Holiday knits

As promised here are some photos of my holiday knits. They're not the best, so use your imagination to experience their true knitted glory.

This is E.R. Evelyn's elephant. He is made of double stranded sport weight alpaca. The pattern is from LMKG.

The scarf for Debbie was made with a funky cotton by Ironstone Yarns called Cotton Flake. I knit the whole thing using diagonal eyelet lace.
As for my mom's branching out scarf in jabberwocky cashmere (stitched back together after massive dog chewing), I forgot to get a picture. I'm sure mom will send one as soon as she gets her camera back from grandma and I'll be sure to post it. Now I'm just finishing up some Thuja socks for my m-i-l and then I'm going to start my first ever fair isle!

Holiday update

I have been slacking. Here is a recap of the Holidays so far.

Tonight we celebrated Christmas early with Scarlett, who is headed to the Dusty Dog Ranch tomorrow for a 6 night 7 day stay at the canine resort.
Doesn't she look fabulous in her new Lands End squall coat? Notice the monogramming on her bum! Green is really her color.
Here is a picture of the pooch under our Charlie Brown-style, faux fir.
On the fourth night of Hanukkah I made traditional latkes and we had bagels, lox, and pickled herring (yum!).

We went to Tulsa for Thanksgiving and had a fantastic time with Matthew's whole family. We will really miss seeing them at Christmas.
I think the above photo is hilarious. Evelyn has every toy a baby could want, but she would prefer to play with a plastic cup. Below is a picture of Evelyn and Scarlett sharing. They were so cute. The baby would take the bone from the dog and the dog would just let her have it and then the baby would give it back. It was too cute.
We're off to my mom's tomorrow for Christmas. We've decided to leave our laptops behind and so it may be awhile before I put up a new post, but next time I plan to put up picture of our trip and all of my holiday knitting (can't put those up until everyone has received their gifts, wouldn't want to ruin the surprise).

Scarlett's first snow

Although she was frightened at first, she is already a big fan.

if I am dreaming

...please don't wake me up, unless you are about to hand me a skein of this

Manos Del Uruguay SILK BLEND!!!!

the Amtrak knitting car

This is an Amtrak Lounge Car. Not any Lounge Car in particular, just a representative of such.
When I travel to and from California on the Southwest Chief I spend most of my waking hours in the lounge car. Why? First of all, it has great light and a much better view of the awesome scenery passing by outside. Second, you can often meet some nice folks in the public space of the lounge car. Third, I have to sleep in my seat and I just don't sleep well in a place where I am also spending all of my waking hours.
On my most recent trip, from which I just returned, I was in the Lounge car reading when I glanced over and saw that the couple next to me were doing some sort of something with yarn. They were using these plastic thingies with pegs that I have seen before at various craft stores. My curiosity got the best of me and I asked what they were doing. They described it as "cheating knitting," but they were really enjoying it and were busy "knitting" scarves for their granddaughters. They pointed out that the man down the way was doing "real knitting," which turned out to be crochet. The gentleman crocheting looked like he had just walked out of a ZZTop video and that he would have been more comfortable riding a Harley, John Deer, or Big Rig of some kind than crocheting on a train, but alas he was a lover of all the fiber arts. At the sight of all of this "knitting" I decided I had to get out my own project and join the fun. The next thing you knew the woman behind me was knitting too. It was like a regular old Stitch N Bitch right there on the old Southwest Chief number 4 train.