Knitting is the new yoga

 I love to knit.

 It's one of my favorite activities, and it's so soothing and wonderful (unless you are a beginner. Then it's a bit more stressful). It's portable! I love to be able to just grab my current project and go to a coffee shop with it and just knit and knit, all the while thinking and thinking. And I'm actually quite lucky, because, what with all the knitting websites and things (my favorite's Ravelry!) you can find the most adorable patterns.

 I just have a bit of a problem.... I have horrible project ADD. I'm not kidding! And it's not just with knitting. I have so many half finished projects that sometimes my mom has to tell me to finish one or two before I start the next one. However, luckily for you, I do sometimes finish a project, so I can proudly present to you a few of my successful knitting endeavors!

Yay!!!! Gloves!!!!!

 I am sooooo happy with how these gloves turned out. The beautiful pattern is from a book we found at Half-Price Books in Seattle (my favorite store EVER!!!!), called Knitting New Mittens and Gloves, written by Robin Melanson. It's a wonderful book with lots of easy (and some very difficult) patterns. WHY I chose to start out with gloves instead of mittens, I will never know. Definitely not my smartest move. I did mess up a couple of times, but my worst mistake was on the right thumb, if you look at it, it is definitely not as pretty as the left thumb. Oh well, lesson learned (that lesson being, don't get too cocky after the first glove and think you can do something without looking at the pattern... whoops....).

  These were my first pair of socks ever, Kyra and I both took a sock class at our favorite yarn store to learn how to make them. They aren't two at a time socks, however, so one sock is slightly bigger than the other.... but that doesn't matter! They are still the comfiest socks I own.

Our neighbors just had a baby girl, so we made them a little gift basket, along with some knitted items from both Kyra and I. I made the little fair isle hat, and had quite a bit of fun doing it, since I didn't have any pattern and I love doing fair isle. I was pretty happy with how the pom-pom turned out, since my first attempt at a pom-pom was.... less than stellar. Kyra made the adorable gray baby booties from a free pattern from Michael's. I also made some of the cutest little baby socks ever, but apparently I didn't take pictures of them. They were made out of pretty purple yarn from our stash, but I'm not actually sure what kind of yarn it was... so we told our neighbors that they might come out of the dryer felted and the size of Barbie socks. :)

 I didn't actually make this adorable little giraffe, but my beautiful friend Kenzie (in the picture) crocheted it for me. Seriously, the cutest thing ever. Kyra named it Giraffamo, a name which I started out hating and I have now accepted as his name (happy, Kyra???).

 I hope to soon start knitting sweaters and cardigans, something I have looked forward to since learning to knit. I'm betting, though, that those projects might turn into year-long projects If I start one. :)

 One thing I love about living in Montana is that whatever you knit, you get to wear for at least 8 months out of the year! It's fantastic! Besides, cold weather is the perfect knitting weather, when it's too hot it's kind of hard to knit, seeing as your hands get sweaty and it makes the yarn really hard to work with. So, another reason to like the winter, also. :)

 I have knitted many more things than that, and will knit many more in the future, but those are for another post. :)

 Until then,

 Happy knitting!

Maddy

P.S.
If you have a Ravelry, go friend me! The link to my page is to the right, below all the blogs I follow.

The end of a lovely summer...

 Bonjour!

 I'm back! I hope everyone had a beautiful summer, with lots of swimming, watermelon, and sunshine. :) But it's almost fall now, which means the weather is getting chilly, school has started, and I'm getting excited for snowboarding (I know, I know, it's a bit early to get excited about snowboarding. But honestly, I get excited for snowboarding right after the snow melts in the spring. Cut me some slack, I didn't even get to snowboard once last year!).

 Unfortunately, we really do need it to snow. Or rain I guess. Because the fires here are really quite bad. Seriously, when you step outside it smells like a giant campfire. The smoke also makes everyone's throat and eyes hurt rather badly. Not fun. So if you could pray for some rain for us, it would be greatly appreciated.

 Kyra and I just started school (goody). It is one of the advantages of homeschooling, being able to start school slightly later. Unfortunately you also have to motivate yourself to do your work, and some days that is just kind of difficult. I'm very lucky, too, because both of my friends are homeschooled now, which is really nice if we ever want to go somewhere and do school together. :)

 We really did a lot this summer, went to Shakespeare in the Park, drove to Beartooth highway, went camping, had outdoor movies.... and a whole bunch more. Kind of funny, but when we had one of our outdoor movies it was just a few weeks ago, and since it was night we all had to have a bunch of blankets, and Kyra and I even got warm winter hats on. It was just funny how people always think of summer nights as just having on a light jacket or whatever, but we could have gone all out and gotten big poofy coats on and everything :) To test out if the projector we used would work, we watched Iron Man! I ♥ Iron Man!

We tried getting some pictures of us as Iron Man in front of the projector, but it turns out that is a lot harder than you'd think, especially when it's on the title screen and Iron Man is spinning in circles.

 The drive to Beartooth highway was beautiful. Long, but beautiful. And when you finally get there.... it's incredible. The drive up the actual highway goes from 5,200 foot elevation to 8,000 feet in just twelve miles!
It's crazy. Honestly, on the way up you are almost underneath the next part of the road (if that makes any sense at all. It loops around a lot so just imagine being underneath the loop above you). When you get to the top, the road in the bottom of the valley is so small it's like a piece of yarn. It's actually kind of frightening. You can look out onto this hill that goes almost straight down the whole way, and all I could think about while looking at it was that if you fell off that you wouldn't stop until you hit the bottom. Ummm.... not really a pretty thought. However, we had candy, so the prospect of falling down a giant mountain was lessened by sugary, unhealthy, corn-syrupy goodness.

 

 It was truly one of the most awe-inspiring places I've ever seen, which is saying something, because there are so many beautiful places here in Montana, but this definitely ranks in my top three. That hill, on the left, is  exactly the hill that makes you think about falling to your horrible death. It's GINORMOUS. And, yes, the bold typeface was necessary. That little tiny white line is the road at the bottom of the valley. So, maybe smaller than yarn? I guess it depends on the kind of yarn. Maybe.... fingering weight yarn? Sure. (For all you non-knitters and non-crocheters, that is pretty small yarn.)

                

I really can't resist a sign like that, now can I?

 All in all, it was a wonderful trip. I would definitely recommend visiting there. Bring a camera! And candy, of course... or not. You can get candy at Red Lodge, the town at the bottom of the road. So it's really up to you, whether you bring your own candy or not.

Oh! Our garden! I showed you the veeeeeeery beginning of it, and since then it has grown magnificently well for our first year!

 Mmmmmm, strawberries, carrots, and mustard greens!

 

 We got a lot more than in these pictures, like lettuce (soooo much lettuce... soooo much salads....), tomatoes, broccoli, squash, and even a tiiiiiiiiny, tiny cantaloupe! Unfortunately, my dear little cantaloupe didn't grow nearly enough for us to eat.

 Okay, this is a rather long post, but I haven't written in a while, so what the heck. I could go on and on, I mean, I do have a bunch of knitting projects to share with you.... Okay, I'm going to show you the knitting projects in another post (even though I'm dying to show everyone), and shall now show you my new patterns!

Yes, sewing patterns. I really can't help myself. Especially when I go online and see that they are on sale for only $3.00 a piece!!!! And they are beauties!

 Oh my word, I just LOVE them!!!!! Especially the one on the right! It has tie sleeves!!!!!!!! Hopefully I will eventually get some adorable fabric and actually make a dress from one of my patterns. I'll get around to it eventually.

 I also started a painting last week, I'll put pictures up when I'm finished. It's of my friend's lovely barn! Which sounds strange, but really, it's a pretty stinkin' cute barn. I did a preliminary sketch, so I'll show you that :)

I understand that's not the best picture (hey! It's not me who is the photographer! That would be my sister.), but at least you can sort of see the barn in the background. I'm hoping it turns out well.

Well I guess that's it for now! I'll try and have another post up next week.

Until then,

Happy Autumn!

Maddy