

To break up the "knitting for everyone else but me" syndrome, I started a lovely scarf/shawlette for myself! I am thrilled with the results so far! While I know I've already got three five (who's counting?) cardigans on the needles for myself, I needed something that was a little more instant gratification. This is the HitchHiker (Ravelry link) by Martina Behm, and is such potato chippy knitting (all garter stitch mostly), for those moments when I don't have enough bandwidth to tackle a more complicated pattern I have on my needles. I'm using Madeline Tosh Merino Light (fingering weight), in the colorway Foxgloves.

As for the home makeover, it's coming along, and I'm really loving what I've done so far. As I've mentioned before, most of my inspiration is coming from Molly, a dear friend of my sister's family. I sent my sister a text a few days ago thanking her once again for Molly's blog url, and heard back from her yesterday. She told me she just got to see Molly a few weeks ago and showed her some of the things she's done in her home, which were some of Molly's ideas that she turned into her own. Molly does a lot of vignettes, which has been a such fun for me to come up with some of my own, but still incorporating her ideas, i.e., pictures of me and my husband in little frames within the vignettes. I had never thought to do this before, and I'm loving taking some of our wedding photos, reducing and printing them on photo paper, and popping them into little frames, some of which I already had tucked away into drawers.
The picture below is what I've done with a console table I already told you about that belonged to my mother. I will be doing another picture in a frame to include here too.  I just love how it's functioning very well for me as a desk, and can be instantly transformed into a sewing table for me. I love sitting at it, it's very confortable, and having my morning coffee by candlelight is...well...delightful. Soon, we will be turning our clocks back an hour, and it will be dark when I get up in the mornings, so candlelight may serve me well then, along with a fire in the fireplace!

 

It is finally supposed to start cooling down here in northern California this next week, and in fact, it was pretty brisk out when we first got up this morning. We are due to go down into the 70's (F), and a possibility of rain has even been forecast for this next Tuesday. I can hardly wait!! I will fill our home with candles, delicious casseroles, and as always,  lots of love!