Merry Christmas!

Last weekend we visited a Christmas light show at Botanica, Wichita's city gardens. There were light shows set to music, luminaria-lined pathways through the woods, cookies and hot cider, and, of course, lights everywhere!

Wichita has many bronze sculptures throughout historic Old Town, many neighborhoods, and in the city garden. Last year, some knitters wrapped some downtown sculptures with scarves. They all disappeared, hopefully to someone who needed them for warmth!

Stowaway!

Wishing you all warmth, good cheer and the Blessings of Christmas!

A Holiday Interruption...

If you look at the bottom of the this post, you will see Summer's last bounty, harvested in November.

I never got around to making green tomato salsa and those silly tomatoes ALL started to turn red.... faster than we could eat them. We ate some every day. I took some to the neighbors. I took some to church. I took some to Thursday Night Knitting. I still had lots of red tomatoes and I was fearful that I was becoming known as the tomato lady.

So I bought an extra bag of onions and some fresh cilantro, thawed some of our jalopenos (also from our garden), hauled out the food processor, and voila! DH and I chopped and chopped, dug out canning jars, mixed, simmered, and finally canned our own salsa. It's really tasty! There was just enough to fill the canner and have a little left over to eat right away. And there are still some stragglers turning red on the counter. Since when are garden tomatoes supposed to be part of holiday decor?

I would have imagined doing this in July, but that's certainly not how it worked out this year.

The one sad moral to this story is.... don't touch your eyes after chopping jalopenos, garlic, and onions, especially if you wear contact lenses. Ouch!

The Moose is Loose!

I have worked on this little guy off and on for the last couple of months, and finally finished him up at Thursday night knitting at Twist.

So it's safe to say that he was born in a yarn shop.

Vital stats: He is knit with vintage wool, Brunswick Germantown, that has been in my stash for +/- 20 years. His antlers are an i-cord worked around a chenille stem, that is then twisted on itself.

As with all newborns, you must check out his "toes"! On the front legs, there is a little bit of shaping to create the hooves. On the back legs, look closely and you will see bobbles to create the hoof toes.

I have good intentions of getting the instructions written up to make Mr Moose, but I am sure it will be after Christmas before they are done. Stay tuned!

You never know where Mr Moose might appear in 2011. I think he will be my travel buddy for the year.

Mittens, mittens, mittens

Last year I released my Pop Top Mittens pattern for kids a little late for the holiday season. This year, they have been a really popular download on Ravelry, plus I reknit several pairs for Knit Picks IDP. My neighbor modeled one of the pairs for me.

And I promised to give the mittens to him when I got them back from Knit Picks, which I did.

Then I found this in my mailbox one day. How cute!

And kudos to his Mom for nudging him to write this.

It makes me smile every time I look at it.