Busy

I'm very busy, but I have not much to show for it. Just doing household chores, raising kids, two days at the office, visiting family, things like that.
Today I tried my hand at some Halloween stuff. It's not (yet) very common here in Holland, but I like Halloween. In my regular (cheap) supermarket they sold small pumpkins, so I bought two. I planned to scoop them out and make some pumpkins soup or pumpkin pie. That didn't work out, the pumpkins were to small. I tried to cook it to make some soup, but it smelled very bad, so I threw it out. Maybe I'll do better next year.
I did make some Jack-o-lantarns though. My very first try. I think they are kind of cute....



Also I baked some halloweencookies. They have been approved by my husband and daughters....



I did do some knitting. The leaning ladder scarf is progressing slowly. I still have to repeat the pattern twice to make it long enough.



Last week I started a curly scarf, but I ripped it, three times, because the fuzzy yarn made it impossible for me to see the stitches for the decreases. Maybe I'll try again later.
So I started an easier scarf for my brother, which is working out a lot better.



Still a lot on the holidays-to-do-list....

Mid Month KAL

Knitting was slow this week, but I did finish the KAL (only one day late).
I kind of messed up the colours. The design calls for black where mine is green(ish) and for white where mine is beige.




It was nice to work on though and you can see the mystery image, if you look carefully.




To me it's something like an icecream, but I saw it on an other blog. It's supposed to be a candycorn, so my picture is upside down.... My only excuse: I have never seen a candycorn before....

Work in ProgressWork in ProgressWork in Progress

I finished my first dishcloth knitted in 100% cotton. This one I'm going to try using. It's kind of small to use as a "vaatdoek" (a cloth most dutch people have lying around near the kitchen sink, to wipe counters and everything that comes along), but it's in my kitchen now...



I also finished the first gift for the holidays. Since my sister liked the colors of my cardigan very much, I used some of the yarn I had left to knit this scarve.



Now I'm working on a gift for my mother in law, the leaning ladder scarve. It's not too hard, but very time consuming, since I make a lot of mistakes (especially when the kids start asking things or have fights while doing the dishes) and it's kind of complicated to go back one or two rows, because of the many yo's, ssk's and k2t's. But it's starting to look rather good.



I'm planning to make a curly whirly scarve (have found some patterns) for my sister in law and I want to make another lacy scarve for my mother. What to make for the men I don't know. Maybe I'll try some hats and mittens.
For my own daughters I thinking about making some of those felted bags I've seen in several blogs, but I need to buy some real wool for that. Or I'll keep it simple and make them socks or slippers.
Anyway, still very busy!

Cardigan problems solved

I finished the cardigan today and it did turn out the way I wanted it. Yay!
I also love the buttons, they match really well.

Dishcloth fun and cardigan problems

I finished the october KAL. I loved seeing the picture growing over the days. First I thought it was going to be a teapot, but as you can see it's a cat. Really nice! I used very wrong and cheap acrylic yarn, so it will look even better when knitted in a nice cotton.



I also tried the mid-september pattern. My very first lace pattern. I worked out really nice, I think, although it may be to loosely knitted, the yarn was too thin or the needles too thick. Well, anyway, I had fun doing these, learning new stuff and finishing things in a few days.



As for the purple cardigan: no fun there. Didn't wish hard enough, I think.
I finished the second sleeve and started to put it together. I wanted it to look good, so I was being very careful to sew it the right way. But I made a mistake anyway. Then I couldn't get it undone, and cut very carefully through one loop of yarn, thinking that was the yarn I was putting the cardigan together with. It wasn't.
After some pulling and trying to figure out what was going on, I ended up with a rather big hole in the back and a very bad temper.
I had to rip out half the back and knit it over. So that's what I'm doing now.

Knitting a house

I thought I found myself a nice little project, but I have been knitting my head off today to finish in time. It's a small gift for our new neighbours, who had their combined house-warming-party/babyshower today.





I wanted the corners to be more clear, but it looks nice anyway, it has little bells in it so it makes noice when the baby (who is already five months old) handles it.
Not much more knitting this week: I finished only one sleeve of the purple cardigan. I hope next week I will have more time. I have many more projects I want to start, so I need to finish the two I'm working on. I have planned to make some scarves and bags to give at Sinterklaas (december 5th) .
But I will be starting my first KAL in the dishcloth group first...