knit purses

I made these two purses for my sisters for Christmas. They're made with Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick and Quick on size 13 needles. The green purse is made with the Grass color and the blue purse is made with the Sky Blue color. I really like working with this yarn...it's thick a spongy and I think it looks great with a simple stockinette stitch.

For the purses, I cast-on 36 stitches and knitted a 15" x 18" rectangle. This pattern is loosely based on the purse pattern in Hollywood Knits Style, but instead of wrapping the knitted stockinette portion over the handles, I tied the knitting to the handles by winding the yarn around the handles. The purse used just about one ball of yarn.

The handles on the blue purse are made by Clover and were purchased at a local yarn store and the black handles are from Joanns.

ruffle scarf

I discovered this novelty "yarn" on a sample scarf at my local yarn store and picked up a few skeins to make a scarf for my cousin for her Christmas birthday. It's Online Linie 194 Solo yarn in color #11 (red/orange) and comes wound in a tight ball, so you have to separate the yarn and flatten it out before knitting with it. The yarn took a little bit of time to get used to working with and kept twisting around as I worked with it, but other than that this was a quick knit with great results.

I used three skeins of yarn and size 8 needles in a garter stitch pattern with 8 stitches on each row. The scarf is about 50" long, but is very stretchy.

The other gift I found for my cousin was this super cute journal that reminds me of the monster book Hagrid assigned for the Care of Magical Creatures in Harry Potter. Kari loves Harry Potter and writing in journals, so I thought it would be a perfect fit.

criss cross coasters

There was lots of holiday crafting going on in our house during November and December! I'll be sharing the finished gifts here in the next week.

First up are these criss-cross coasters that I made - a set for my grandma and a set for Jon's mom. I found the tutorial at allsorts and she's got lots of other cute little tutorials to try out on her site also.

I had a few fatalities in the corners of some of the coasters when I was flipping them inside-out (too vicious with the chopstick and poked holes in the corners), but I was able to re-sew the corners to hide the evidence. I'm definitely going to be making some more of these - maybe one day when I get around to making placemats, napkins and a table runner for our kitchen table.

and they're finished!

I love these stitchettes and I think they're so cute, but I am so glad that I've finished stitching all of them up! What a relief!

Here are the final four that I've finished over this holiday break week:



Georgia Grows

Oliver Observes

Miles' Mother's Day

Ruby Ricochets

And, the hero shot with all 16 stitchettes together:

Now, onto the quilt!

Merry Christmas!

It wouldn't be Christmas around here without Peanut Butter Bon Bons.

Here's the recipe for this festive little treat we make every year:

1 cup Peanut Butter

1 cup Butter

2 cups Confectioner's Sugar

4 cups Rice Krispies

12oz package of Chocolate chips or bits

Melt butter and add peanut butter. Stir until melted on low heat. In a large bowl mix Rice Krispies and confectioner's sugar. Pour in peanut butter mixture and mix with hands. Form into 1 inch balls and place on waxed paper. Refrigerate until firm. Melt chocolate bits in double boiler or microwave. Dip half the cookie in melted chocolate. Place back on waxed paper and refrigerate until chocolate hardens. After dipping in chocolate, they can be dipped into colorful sprinkles, chopped nuts, etc.

yummy marshmallows!

Design*sponge had a little video tutorial on marshmallow-making last Wednesday and after stocking up on corn syrup and sugar, I decided to give the recipe a try. I used the recipe from readymade magazine featured in the video and added vanilla for extra flavor. The first batch was ruined because I didn't mix it long enough, but the second batch came out just right and I've been munching on them ever since.

Let me tell you...these things are absolutely delicious! I am not a fan of marshmallows whatsoever - I can manage one melted marshmallow on a s'more once or twice a summer and that's about it (I really only eat them for the chocolate). I'm not going to own up to how many of things tasty little things I've eaten in the past two days...they are so good and taste nothing like the packaged marshmallows from the store. You've definitely got to try a homemade marshmallow (or two or three) yourself!

big bright light show

Jon and I took a spontaneous little road trip to downtown Rochester, MI, my hometown, on Friday night. Last year, they started this Christmas light spectacular called the "Big Bright Light Show" which decorated the downtown shops with 500,000 lights. This year was bigger and better with twice the lights and twice as many decorated buildings. It was quite the sight! While we both would have preferred downtown Rochester to be turned into a quaint Dicken's Christmas town, the continuous stream of lights for blocks on end were quite amazing to see in person. It's definitely brought tons of business to the downtown area and revitalized a lot of the stores. Red Knapps got our business when we treated ourselves to one of their tasty chocolate malts!

We've been trying to think of some Christmas and winter things that we shouldn't miss out on, so it was nice to get out and see some lights this year before Christmas. We've got three more months of winter to do all of those other crazy outdoor activities: sledding, ice skating, snowboarding/skiing and igloo building (Jon's idea) later this winter if we can brave the cold.