Ten on Tuesday

It's the week after Thanksgiving, and so it's officially the Christmas season.  With that came a cold front this weekend and suddenly I. Am. Cold!  It's time to re-evaluate my mitten collection and add to it.  Again, perfect timing with 10 on Tuesday as Carole's prompt this week is:

10 Mittens/Mitts I'd Like to Make

I merely had to go to my Ravelry queue to get me started today :-)

1. Winter Wonder Mittens - I'll admit that I've already started these, but stranded colorwork and magic loop are not a god combination for me.  My floats are too short going from needle 1 to needle 2, so they need to be frogged and restarted with dpn's

2. Postwar Mittens - I just love these and the color combinations are endless!

3. Breathe Deep - The pattern on the hand is simple but interesting.

4. Swansea - I like the texture of these.  The bobbles remind me of little snowballs.

5.  Eugenia's Mittens - I really like the cable on these.

6. Cloisonee - A simple mitten with some fun on the cuff!

7. Snowflakes in Starry Skies Mittens - More snowflake mittens, but these have snowflakes on the palm too.

8. Green Autumn - I've loved these for a long time!  Initially I couldn't find the Vogue Knitting magazine that they were published in, but now I can get the pattern through Ravelry!

9. Genmaicha - These have been in my queue for a long time!  Maybe I'll finally get to them this year.

10. Susie Rogers' Reading Mitts - this is another pattern that I've had in my queue for a long time.  I'm thinking about making these for my book group Yankee Swap.  I think they'd be perfect!

Honorable Mention - I just had to add one more, Clepsydra.  I've actually made these once before, but the yarn I substituted had a really different row gauge so they ended up ridiculously too long.  I'd like to try them again with a different yarn and a little more confidence to modify the length if necessary.

These are some of the mittens I'd like to make.  How about you?  If you'd like some more ideas be sure to check out the links on Carole's Blog. I expect my queue is going to grow a LOT today!

Visiting

Last weekend we went to Alabama to visit my middle son, Justin.  We had a fantastic time!  We brought our youngest son, Chandler, with us too.  He is a junior in high school and has no idea what he wants to do for college, so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do a school visit.  It gave him an idea as to what a big Division 1 school, far from home, would be like.  So we started our weekend with an official school tour Friday morning.  (Typical teenager, can't do anything without his phone :-))

Then we headed over to Justin's apartment to meet up with him.  As it turned out, all 3 of the boys that he lives and a few other kids from the waterski team had their families visiting last weekend too! The boys decided to have a party so everybody could meet.

Here's a little glimpse of his apartment.  I don't know about you, but the places I lived in as a student were no where near as nice as this!  He lives in a 4 bedroom/4 bathroom townhouse, fully applianced and furnished including a washer & dryer with utilities included to a capped amount.  It is off-campus housing that caters to students and very common in Tuscaloosa.  They also have a clubhouse with a pool, hot tub, pool tables, movie theater, fitness center, etc.  Amazing.

Anyway, it didn't take much encouragement for the moms to jump into action and start throwing some food together.  The dads manned the grills, and supervised the keg and cigars.  One set of parents came prepared to make margaritas.  After dinner, there was a rousing game of beer pong with father/son teams.  It was pretty hilarious and probably not all that different from a regular game weekend :-)

Saturday was Game Day! We headed over to the Quad to enjoy the festivities.  I have never seen anything like it!  EZ-Up tents were as far as the eye could see and they were fully decked out. Lots of food, tables decorated with tablecloths and flowers, flat screen TV's playing all the pre-game stuff, and if you can imagine it it was probably there!

The game was a lot of fun.  It was the first time that Alabama and Texas A&M had met since A&M joined the SEC Conference.  Sadly, UA lost, but it was a fun game to watch.  I really enjoyed the marching bands. This is the A&M band, who happened to be staying at the same hotel we were at.

And the UA band.  It's a little hard to make out, but they spelled out USA and played music to honor each of the branches of our military.

Here we are enjoying the game. We had great seats on the 30 yd line, 27 rows up on the visitor side.

Before the game, the band percussion section did a show on the Quad.  Here is a small section of it. I hope you enjoy it!  As a former band geek myself, I loved it!


So that was our weekend!  I had a great time, but the best part about the entire weekend was seeing my son, in his element, doing his thing and enjoying his friends. I am a lucky mom that I got to see and experience that.  It makes it a little easier to have him so far from home when I know first hand how happy he is.

WiP Wednesday

It's been a couple of weeks since I've blogged. There hasn't been as much knitting as usual going on for me. We had some storm prep to do for Hurricane Sandy, which we survived just fine fortunately. We also went to visit our son in Alabama for a few days, and while we were gone we had our wood floors refinished, so there was lots of preparation to get read for that too.  But let me show you what knitting I have been working on.

I joined the Mystery Sock KAL on SKA.  The designer is Erica Lueder who is well known for her textured patterns, especially her Harry Potter themed patterns.  This is Moody's Secret Stockings.  I'm just about finished with clue 2.  Clue 3 will be out tomorrow.

I'm also working on one of the patterns from Cookie's October Sock Club shipment.  I'm using one of the Hazel Knits October colors for this pattern and saving the club yarn for the other pattern.

I'm just about finished the body of Lilianna.  I'll be binding the body off tonight and starting on the sleeves.  Hopefully the next time you see this it will be a FO.

I have about 4" to go to finish the first sleeve of Vodka Gimlet.  And again, hopefully the next time you see this it will also be a FO.

So that's what's on my needles this week!  How about you?