I took a brief break from all that knitting last weekend to scrounge around in my beading supplies. I'm not much of a jewelry maker, especially since I'm not much of a jewelry wearer, but lately it seems as if I am acquiring some cute necklaces. I like the way they spice up my usual t-shirt/cardigan uniform. 

I've had this black chain for a while. I love the oblong links. I'm also a collector of vintage lace and linens, so I pulled out this bit of black lace and made a funky necklace (which was surprisingly difficult to photograph). 

It's lovely and light to wear. I like it just off center, so it feels sort of corsage-like. But I could use some advice from the jewelry makers out there. I like the multiple strands of chain, but they wrapped around themselves throughout the day and twisted into a single chain. Is there a way to keep them separated? Jump rings between the chains? Short lengths of chain running perpendicular? Any suggestions would be welcome. Thank you! 

Okay, it's back to knitting for me now! 

It snowed yesterday, and I knitted and baked and watched Love, Actually. It was just perfect.

The video features a brief cameo appearance from Winston and Bear.

Despite the temptation to cast on right that very minute, I did not start my hat with the too-small ball of yarn from my stash. I did, however, go out the very next day to get enough yarn to make it. 

 
Despite all the cables, it was a pretty quick knit, and I think I will make a couple more, actually using stash yarn. This is the Habitat pattern from the always elegant Brooklyn Tweed. The yarn is Berroco Jasper, a nice, soft, squishy merino wool.

I'm making a few knitted gifts this Christmas, and the hat is one, so I'm making good progress. It's been awhile since I've knit anything, but I've realized that I enjoy knitting much more in the winter. So, knitting season is here, and I am embracing it. 

Gift number two was coming along nicely, until I realized that it was much too small for the intended recipient, but it's cute, so maybe a niece will be getting a pair of squirrel mittens too, and I'll have to try again with heavier yarn and bigger needles. 

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving. I spent a quiet day, puttering, knitting, sewing and cooking. It was actually very nice. We're taking dinner to my mother-in-laws house today, and then I will have the rest of the weekend to recover from her. I used to try having a good attitude when visiting her, hoping it would rub off, but it never worked, so I think I am going to try having a bad attitude this time, and see what happens. Do you think it will work? 

 
I really like this hat.  

I really needed to do something creative that didn't involve a computer. Also, I'm dead tired, so it couldn't be too hard or take too long. So I did the quickest craft ever. I turned my grandmother's charm bracelet that I inherited, into a necklace. The pretty silver, wood-grained ribbon is from Martha Stewart's line at Michael's. I cut two pieces, looped them through the clasps on either end, and trimmed the ends. I'll just tie a square knot in the back to wear it!

I've always loved this charm bracelet, it's absolutely packed with charms. There are silhouettes of her children, and a few of grandchildren, but then she switched to a gold charm bracelet for that. With seven children and 25 grandchildren, she had enough for a pretty full bracelet of just the silhouettes. It just barely fits my wrist, but it's too jangle-y and heavy for working at a computer all day, so I've rarely worn it. This way I can wear it more often. I think the squirrel and the spinning wheel are my favorite charms.

Now I'm going to knit. I'm thinking of living on the edge and casting on for a hat. The pattern calls for 120 yards of yarn, but I have a skein that says it's 95 meters. that's a difference of just over 16 yards. Should I risk it? 
 
 

To all the iPhone users out there, I created a new little project called APPlesauce. There will be some fun stuff going on over there in the coming weeks, so I hope you'll visit and send your friends. Feel free to steal a button, if you'd like to spread a little link-y love too!

I had no intention of disappearing for three weeks, but I guess that's just what I did. I've been both busy and lazy. Well, not so much lazy, just worn out from the busy. And there was a bit of a cold somewhere in that time too. Last week I decided to enter a contest at Veer.com to win a MacBook Pro. I knew the competition was going to be tough, but I forced myself to try anyway. Veer is a stock photo/illustration/design site, so most users are professional graphic designers. So the contest was to step away from the computer and recreate their logo with real materials. Multiple entries were allowed, so I did three: a mini quilt, a papercut, and a candy mosaic. 

The winner was pretty darn cool, and the ten runners-up were also really great. I'm still happy I went without sleep and ate too much orange candy in my attempts. I do love my papercut one, although that was my first attempt at papercutting, and it was not easy. I want to try it out with different kinds of paper, because everything looked terrible when I tried to use a blade. I ended up using paper scissors in the end. I think I'll remove the letters from the quilt and turn it into a little doll quilt, I love the bright, juicy oranges. 

I've been doing a little cooking as well, and had myself a little tea party one afternoon, while watching Howard's End. You don't really notice the food in that movie unless you watch it hungry. I speak from experience. So I was prepared this time. One of my favorite scones ever are the ginger scones I would get at Teaism, when I lived in Alexandria, Virginia. So I used a cream scone recipe and added finely chopped crystallized ginger and they may not have looked like much, but they were just perfect. I recommend that you try this sometime. 

My former boss is an avid fisherman, and brought back a whole lot of yellow fin tuna from a recent trip. So I decided to use some to make fish & chips, but with a little Asian twist. I cut the chunk of tuna into fat sticks, dipped them in beaten egg, and then coated them with panko crumbs. Then I fried them in a little oil (maybe a half inch deep), turning so that all the sides got nice and brown. I made two dipping sauces instead of tarter sauce. The first was my usual wasabi cream sauce and the other with a spicy mayonnaise, which was simply mayo with some srirachi chili sauce (also known as Rooster sauce), and a little squeeze of lemon. Yum! It was delicious and really easy. 

Now I'm hungry, and we are out of bacon, so I think I'm going to get myself dressed and head over to the local diner for breakfast. 
 
 

I really need to get back to sewing and other creative pursuits so I stop boring you with these photos, but here I am again, with another iPhone picture edited in another new app. I just downloaded the Photoshop Mobile app, which is pretty nifty, especially since it’s free! I applied the sketch filter here, even though as I was doing it I thought, “what’s the point of this, it seems cheesey.” Surprisingly, I like the effect. I will probably post a more indepth review at appmodo tonight.