Tag Archives: friends

Feb20

Girls Gone Crafty

Posted on by
Standard

On Friday I shared that I was going away with some friends to Autumn House Farms for a girls get away craft weekend. We were to stay at The Shepherd’s Rest on the property of the farm. The weekend turned into so much more than just a weekend away with some of my friends to knit and paint bird houses.

20120220-171959.jpg

20120220-172247.jpg

Yes, we drank wine and ate Girl Scout Cookies.
20120220-172422.jpg

Yes, we acted silly and took silly pictures, we acted like a typical group of girls do when they are together (even girls in their 30s).

20120220-172554.jpg
(We drove through Punxsutawney, PA so we had to get a picture with a ground hog.)

But the weekend turned into so much more than all that. It was a weekend that made you think. Think about what is really important in life, think about what kind of life you want to lead, think about what kind of person you want to be. This was all because of our host at the farm Harriet Knox. She was such an incredible woman that I will dedicate a separate post to her tomorrow. She not only taught us about life but also about running a sheep farm and wool mill which I think we will also save to talk about later this week.

So for today I’ll just show you some highlights of the farm.

20120220-173121.jpg
This is The Shepherd’s Rest where we stayed…it’s the guest house on the farm and was built in the 1860′s. It was rustic but beautiful with beautiful antiques throughout the house where ever you turned. We will also save the antiques for another day because that could be a post in its self.

20120220-173327.jpg
Barb and Mouse the lamb we all got to hold.

20120220-173447.jpg

20120220-173550.jpg

20120220-175339.jpg
The carding house….more about that this week.

20120220-175543.jpg
This is a line of their yarn…is there any wonder why I love these people if they name their yarn after coffee.

20120220-175803.jpg
The barns on the property.

20120220-180207.jpg
Not only can you clothe your family in garments made with knitting needles but they make great decorations.

As I mentioned I will be continuing to write about my weekend for the rest of the week because there was just too much to put in one post. So please check back in with me because I have so much more to share about this incredible place. If you would like to hear another perspective of the weekend check out my friend Anne’s blog. She joined us this weekend and is excited to share her experience so take a jaunt over to her site at:All About the Beez

Feb16

Girls Gone Wild

Posted on by
Standard

When: This Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon

Who: Myself and 4 (suppose to be 5, we’ll miss you Sarah) of the most wonderful people I know

Where: Autumn House Farm and Shepherd’s Rest House

What: These crafts:

20120216-201917.jpg

20120216-200142.jpg

20120216-200158.jpg

The projects are as follows: one knit jumper, several wooden bird houses to be painted by girls attending, needle felted Christmas ornaments, knit lace socks, knit picture frame and silk flower hair pins and knit flower hair pins.

Why: Because we have amazing husbands or roommates who will watch our children and cats so we can go away and relax!

I’m super excited about this trip. I’ve been looking forward to it for months. One project I’m particularly excited about working on are the socks I’m going to knit out of my Misty Alpaca Sock Yarn. It looks like this:

20120216-200758.jpg

It’s pretty knitalicious if you ask me! (It’s a little brighter and prettier than the picture shows)

I will be sure to write about the weekend and it’s prodcutivness later!

Feb8

31

Posted on by
Standard

I turned 31 years old today. Normally I’m super excited about my birthday, really it should be a national holiday with banks, schools and post offices closed but I’ve yet to convince anyone else of that. Anyway, this year my family has all been sick for weeks and along with a lot of other things going on in life I just wasn’t as excited about it. Maybe it was also because last year was such a big year, it’s not that I didn’t want my birthday to come…it was just that I was sort of indifferent. A few times I brought it up with people and tried to make a big deal of it like I usually do just because I felt I should because that is what I always so! Anyway, I ended up having a perfectly lovely day and I’m left with a feeling of contentment and satisfaction. I would like to high light 31 things now that made my day special.
1. My husband
2. My daughter, who may have been more excited about my day than I was
3. It snowed one of the most beautiful snows I’ve seen in a long time
4. Chai Lattes bought for me and drunk with me by a friend
5. Getting to go to my young mother’s bible study
6. Warm fuzzy socks that felt amazing after I left the house without socks because I didn’t know it was going to snow (Did you catch that Mom?)
7. My daughter and I blowing raspberries on each other for so long this afternoon I got light headed
8. Having lunch with a wonderful bunch of friends
9. Have 5 little 2 year olds color me pictures for my birthday
10. Receiving a candy bar from California from a friend who got 15 of them in the mail
11. Chai Cheesecake
12. My husband baked me a birthday cake
13. Over 100 messages from people on Facebook
14. The handy little keyboard I got for my iPad that I am currently typing on
15. Knitting in my favorite coffee shop
16. Amazing peanut butter cookies
17. Gorgeous hand cut birthday card with knitting needles on
18. So many beautiful comments and sentiments from so many friends and family
19. My husband stayed with Ella during nap so I could have some Me time
20. Cheese danish for breakfast
21. Starbucks gift cards are such a great gift!
22. 5 little 2 year olds who kept saying Happy Birthday and hugging me
23. A friend who is willing to babysit so Mike and I can go out to dinner
24. Birthday cards with fuzzy feather boas on them
25. Reading in my favorite coffee shop
26. Phone calls from far away friends
27. Texts messages from lots of friends
28. Free movie rental from Red Box
29. Free drink from Starbucks
30. Two parents who brought me into this world 31 years ago and still don’t regret it, plus 2 step parents and in-laws who love me like their own
31. My health and freedom and so many more blessings than so many in this world have.

To all who contributed to my day, thank you…it is one I will always remember!

Jan18

The Barter System

Posted on by
Standard

My dear friend Jess is a teacher at Michael’s, she teaches cake decorating and in my opinion she is pretty darn talented. So the last few years I’ve had her make me cakes for some family member’s birthdays. We decided what would be more fun than me paying her would be to trade crafts…so she makes me a cake and I knit her something. Last year I knit a hat for her daughter in return she gave me an awesome golfing cake for my Dad. This year was my Mom’s turn to get a cake and my Mom really likes penguins. So Jess made this:

Pretty awesome right?

So in return I made her these:

They are called Teak Bittersweet Gauntlets and they are from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Boutique-Knits-Laura-Irwin/dp/1596680733 .  I absolutely love this book! I’ve knit a number of projects from it and I had been wanting to knit these gloves for a while so when Jess picked them out I was super happy to get to try the pattern out. I knit them on a size 1 needle and and I used Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift in Lilac and Zodiac for the yarn. It wasn’t a hard knit, just a little time consuming because it used finger weight yarn and size 1 needles, but it had a lot of fun techniques in it so the process stayed interesting. I found it strange the the fair isle part was knit flat but we powered through that. I did run into a couple problems on the second mitt. I kept screwing up the pattern on the fair isle part of the second glove. I think I wanted to be done and started getting lazy. First I just forgot a section, ripped it out, started over, then I forgot a different section, ripped it out, started over…got to the end hallelujah! Then the  horrifying realization came…I knit two left handed gloves! GRRRRRR!!!! Ripped it out…started over…got it right! I did realize I missed one row of bobbles  back towards the beginning but I wasn’t about to go back an fix it after all that so I just did a make shift bobble after the fact…you’ve heard of an after thought heel (probably only if you’re a knitter), well I just invented the after thought bobbles! It worked…I bet you wont be able to tell which one it is! Anyway, I think the mitts came out pretty good and Jess loved them, or so she said, which is really all that matters. It makes me happy seeing the people I love wearing my knitted items, however I think I’ve had enough of these gloves so Jess, you just landed yourself a one of a kind pair of gloves! I’ll leave you with a few up close shots of the gloves and be on my merry way to work on a pair of gloves for myself!