Post-Christmas

Whew!  I'm all tuckered out - and we're only half-way done.  We spent a week in Alsace with T's family; we celebrated Christmas there with plenty of snow.  We also spent some time cleaning out T's paternal grandmother's farmhouse.  I'll do a separate post on that experience.  I wasn't super thrilled to be doing that during Christmas vacation, but it wasn't so bad and we salvaged some lovely things.  Photos of the farmhouse in a future post.

Makes you want to break out some ice tea and relax in the chair, doesn't it?

Earlier this week I was in Paris for an afternoon to meet up with my friend L.  She was in the south of France visiting extended family and sped through Paris, so I was lucky to catch her for the afternoon.  T. and I came back from Alsace on the 26th, and I was off to Paris on the 27th!  Unfortunately, I'm silly and I didn't take any photos of her.  Well, there are two photos, but both are blurry, so that doesn't count.  (On a side note, I really need to get a new camera one of these days.)  She took a couple photos with her camera; maybe once she's back in her hometown, she can send me something to post.  But it was great to be able to see L.; she had flown all the way out from Hawai'i - that's not a short plane ride!

Tomorrow we leave for Toulouse to spend New Year's with T's engineer school friends.  Since I don't drive our car, as it is stick, all that car time equals more knitting time for me.  I'm not as far along as I'd hoped on T's sweater, but I have (basically) finished the front and back.  And I've started the sleeves; I'm doing both at the same time.  I always tell myself to do that and I always forget.  So yeah for me that I remembered this time!  I did have a little mishap while in Alsace.  I confused the neckline and shoulder instructions; I had to rip back a few inches.  It wasn't too traumatic though. 

And I'm eager to try a new technique that Interweave Knits posted a video on: changing one's zipper into a knittable object.  I'll have to buy a knit-picker (do they have those in France?), but the technique seems brilliant, much better than sewing the zipper on with the sewing machine.  Also, I learned that one should wash and dry one's zippers before attaching them to the garment.  Never would've thought of that.  Apparently zippers shrink too.

I haven't made any progress on my sewing project, but here's a photo of the coordinating fabric I bought:

Main fabric is the spots, the coordinating is the light teal (?) below.

I sewed the first elbow patch to one of T's sweaters, but it came out all wonky.  I think I'm going to rip it out and try again.  I had no idea how difficult this would be!

I'm excited to get back to sewing though, once I've returned to a normal schedule.  I received some patterns as Christmas gifts and I'm ready to try them out.

I'd like to attempt sewing with knits - that dress looks fabulous.  But maybe not right away...

I also received some lip balm as an unexpected gift and as I'm a major lip balm consumer, especially in winter, I'm excited to try it out.  Plus, the name is hilarious.  I couldn't pass up a picture:

That's my Henriette Turtle pincushion in the background.  My first attempt at sewing something three-dimensional.

There's so many things to share from the holidays, so expect several future posts to be filled with pictures and maybe a few stories!  Thank you to everyone and Happy Holidays!

P.S.  I've learned a couple tricks on the blog.  For example, now I know how to resize the photos and change the layout, yippee!!