apple mint salad

Fresh green salad with pistachios and apples with a lemon, mint & gin dressing — this is really good with leftover turkey. The original recipe calls for turkey, but this is a good green salad on its own and would be refreshing in the summer. I think next time I will try it with pink lady apples instead of granny smith.

december 21 — first day of winter

A bear possesses enormous strength yet generally thrives on fruit and honey. Because of their habit of hibernation during the winter months, bears can represent resurrection.

To see a bear in your dream represents independence, strength and renewal.

Bear by Reynolds Stone.

felt & glass

Pretty felt ornament tutorial from the purl bee via pinterest. — we've had a few false starts making these for the tree. We begin, and then become distracted (by trucks and getting dinner ready respectively). However, we are very enthusiastic in our intentions... I think half of crafting is just the pleasure of imagining doing something anyway.

Update: we did make a couple and ^ this lovely one is by my niece, age 6.

This is the first year we've had glass ornaments on the tree for awhile. I like my son's tree decorating style — fit as many on each branch as you can. He likes to put them in pairs according to colour.

acorn hats

Somehow or other, these have survived in a little boy's room for more than 3 months. I am not sure where the nuts went. I was thinking maybe we could save them and make some ornaments...but I feel more like appreciating them as they are. I am feeling a little craft overload — maybe too much pinterest.

baby pine trees

We got our tree last night. I don't really want to decorate it at all, it looks nice just plain in our living room. That's obviously not going to fly with the 3-year old set, though.  I have only just figured out why our trees weren't smelling like anything the last few years — we were picking small trees. I like small trees, but they don't have enough sap to smell like a tree, so we've switched back to the bigger ones.

soft grey cotton

I used to prefer harder wools, because they are elastic, don't split and don't pill — they're easier to work with. But they are also itchy. Besides, it's only cold enough for wool for a few weeks where we live. I've  started really liking cotton and linen yarns.

I've found two cottons that I really like. One is blue sky cotton which is fluffy and thick and the other is Rowan pima cotton, which is smooth and comes in a beautiful palette. This hat is pima cotton in millet. I used one and a half skeins.

bright snowflakes

I put up a simple tutorial for paper snowflakes up on windy today. We had a lot of fun making these yesterday, as school was cancelled and we were footloose and fancy free.

cabled owl gloves

This was a satisfying project — quick little fingerless gloves with a cabled owl pattern. Auggie has never been too crazy about having his hands in mittens, but he is fine with these since his fingers are free. (Top image is from my friend Lori Kiessling). My pattern notes and source below.

pear tree denim

These were inspired by Amber, who would always wear nice slouchy fingerless gloves with a long ribbed top to staff meetings. I thought that was very clever, so I added 2 extra lengths of ribbing to the top of the long striped handwarmers from the purlbee. I have a lot of 3/4 length sleeves and these keep my wrists warm. And then I can roll down the top ribbing and tuck my fingers in when it is cold (it feels a bit like those skater hoodies with the holes in the cuffs).

These are pear tree merino yarn from australia in a denim colour way. I added in a few extra stitches as I found these knitted up a little small (but I knit tightly).

It took me almost 4 months to make these — I just carry my knitting around and get in a few stitches here and there.