Happy New Year and Some Resolutions

Happy New Year!!!!! Today is the start of 2009 - DUH!! It's official and I can't pretend anymore - Logan's going to graduate this year!! How did the last 17 years and 10 months go by so quickly?? I will say that I'm so thankful that I had the privelege of homeschooling both him and Kelby from beginning to end!! I taught them to read, write, and do math. We've all learned so much together and I'm thankful I didn't have to turn them over to someone else to get the joy of all those firsts!! Now comes the time to start getting ready for his graduation reception. We'll have a come and go reception from home. I need to scan ALL of our pictures and my brother and I are going to put together a slide show to music. Plus, Logan is going to play some guitar and maybe sing with a friend of his! It's going to be beautiful, but so sad!!

As far as school we're going to start back on January 19th. Kelby has 12 math lessons left in this book. Once we finish this book we're going to stop math for the year and concentrate on finishing up history. We had a mix-up in our histor curriculum order and are getting a late start. Math takes up a lot of our time every day.

As far as knitting goes my first big project for the year is a Harry Potter blanket for Logan's graduation!! I'm going to use the myriad dishcloth and other HP patterns on the internet. I've printed out many of them and I'm always getting new ones from my friend Always Alice!!! She is a master pattern finder. She's always sending them to our online knitting group Lone Star State Knitters. I save those emails and save them to the end of the day like a special chocolate treat.

This year I'd like to learn to spin. I'll start drop spindling, but I'm far more interested in a spinning wheel. And, as usual, my taste is far bigger than my budget. I found a beautiful handcarved oak wheel. I can't remember the website, but I saw it on the Let's Knit Together video podcast. I also plan to start dyeing yarn. I have the Knit Picks sock blank and several pots of their dye. I so love to knit socks now!!

Speaking of socks...My parents gave me a skein of Harry Potter sock yarn. It's the Harry and Ron colorway. They also gave me a set of Knit Picks Harmony dp sock needles. I love them!! I've started the socks using the Horcrux Sock pattern. I would link you to that pattern but the only way to get it is to join the Six Socks Knitalong yahoo group. I'm enjoying it so far. It's basically a knit 3 purl 2 rib. Then there's the lightning bolt scarf pattern. It's neat.

I got no knitting done for Christmas presents. I did, however, do some just for fun knitting. I knit two reindeer from Mochimochi Land. She has the cutest and strangest stuffed creatures!! I really want to knit nearly all of them!! Here are the 2 reindeer:


They were lots of fun to knit and I learned some new things!! I will probably make more of these!! I also knitted some turkey hats for my nephews for Thanksgiving. They were silly but really cute on them!!!

Then I knit a couple of things for me. A couple of years ago I knit Santa hats for my family of 4, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law. Then they had their first one, Alton, and I knit his for Christmas 2007. Then this year I knit one for my other nephew, Kaden. However, my brother and sister-in-law forgot to bring their hats this year and we didn't get our usual family picture. I decided I wanted some matching arm warmers to go with mine because I wear my hat a lot between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I finished them on the 23rd but it warmed up and I only got to wear them for this picture:

The other thing thing I wanted to share today is this slouchy cabled hat I knit last week. It's from the cover of the new Knit.1 mag.

I knit this using Bernat Softee Chunky double stranded in the Blue Denim Heather (I think) colorway. The only change I made in the pattern was to do the ribbing on size 10's instead of 7's. You're supposed to cast on 50 stitches and do your ribbing. Then you change to size 11's and knit into the front and back of every stitch to get the slouch. Well, I must have a fat head because 50 stitches on size 7's squeezed the crap out of my head!! I'm very satisfied with this hat, but it hasn't been cold since I finished it, either!!

Well, I could go on and on. But one of my resolutions is to blog 2 or 3 times a week this year!! So I'll be back very soon to gab incessantly!! I need to scan in a pile of pictures and try to get some sleep!!

Knit On and more later!!
Shama D