Updates from Turkey Week

Hi everyone! I hope that you had a fantastic Thanksgiving last week, or just a fantastic Thursday if you are not into Thanksgiving. 

Fortunately I am finally over my nasty cold, but unfortunately I gifted it to my dear boyfriend, who subsequently missed three days of work and was sick on Thanksgiving. He usually never gets sick, but the combination of stress from work and living with someone with practically no immune system finally took its toll.

For the next couple of weeks, I may only get in a little post, or no post at all. Finals are coming up, and I have many papers I need to write and tests I need to study for. I also really need to finish up Christmas present making/shopping, so that, homework, and work will probably take up a good chunk of my time.

This long weekend was AWESOME! I did not have school for about a week, I got to spend time with my wonderful  family, and Brandon and I got the Christmas tree up and decorated. 

My gorgeous nephew

<3

My beautiful sisters and Mama

Yep, this pretty much sums up my family :)

Our first Christmas tree!

With all of these days off I got a lot of knitting done. I have not started anything new, but I got two projects done and worked more on a third.

Works in Progress

Still Brandon's scarf- but I got a few more inches done on it. I told him it might not be done by Christmas- I am just so sick of scarves! :P

Finished Projects

1) I finally finished that damn headband thingy for my sister. I will not be using that pattern again, I do not think. And I discovered with this project and Brandon's scarf that I am not a huge fan of Knitpicks Brava. It is a nice, soft acrylic, but I hate working with it. Maybe it is just the way that I knit, but the yarn seems like it is over-twisted, and it is not much fun to work with.

Here is the finished headband. I ended up having to tack down the sides of the cable so that it would lie flat, but I think that it looks pretty nice. Sorry about the not-so-nice photo: I already gave the headband to my sister, so I did not get a chance to take a better picture.

2) I also finished my grandma's scarf, finally. I will also not be using that yarn again, but since it is just the recycled yarn from a sweater that I bought for three dollars I am not that upset about it. I used the yarn doubled, so I ended up using about 650 yards altogether. By the end of the scarf I was sick of knitting it, so I powered through about ten inches of speed knitting in one night.

I also added some fringe at the end, to use up some more of the yarn.

Stash Enhancement

I have managed to do so well as far as not buying yarn goes, but Black Friday and Cyber Monday totally did me in this year. I got Brandon to buy me seven skeins of yarn from the Knitpicks sale yesterday (as a Christmas present) and then I bought three more. And I also purchased some fiber from a Black Friday sale on Etsy. Over all I only spent about fifteen dollars, so I am not feeling a lot of buyer's remorse. I will be posting pictures once the lovelies arrive.

Good luck to anyone working on finals in the next couple weeks, and I hope that everyone is having a great Tuesday!

-Nicole

P.S.

I just found out as I was finishing this post that one of my favorite bloggers and podcasters, Karrie (AKA Knitpurlgurl) passed away yesterday. This is so, so sad, and my thoughts are going out to her family. :-(