refreshed

I had an amazing weekend! We drove up to Buffalo on wednesday, and got in by 9:30PM which was nice. We had a great thanksgiving dinner with my mom and step father, which I helped cook. I love making thanksgiving dinner!

Friday afternoon, after breakfast with my dad and step mother, my hubby and I drove up to Niagara on the Lake, in Ontario, Canada. We hit a few wineries (Peller, Reif and Inniskillin), tasted and bought some wine, and met up with my friend Kristi and her fiance Mike. We stayed at the Oban Inn, an amazing inn right in town. We ate dinner there, and had an incredbile meal and great wine. Ok, maybe a little too much wine (is there such a thing?!). Saturday morning, we had breakfast and went our separate ways. Nathan and I hit a few more wineries (Jackson-Triggs and Hillebrand) for more tastes and buying. After hitting 5 wineries, we ended up buying a grand total of 17 bottles of wine. We really need a wine cellar.

Needless to say I didn't get much knitting done. We had way too much fun, and I only got 4 rows of Celia's alphabet sweater done. It was well worth it, and I look forward to drinking the wine.

Now we're home, and Celia ended up getting Pinkeye somehow. She's all congested and sneezy, so I'm guessing she just rubbed the snot in her eye again, seems to do that every so often. Lucky me gets to take her to the doctor in the morning for antibiotics. At least I get to sleep in a little. And this will give me time to do laundry...but I really wanted to work! Soon I should have an access code so I can work from home, but it's not done yet. I love being at a computer job and not in the lab. Bioinformatics is easy to do from home. Bench work, not so much.

Pictures!

I'm finally posting pics of my recent projects. First, I'm showing what I got in the mail today, from my secret pal! I got a package from canada, and inside was this:

A beautiful handmade scarf and a bottle of perfume. So pretty! I can't wait to wear the scarf, it looks so warm!


And this, is the christmas stocking that I made for Celia.



This is a sweater, that I made for Nathan's cousin Becky's daughter. She's 3 months old, and just adorable!


I'm so glad that I'm finally getting things off of my needles!

almost there...

I've been trying to finish some of my ongoing WIPs before the holidays. I have a cardigan I'm making for Nathan's cousin's baby (who was born and I really need to get the sweater to!), and a sweater for Celia that if I don't finish soon she won't be able to wear. I'm almost done with the last front piece on the cardigan and will hopefully get it finished tonight. And I'm hoping to finish the alphabet sweater for Celia so she can wear it soon! She's having portraits taken on Dec 2nd, and I"d love to have some taken of her in this sweater. We'll see how the weekend goes!

busy weekend

We had our first of several holiday dinners this weekend, our neighbors all got toghether to celebrate before things get crazy and we run out of time. I made turkey, stuffing and yams, and everyone else took care of the rest. It was a lot of fun, but made for a knitting-free weekend.

I saw my SPs website, and she got my second package and liked it! It's so much fun to give like this! I'm trying to decide what to give her for her last package...so many choices!

I still haven't received anything from my person, but did get an e-mail saying that she got it back damaged. I'm trying to be patient and hopefully everything will work out. I think this will be my last SP for a while.

stocking

And I've already reached the heel flap! This will be done in no time. To celebrate, I started another pair of socks last night.

I got in my Knit Picks order, some for my SP and some for me (couldn't pass up the chance to add a bit for free shipping), and I got this beautiful "sangria" color of Andean Silk. It's amazingly soft, and I already have a sweater in mind for Celia. I love knitting baby clothes, they go so fast!

And on a non-knitting note, I found out this morning that a paper we've been trying to get published for a while now is going into PLOS-Pathogen. Yay! Now I"ve got 5 publications (granted I'm way down on the author list, but that doens't matter to me!).

FO and new WIP

I finally finished my daughter's bolero from the Debbie Bliss book, and it is adorable! It really turned out great, I was so pleased. We're taking my daughter to Celebrity Portrait Kids studio for holiday photos in December, and she's definitely wearing this sweater in one of the poses. And I bought a cute denim skirt from babygap, with a lace trim on the bottom, it will be really cute with the bolero. I'll have to take a pic tonight if I remember.

And I started a Christmas stocking for Celia too. I'm about 4 inches down on it, thankfully it's a quick knit!

hat!

Last christmas, I finished my first project for my daughter, a light purple hat. It was way too big for her last year (I didn't do gauge swatch), but fits her perfectly this year. I put it on her last week, and she went out the door with it on, saying "hat!". When I picked Celia up from day care, her teacher said "don't forget the hat!", I guess Celia had it on all morning, and refused to let anyone take it off. It was cold again this morning, so she had her hat on when she left the house. Nathan said that he left her at day care, happily sitting in a high chair with her hat on. That made my day!