It's all about Color...

Nine and a half years ago when we bought this house I painted the very pink master bedroom in taupe with an off-white accent on the molding. Apparently the taupe thing was a passing phase and I was over it two years into our ownership. While taupe is still very popular with my friends and decorators, I need more saturated colors in my house. Colors that are vibrant and can be paired with silver accessories. I would have liked to have repainted it many years ago, however, having just painted most of the house in those first two years I wasn't really in the mood to revisit it. DH and I spent many years discussing colors and settled on purple. So for the last five years I have been collecting paint chips. Fast-forward to early December when I finally decided the time has come to paint this room along with rearranging the furniture and removal of the very pink rug. We settled on two colors of purple and Friday morning, the day after Christmas we headed to the big box home store and bought the paint. Friday evening I had one side of the room painted. Saturday I painted another two and a third walls of the room. We are working around the furniture in the room since we really don't have a great place to move a King size bed and four dressers. The cats aren't quite sure what to make of this development. All I can say is the color is a huge improvement and DH agrees. 

Merry Christmas

Well it has finally arrived, barreling quickly from the Thanksgiving holidays and before we know it Holiday season will be behind us and there will be a long 3+ months before we hit the next one. :) So now I have a week and a half to enjoy life. Tomorrow we will enjoy unwrapping the presents with my folks. This next week I have some painting lined up for the master bedroom in preparation for removing the last of the carpet in this house. The cats will hate this but it will make cleaning up the fur-devils or fur-tumbleweeds so much easier. Thankfully when the house was built nice hardwoods were installed upstairs. Downstairs the nice hardwood was installed with the thought of carpeting and we have nails all over the place in well odd spots. Then it is off to purchase cabinets for the dining room. Think built in side board. Finally we are adding more storage so we can maybe find the kitchen again.

Hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas and that Santa brings you something fun to enjoy for the coming year!

Noro Scarf

Pattern - Noro Scarf
Yarn - Noro Silk Garden 264
Noro Kureyon 153
Needles and size - Addi Turbo US 6

It’s complete. This scarf takes 4 balls of yarn and is knit in 1x1-rib over 49 stitches.

For more inspiration

Noro Guy Scarf

Pattern - Noro Scarf
Yarn - Noro Kureyon 149 and 172
Needles and size - Addi Turbo US 6

After finishing the first Noro scarf I headed off to the LYS to buy some yarn in a more guy color way. Although I did have a guy tell me how much he liked the colors in my scarf and he would wear it…one has to understand that most of the Noro color ways have pink, magenta, or fuchsia in the mix and I can guarantee you that DH will not be wearing those colors no way no how. So now complete, wrapped and under the tree we have the Noro Guy Scarf with 4 skeins of yarn in 1x1-rib over 39 stitches. Total time to knit is around 30 hours.

Previous post on this topic

Christmas is almost here...

Meet Hobbes he belongs to my sisters family, where we spent the weekend celebrating my BIL's graduation from college, shopping, and celebrating an early Christmas.

The tree was all decked out for the woodland fest and the finishing touches were made to the house for the upcoming festivities. We watched the kids while Sis and BIL climbed on the roof to finish hanging the lights. It was a fun weekend!

On the previous weekend we got our tree up and unlike my sister, who has ornaments all the way down to the floor on the tree even with kids and cats, we just don’t take the chance and it looks like we have young kids since the decorations start at about 2 feet from the floor and go up. The cats love this time of year as now they have a great spot to hide and pounce on whatever happens by the tree. Yes the tree goes down to the floor quite nicely. Three years ago we gave up on the tree skirt; it never stayed under the tree anyway.

Tonight when I came home I found that one of the kitties had left his toy under the tree. Perhaps to entice one of the other cats closer for pouncing practice or perhaps they had other mischievous ploys in mind.

Most people know I love all things cat and so we have several for the tree.

Here are a few of my cat ornaments...

that I have acquired over the years.

“These little ones are mice. …
These over here are hamsters. …
Ooh! This must be a gerbil!”

May the season
be filled with sweet surprises.

--Gary Larson (The Far Side)

Inspiration

Last year a friend blogged about a hoodie-scarf that her daughter had seen at Anthropologie. It was definitely a cool looking idea. While visiting my sister we went to the Whole Nine Yarns and I came across the most incredibly soft yarn from Misti Alpaca (yarn in the middle). I thought this would be perfect for making a hoodie-scarf and bought 2 skeins. I later determined that I would need at least 3 skeins to make this a reality so had my Mom pick up another skein in December 2007.

Skip ahead to last week when it got really cold here and it just seemed like it was time to knit this project up. I knew that with Alpaca I couldn’t use a complicated cable pattern and lace really isn’t ideal for warmth so I went with a one stitch wandering cable that worked really well on another alpaca sweater that I made a few years ago. This should be finished in the next week unless I have to order a fourth skein. I did source a place that has this yarn in stock in the color sage I need.

The next inspiration was just plain hard to ignore. I love Noro silk garden color ways, and so while at the Cast on Cottage this time I looked to see what color was going to jump in the bag (color 264), thinking scarf. I have a sweater that I made several years ago and it just gets softer with wear. Well within a week of buying this yarn the Yarn Harlot writes a blog on this 1x1 rib scarf using Noro silk garden only darn I need an additional color to add to the one I bought. I also checked out the links she provided. So since it will be another 3 weeks before I am anywhere close to my source for silk garden I journeyed down to my LYS, took the silk garden and matched it up with a Kureyon color 153 and cast on using 49 stitches and size 6 needles. It’s cold and yes never mind that there are two other items I WAS working on but these projects were just calling out that they had to be made NOW.

The 1x1 rib is going really quickly and since the color changes are interesting it keeps it from turning into a slog fest like some ribbing can become. So as you can see things are moving along and this should be done soon too.

In the first picture to the right I picked up some Malabrigo silky merino yarn in a similar color way to the Noro silk garden. Eventually these will become fingerless gloves. But I think I will finish my Walkame tunic and Autumn in New York shawl first. :)

Yes it is cold the cats have taken to the fleece!

Red, Orange, Gold...

Fog rolls in as colder weather is about to come our way,


Leaves are falling, the color change about done,


Red, orange, gold as one by one they fall.

Anne Woodbury Socks

Anne Woodbury Socks
Pattern - In Interweave Favorite Socks
Yarn - Pagewood Farms St. Elias
Color - Bird of Paradise
Needles and size - Addi Turbos US 2

This was a quick to knit pair of socks done in a soft wool of Bluefaced Leicester with Nylon for strength. In the photo I turned one of the pairs on the sock blocks so you could see the pattern on the top (same for back) of the sock.

What am I working on...

Autumn in New York, another BadCat Designs Knit-a-long that should yield a short triangular shawl. This is being knit in Noro Kueryon Sock yarn. Also on the needles is the Walkame Lace Tunic by Angela Hahn and found in the Summer Interweave magazine.

Fall Hike

Today we went for a hike in the woods behind the house. We are fortunate that we have a large park behind us with lots of trails so lots of chances for exploring and seeing what this past week's freeze may have brought us in the way of plant and tree colors.

As you can see the creek system is still dry and the wild blue asters are still in glorious bloom on the trails. We are seeing lots of what we call "Brain Balls" from the Osage Orange tree (or other names: Bodarc (Bois D'arc) and Bow-Wood (Toxylon pomiferum)). It’s a beautiful tree but don’t park your car under this tree. :)

Fall is coming to the Mountains. Happy Fall!

Lazy Friday