Gnome Invasion

I just love gnomes...the silent g, the super cute red hats, their joyous nature and drinking habits....what's not to love people.

Last week I went on a gnome frenzy and started knitting up a bunch of these guys. It's so addictive and takes hardly no yarn at all. Each one has their own little personality. The pattern was found at Saartje knits. (I go a bit longer on the torso and hat before binding off of decreases.)They're called korknisse.

There are more gnomes below and a wonderful bitty baby gnome that I also knitted up. That pattern is from here. Thanks to Knitting Iris for the link and check out her super cute gray and blue one.

Knit + Boy=Mom in Tears

H has been wanting to learn to knit for a very long time. I'm sure it's the pointy sticks. It's that element of danger he craves. This year was the year, Santa brought him his very own knitting needles!

He of course already knows how to knit since he's been watching me do it his entire life. I finally convinced him to let me "help" get him started. The surprising thing is he took to it very easily. He had only a few problems with dropping stitches, which threw him into a crying fit. I explained, in a very yoda way, "There is no crying in knitting buddy. Anything you do, I can fix."

The stitches are still pretty large. He's knitting a pink(his favorite color) scarf for his General Grievous action figure. He did finish it and has cast on for a hat for his Ugly doll. Pictures of that to come later.

*Sniff, sniff* he's growing up...

X-mas Party A Go Go!

So what do you do when your done with the presents, stuffing your face with treats and a full dinner, and ready to pass out from exhaustion since you've been up basically since 2:50 a.m.?

You go to a raging x-mas open house at "The Gates House". When we arrived at nearly 5:00, the party was in full swing. Kids showing each other their loot, adults drinking adult beverages. Enough food to feed an army (and good food too not just cheeze whiz and crackers), conversation abounded, and everyone was just happy to be there.

And if you don't believe me, check out the participants:

X-mas Revisited

We had a wonderful quiet xmas this year. No one was ill, everyone was in a great mood, things just went great.
This year I made it a point to wrap as I bought stuff. Usually, I'm a wrapping fiend on xmas eve and get a bit cranky. This year, I was able to make sushi on xmas eve (sorry no pics) and hang out with a friend who was visiting for the holiday. We had a few glasses of wine, listened to some great music and just mellowed out.
The tree photo above was taken after Santa had come.
In our house, the kids can open the stockings as soon as they get up. Presents must wait for a reasonable hour like 7:00. H got up, opened his stocking stuff and then wanted to know how long till he could open his other gifts. We had him read the clock numbers to us..."two....five...zero". WHAT!! Yes that's right, he woke up at 2:30ish and then wanted to know how much longer. We explained that he needed to get back to bed and sleep some more. He decided to sleep in the living room on the couch....with cartoons on...yeah. Then he wanted to run in every hour or so and find out if it was time yet.
We finally gave in at about 6:30. Everyone was pleased with their gifts. With C getting older (13 in a month) she is asking for more pricey gifts and I was worried that she would be upset that she didn't get the quantity like H. But, they were both very happy and excited with what they got.

C bought H a really cool real Harry Potter wand online and I think it was one of his favorite presents.
For breakfast I made this:

It's a German Pancake recipe courtesy of Shmoo. It so yummy and so full of butter that it made for a perfect xmas morning breakfast. And, it has fruit on it so that made me feel better that the kids would have one healthy thing that day.
We had dinner that afternoon at my parent's house. That evening we went to a friend's "open house" party. We saw a lot of friends we hadn't seen in a while. The kids got to bring a few gifts so show friends and well, I ate almost everything offered even though I was full to the point of illness. LOL But that's for another post.

I know .....L.A.M.E.

Sorry for this excuse of a post. I'm waiting for some new photo software so I can wow you all with my awesome photo skills.

I hope you all had a wonderful xmas. Ours was very nice and quiet. Well except for the crazy wild xmas party we went to on xmas night. That was a crazy time...

The kids were all pleased with their xmas booty and I finished the surprise hat for Troy.(now to get a photo of him in it) He actually wears it all the time. This makes me so happy I could squeal every time I see him in it.

I don't want to ruin the rest of my future really-cool-awesome-award winning posts so come back in a bit.

Here's a list so you can get excited:
Xmas Revisited
Xmas Party a-go-go
Knit + Boy= Mother in Tears
Gnome Invasion
Resolution Re-cap
New Year...New List

Oh! And here's our family's holiday photo:

Pimp My Nutcracker

Yeah, you read it right.
Have fun: Pimp My Nutcracker

This is kid friendly.

Giant Snow

Giant Snow, originally uploaded by That Bohemian Chick.

Happy Solstice!

I've been a bit of a bad blogger of late. I'm such a procrastinator and am scrambling on the holiday front. This photo is from the other day.

We looked outside to see snow flakes the size of half dollar pieces. H ran out in a frenzy and started to punch them in the air. The begining of a new sport, snow boxing.

It sure did dump a lot of snow all at once but hasn't snowed since. Now the forcast is for the temp. to get above 40.

And I was hoping for a white holiday.

For a truely spectacular blog post for today, visit Knitting Iris (link in my side bar). She captured this day in such beautiful photos.

Happy Holidays!

Watch Little Mew!

My Brother's Brioche Scarf

Brioche Scarf, originally uploaded by That Bohemian Chick.

I forgot to post this photo of the completed Brioche scarf I knit for my brother. It's from Melanie Falick's Weekend Knitting book. His birthday was in October and I finished it by December first. Hey, he got it. The idea of the book is that the projects in it can be finished in a weekend. This was not true for this scarf. Maybe, if you knit on it for a straight 72 hrs, you could finish it in a weekend.

It was my first time doing brioche and I really liked it. I would do it again. There is a matcing hat and a cowl in the book. They seem like they could be done in a weekend. I love how brioche looks different on both sides and the opposite side's color peeks through. You could really go nuts with color combinations.

Or you could just go really nuts...