I have one last FO from 2008 that I haven’t discussed yet as it was a secret knitting project for Shel.  But, now that it has arrived on her doorstep, I can tell you more about it.

I decided to go away from the wishlist this year for Shel’s Christmas present and instead knit her a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

There isn’t really much else to say about it - so here are the details:
Pattern: Flying Spaghetti Monster from HistoryWeaver
Yarn: Encore Worsted (for the “pasta”), Queensland Kathmandu Aran (for the meatballs)
Needles: Size 7 dpns
Additional Materials: Floral wire, polyfil (I actually used some leftover quilt batting), eyeballs
Notes: I used 24 gauge beading wire for the posable noodles & it broke into several pieces by the time I was putting everything together. So I’d recommend going with a thicker or stronger wire for similar projects. I also didn’t want to make my own eyeballs out of clay, so I bought some doll eyes that had a hole in them the wire could be fed through.
Also, one of the “noodles” was knit by one of my fellow Sunday knitters when she forgot to bring her knitting to our holiday potluck.

This was a really easy project to get done, although I was getting bored with the incessant miles of i-cord by the end of it. Still, it was fun and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Ah, a shiny new year means it’s time for a set of shiny new goals:

• First and foremost is getting in shape/getting healthier. Even though I started working towards this in September, I set a goal to get down to a specific weight by the end of August. At this moment, I am 43 pounds away from that goal weight, so it’s completely doable. I joined up with a nearby “fitness club”/gym this week, so that should help with this one, too.

In the world of yarn:

• I want to learn to crochet (more than crocheting a border on something). I have the hooks, I have yarn, I have a book. I should be able to do this.
• I want to do some charity knitting/crocheting. I’ll probably make a bunch of snuggly things for the cats at Stray Rescue and maybe even some more cat toys (although I still have the ones I made before to donate).
• I will finish four of the five knitting projects I have on the needles. The one I probably won’t finish is the knee highs I started in June. (Currently on the needles to finish: February Lady Sweater, Scrunchable Scarf, Dashing Mittens, Bittersweet Socks.)
• I want to make a pair of colorwork mittens (or armwarmers/mitts).
• Finally, the yarn diet. It is on again. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a gift certificate that should take care of most of my yarn needs for the year when combined with what I have in my stash.

Travel:

• I want to make another weekend trip to Chicago sometime.  I generally love Chicago, but the last two trips haven’t been great (I blame the hotel location), so I want to have a good trip there again. Maybe Stitches or BlogHer?
• I’d like to go somewhere I haven’t been before, although I haven’t planned anything at the moment. There are a lot of places I want to go, both within & outside of the US.

That’s about it, I think. I hope that 2009 will be a great year for me & everyone I know.

Tomorrow begins 2009, so today is the year in review post. Of course. And because I can, it will be a review in pictures.

Three friends (or sets of friends) got married this year:

The girls at Karen’s wedding in April

Brent & Shanon got married in May

And in October, Mindy & Eric tied the knot…

During which I boogied my booty off.

In the crafty world, I apparently completed 25 knitting projects this year (note that a few were started in 2007, though).

& I conquered the sewing machine, again.

I also refinished an old chest of drawers, which took FOREVER.

Travel-wise, there was a brief trip to Chicago in May to see Eddie Izzard

In June, I went to Detroit for the Stonecutters gathering, where 4 of us decided to get tattoos together.

November found me on the road with NoMiniMom to Columbia for the Nine Inch Nails show.

The summer found me with a birthday, a visit to MoBot, at a Cards/Cubs game, & a couple visits with some Stonecutters that were in from out of town.

I also moved into my apartment back in April, which is good. :)

Whew. Quite a year once I look back.

As it happens at the end of every year, it is time to look back on the resolutions for the past year and see how I did.

But before I get to that, let’s do a little chat about the year in general. It’s been at bit strange, at least for the past few months. In making the decisions that are leading me to a healthier lifestyle, I have completely changed my outlook on my health, weight, and life. In the past, I just wouldn’t put out the effort to make the changes that getting healthier required. But now that I am moving toward healthier eating habits and exercise, I find that it becomes a habit and doesn’t require that much extra effort. There are still times when I fall off the workout wagon and forget how good I feel after I actually workout, but I always jump back on. The best part - I hit a milestone this week. I have officially lost 20 pounds. I am about 4 pounds away from losing that first 10% of my body weight. And you know what? It feels kinda awesome to know that I can do this.

With that said, let’s attack the resolutions. Original resolutions are in italics with my current comments after.

• Cut down on the amount of fast food I eat, eventually leading to not really eating it at all. I have rocked the socks off of this one. I haven’t completely cut out fast food and I don’t think that I will, but I have limited what I eat and where I eat. I make sure that I know the calories & fat I’m putting into my body before I even go someplace. Sometimes I’ll still choose to eat something really bad, but I am at least aware of it now, as opposed to before when I would just order a Quarter Pounder without thinking about it. As a side note: Did y’all know that Burger King has eliminated trans fats from their cooking oils? Good news for everyone, there.
• Eat more veggies/eat healthier. Um, see above. I sometimes actually crave veggies now. Also, I have mostly cut high fructose corn syrup out of my diet - I still succumb to the call of the occasional Dr. Pepper and I don’t worry about it as much when I’m not at home, but for the most part it’s gone. And I don’t really miss it (well, except for the occasional Dr. Pepper).
• Continue with the daily photo on the blog. Ha! Oh, yeah. This was not a good idea unless it was going to turn into the Daily Ziggy. While I think he is the cutest cat on the planet, I don’t think that the rest of the world would agree (or care).
• Knitting goals:
  • Finish projects within a year of casting on. If it’s not done, rip it out (totally stole this one from Kathy). I think I’ve accomplished this one. It became less about the time requirement and more about taking a long look at a project if it had been lingering too long and deciding if I really wanted to finish it. So, I have both frogged and finished projects this year.
  • Finish the projects that are all currently on the needles (like my Wicked sweater). I don’t even remember what else was on the needles last year at this time, but I did finish the sweater. And then I realized it was too short and the sleeves were funny. And then I realized that with the previously mentioned weight loss, the sweater is too big. (See the previous post for more on this.)
• Sewing goals:
  • Finish making the quilt I have started and make a second one I already have fabric for. I have discovered that I don’t have the stamina for large quilts. Baby quilts I can handle, but something for my bed? Not so much. I did finish the halloween quilt top, though.
  • Help Kathy meet her goal of learning to sew. We didn’t do so hot on this one.
• Find a job. CHECK! Found job in February, even if it did take forever for me to get the permanent position.
• Go on a date. I put this on here because it seemed to work last time. This time, not so much. Unless I magically go on a date in the next 72 hours. Which I don’t see happening. So, yeah. Not so much.

As for the other big resolution of the year - the yarn diet - well, that didn’t go so well. I did good until about June, I think. That’s when we realized that Stitches wasn’t going to happen this year for various reasons and it kind of went to hell in a handbasket. However, I do plan to try the yarn diet again in 2009. It’s not going to be as restrictive, but I have so much yarn to use and I still have about half of my Christmas gift certificate left that should cover most of my yarn needs for a while. The big thing - no more sock yarn (with the exception of my Plucky Classics subscription). I don’t need it, especially since I haven’t been doing socks much lately.

There has been a casualty in my journey to better health. It was a sweater, the first one I knit. Back in August, I had ripped some back because I needed to fix a couple things before I would actually wear it (sleeves were too big & it was too short), but never got around to doing it.

After a discussion with Kim & Kathy during knitting today, I decided I should try on the sweater again just to make sure it still fit. And, well, it didn’t. It was kinda huge. Not so much in the front, but I had a lot of extra room in the back. I probably could have fit a small child in there with me at this point.*

RIP, Wicked.** You were a good first sweater.

In other knitting news, I finished a second beret.

Same pattern as the last - Le Slouch. Yarn was Malabrigo Worsted in Hollyhock I got for my birthday. Double chin not a requirement for successful beret wearing.

*Possibly an exaggeration, but I definitely could have fit Ziggy the Wondercat in there with me.

**There is always the chance that Wicked will get knit again, but not out of the same yarn. I learned quite a bit about the importance of dye lots with this one, too.

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday, whichever you celebrate.

We had our annual family Christmas Eve gathering this year and (as usual) it was fun. I took a veggie tray, fruit tray, and whipped up a batch of Santa’s Nuts for the party. The food was delicious - there were like three things with cheese in them! One of them also had bacon. Mmmm, bacon, cheese, & potatoes together. YUM. During our Dirty Santa gift exchange*, I wound up with a nice screwdriver/ratchet set. Because I am apparently a handywoman, I kept opening tools - my original gift was a set of drill bits. Ooooh, drill bits!

As often as there are the tool-type gifts, there’s also some girly stuff. Like bubble bath. Every year there is at least one present with bubble bath/body wash in it. Somehow, it’s always the guys in the family that wind up with the bubble bath. I joke that one year all the presents are going to be bubble bath. :)

Yesterday, I visited the family again for lunch, then came home and napped. I had a good holiday gift wise - during our exchange with the girls last week, they chipped in together to get me a yarn swift (which I SO needed), among other fun things. My dad and D (the girlfriend) got me a few small things and a generous gift certificate to my favorite LYS - enough to buy a sweater’s worth of yarn plus some.

Today I braved the crowds at Target to pick up some ornaments so I can make a yarn ball wreath for next year & picked up a copy of Mamma Mia while I was there, so I think I’ll be watching that while I relax tonight. I have also managed to de-Christmas the apartment already. I would have left it up longer, but I wanted to remove the tree from Ziggy since he keeps trying to eat it (next year the tree is going on a table of some kind).

All in all, it was a good holiday.

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Christmas Balls, originally uploaded by Star Monkeybrass.

Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and all that jazz. I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday season, whichever you celebrate. :)

Over the weekend I sat down with a couple movies and my knitting and made myself a quick and easy project. Well, quick as in I finished it less than 18 hours after I started it and still managed to work a good 8+ hours of sleep and at least one meal in there. I think it took me a total of 5-6 hours of knitting time from start to finish.

I present to you my first beret. And it fits my giant head.

I loved this project from start to finish. It was quick and easy, suited my needs for something to wear on my head while it’s super cold here, and the yarn was fantastic. The only thing I wasn’t really happy with was my cast on - I used backwards loop this time and it was a little sloppy looking.

Details:
Pattern - Le’ Slouch by Wendy Bernard (link to pdf of the pattern)
Yarn - See Jayne Knit Mercerized Wool in Green Tea (link to her etsy shop, although she is on vacation at the moment).
Needles - Used size 8 dpns, switched to my size 9 KP circs after the ribbing. Finished using magic loop (mostly because I don’t have size 9 dpns).
Notes -  This yarn is fantastic to work with. Jayne does some pretty amazing dye work and her semi-solids have quickly become some of my new favorites. The mercerized wool is machine washable and super soft. It’s also got a little bit of a shine to it. This colorway in particular was fabulous - shades of green from yellow-green to a deeper almost forest green. I used a little over 1/2 a skein for this project, I think I have enough left to make the Maine Morning Mitts, too (fingers crossed!). Love, love, love this yarn. LOVE.

I have alluded to the weekend I spent sewing up many project to get them ready for the holidays. And now that they have all been given, I can share them with you.

First up was a stocking I made for our knitting potluck/gift exchange.

I made this for Megan, who (as it turns out) didn’t have a stocking of her own and was thinking about asking me to make one for her anyway. It was kismet that it happened that way. I actually still have 2 stockings left to make this week for my Dad & his GF, I picked up some fabric for them this weekend and will work on them tomorrow evening.

The bags - for Mindy, Kim, & Kathy. I used the Birdie Sling pattern again and Amy Butler’s Swing Bag pattern for Kim’s bag. There are more pictures and details about the bags in my flickr Christmas set.

Finally, I made this CD pocket for Kathy & filled it up with some fun cds. I used the “CD Poket” tutorial found here. You might notice that it matches her bag perfectly.

I spent my weekend working on some knitting projects. Today I finally finished up the secret knitting project, which I will be able to share as soon as it reaches it’s final destination. So, yay!

Last night I drove to Festus for a hair appointment. I left with a bit of a funkier cut and color than I came in with. I have purple highlights, on purpose. I wanted to do something a little different and purple came to mind. So, there’s that.

I came home from my appointment and brief trip to Target to find that, once again, Mr. Ziggy vomited on my floor. Third time this week. He is acting completely fine, even running around and playing, other than the vomit. On Day 1, there were bits of my Christmas tree in it. Bits of my ARTIFICIAL Christmas tree. But he also tends to snarf his food when he gets it. So I figure he is either eating too fast, has a hairball trying to work it’s way free, or might be trying to expel more bits of tree. Whatever it is, I took his food away last night and will slowly start reintroducing it to him to make sure that it isn’t something he’s eating at the moment causing a problem. In the meantime, I will be borrowing Mindy’s carpet shampooer again and doing some carpet cleaning. I think I might need to get one of my own soon. Oy.

This has been my week.

Tonight, however, is the gift exchange between the girls, so I’m excited about that. We’ll also be gorging on Chinese food and watching the Muppets holiday thing that was on tv Wednesday while we were knitting. I may finish the secret knitting project this weekend, although I will not be mailing it until after Christmas at this point.