Ten on Tuesday

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know there was a BIG Powerball jackpot this weekend. I generally don't play, but when the jackpot gets big, I'll buy a few tickets just for fun. Except for this weekend when I forgot to buy a ticket! As the saying goes, you can't win if you don't play. So play I do when the prize is big and then we have some fun dreaming about what we'd do with the money.This week's 10 on Tuesday prompt is:

 10 Things I'd Do if I Won the Big Powerball Jackpot

1. Tell nobody!  Except my husband, of course.
2. Hire somebody to clean my house for me.  I love my home, but some days I feel like I am a slave to it.  Paid help would be awesome!
3. Meet with our financial advisor and attorney.
4. Pay off the house.
5.  Set up educational funds for my kids who still need it, my niece and nephew.
6. Buy my dad a new car. I don't think he has ever had a new car and that would be fun to do for him.
7. Go on a luxury vacation in Italy.  It's one of a few places that Tom and I would both love to visit.
8. Buy a vacation home, somewhere away from it all.... :-)
9. Do something fun, like restore an old home that's fallen by the wayside to it's former glory.
10. Make some anonymous charitable donations.

That's a little bit of the fun that I would have.  What would you do?  Visit Carole's Blog too and see what other people would do too.

A Finishing Fest

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged, and I've been busy looking back at what's been on my needles. I've decided to finish a few things and to let go of a few things. So let me show you what I've finished!

This Tulips Sweater may be the cutest darn thing I've ever made! I made it for my sweet niece who turned 1 last month.  I did purchase a kit from Webs so that I didn't have to buy full skeins of 8 colors but I didn't like the color that they chose for the border.  I was able to get a skein of Cool Fire at Spinning Yarns to substitute and I loooove the end result :-)

The only thing that I didn't love about the kit was the pattern.  Honestly, I found it to be poorly written and I would not recommend it for a beginning knitter.  To be honest, I'm not sure if it's the original pattern that's included in the kit or if it was reformatted to fit on one page for the kits and "stuff" got left out.  But I did more ripping back and reworking on this sweater than I think you should have to.

Next, I had a request from my Bama Boy to make a hat for his friend Ashley.  Apparently she loves the hat I made for him for Christmas and was constantly "borrowing" it.  Her birthday is next weekend and they are going skiing in Colorado this week for Spring Break.  She was pretty excited when he received his care package this week and there was a hat in it for her.  Happy Birthday Ashley!

I needed a new pair of mittens this winter.  I had intended to make myself a few pairs this year, but my time got sucked up by the hockey hats.  When I finished those, the first thing I did was finish these Fallow Mittens that I had started for myself.  I used Madelinetosh Vintage in the color Norway Spruce.  I wasn't able to get a good picture of the color, they are more green than this picture shows.  I love them! They are by far the most comfortable and best fitting mittens I've made for myself.  The pattern also has instructions for making them as fingerless mitts too.

Last finished project is my Hamantaschen socks.  The pattern is from the October 2012 Cookie A Sock Club.  I started these in October with the Hazel Knits October Club yarn, Artisan Sock in Sandlewood.

I was glad to have a finished pair of socks.  I hadn't finished a pair in 10 weeks!  I signed up for the 26 Pair Plunge and this is pair #9.  The plunge ends June 30th. I don't think there's any way that I can finish another 17 pairs by then, but I do intend to keep going and see how many I do finish.  There's always next year too :-)

I hope you're enjoying some Spring weather.  We still have lots of snow in NH!  Warmer weather is on the way next week.  I'm looking forward to it and doing some spring cleaning!

Mission Accomplished!

The Great Brady Hat Challenge is complete!

It all started with this hat...

A simple hat with earflaps, in school colors that looks like his hockey jersey, complete with his number on the back.

And then in January I began the challenge to knit hats for the entire team.  Some of these I've already shared, but I thought it would be fun to see them all together.  So here they are....

The seniors.... Thomas, Craig, Carter, and Casey.

The juniors... Mike, Shelby, Birdie, Nick, Brandon, & Derek.

Next up was Pickles.

Somewhere along the way when the kids were trying to guess who was getting the next hat, I told them that if they scored in a game and didn't have a hat yet, they would go to the to of the hat queue.  In the next game...

Spenser scored!

and so did Zach!

Next up were the Andrew's... Andrew Y and Andrew C

Then it was Brendan's turn

then Matt's

And last, but certainly not least Michael and Byron.

So there you have it. 20 hats!  19 of them knit between January 7th and February 23.  I really was not sure that I could get it done, but each hat that I finished made me more determined to finish all of them before the end of the season.  I know the kids love them.  I see them around the rink, waiting on the bus, and a couple other times around town.  A few parents have told me that their kids wear them ALL the time, and one dad told me that "if it made sense to wear it in the shower, he would wear it then too!"  Is there anything that warms a knitters heart more than knowing their hand-knits are this loved?  This ended up being such a fun and rewarding challenge for me.  I'm so glad I did it!  Thank you to all of you for cheering me on too :-)