Remember my mentioning I wanted to knit a scarf for myself before this winter… Well I gave in and went to the local yarn store on Friday afternoon. I was completely surprised at the selection, the store was much bigger than I thought it would be! I actually had to go to the store twice because I was supposed to be somewhere and couldn’t decide the first time I stopped in…

I hardly know anything about knitting, except the basics like how to cast on, knit, purl, and bind off. Other than that my knitting knowledge is very limited, so I have no idea if the yarn I bought is really meant to be used for a scarf but I love the feel and texture of it. I didn’t even notice until I got it home that it is actually 100% cotton (again I know nothing about yarn/knitting, but this is the first time I have seen cotton yarn).

It is so soft and lovely and I love the colors I bought:) I actually started knitting it using a little pattern I made up in my head, but decided that I would really rather just do a straight basic knit so I didn’t have to think much while knitting. So after putting in about 30 rows, I ripped it back out and started over (the picture is after ripping it out). Now if I can actually finish it before winter starts! :)

Homemade apple pie baked from scratch by Ben…

He baked it on Saturday and it made it really seem like fall, with a slight chill in the air and the smell of apple pie baking. Could a Saturday afternoon get any better? :) It tasted delicious (tasted – because there is hardly any of it left:)!

Do you ever spend a bunch of time working on something, think halfway through that you are not sure it is worth it, finish it and then know it wasn’t worth it (but still try to convince yourself that maybe it was)? That was my day yesterday… I have a lot of crafting/sewing books that sit on my bookshelf, opened occasionally for inspiration but hardly ever used for the projects within. So yesterday I decided that it would be fun to try a project out of one of those books. For some reason I picked the “In Stitches” Apron….

It turned out nice, although the directions had you put it together in not the smartest way ever in my opinion. I followed the directions anyways, causing me to halfway through wish I had never read the directions and just put it together the way I would have thought it went together. (Has anyone else made this apron & felt the same way? Maybe it is just me though… I seem to hate patterns unless it is one I make:)

Anyways all that work and I don’t even think I like it on…

Oh well!

Oh and that photo above of Axel, it just seemed to fit this entry… :)

Anna did a little giveaway on her blog a couple weeks ago, and by the time I commented 200+ people had already left comments. Needless to say, I didn’t think for one moment that I would win anything, especially when I checked and saw that she had over 800 people comment in total… Imagine my surprise when I read a little comment from Regina (if you don’t read Regina’s blog, you really should!) saying she noticed I had won some fabric! What fabric is that I wondered? Oh Anna’s giveaway! Oh my:)

My favorite out of the pile of 10 fabrics she sent (all designed by her for FreeSpirit Fabrics, if you didn’t already know), the brown with multi-colored dots. So very cute!

My poor sewing machine has been a bit neglected the past few days… I had grand plans for sewing this week, but then yesterday I decided to knit on the never ending blanket I have been working on for um, *over 3 years I think*… Then today, I decided I had to knit a scarf for myself before winter! So I went to the craft stores and didn’t find a single bit of yarn I liked… I might have to try the local needleworks store to see if they have nicer yarn… Or I might just decide to give up the silly notion of knitting myself a scarf that I may or may not even finish in the next year (glancing at above record). Maybe I should go back to the original plans for doing some sewing:)

Thanks by the way for your very sweet comments on the photos I posted on Monday! It made my day:)

Oh and my husband definitely deserves a major thanks for the help he gave with the swap. I was going to manually assign people swap partners and as I mentioned in the last post he made me a program to store everyone’s data, assign swap partners, and generate a letter that put in people’s names/addresses so I could click & email everyone. Pretty amazing and sweet! Thanks Ben (you are seriously the best software engineer ever:).

Reading back through this post, I feel a bit boring… maybe it is just from feeling tired? I hope so… Tomorrow I will try to get some sewing in so I have something fun to post:)