Happy 2012!

Hello my friends! It has been long time since I was here with you. I hope you all had a blessed Christmas and New Year. We did not do much to celebrate the New year. Just after Christmas we picked up a flu bug from a relative. It was not your typical flu bug as it took some of us out of comission for up to five days. Needless to say our New Years eve was quiet, we all went to bed early.
Thankfully everyone is recovered and back to their normal schedules now.

Leading up to Christmas I was extreemly busy with preperations for the holidays, which included finishing up Christmas gifts. Regretably I  am unable to share photos of the gifts I made or my current projects. Lord willing I'll be able to share some pictures in the near future.

Now that the rUsh and busyness of making Christmas projects is past, I feel like I can relax and breathe again. However that is not completely the case as I have some comissioned knitting to finish up this week.
I'm excited to be back at my winter knitting/spinning projects. I have 2 pounds of walnut dyed alpaca calling my name! I still need to card it all up and then spin it. I would like to do the carding and spinning yet this winter. my other large project is my bed quilt. Sizing is somewhere between full and a queen. I have been working on appliqueing a vine all the way around my first border. I finished that just yesterday and I was able to pin on all the previously prepared leaves. Turning under the edges of the leaves and basting them was quite the time-consuming pocess. I am thankful that I got them all prepped late summer/early fall. There are thirty four leaves total. As of this morning I only have 2 leaves appliqued. I need to get a move on or I will take a month to applique the leaves! I am planning on quilting by hand with perle cotton, #8.

In knitting I am currently working on the "Tibetan Clouds Beaded Stole" by Sivia Harding. The pattern is found in the Knitter's Book of Wool. For Christmas my sister kindly gave me 5 skeins of Knit Pick's "Gloss", fingering weight in the Masala colorway. Masala is a rich, pumpkin spice color. And as such I have decided to name my project the Pumpkin Spice Stole. I have made it as far as Chart B and am about ready to switch from dpns to circulars.

That about catches you all up on what I have been working on lately. I'm off to make a spot o' tea and have some lunch. It a grey, gloomy sort of day, with rain in the forcast. The perfect sort of day for hunkering down by the fire with tea and some knitting.
I pray you have a bessed day, my friends!