Well, I've got no good reasons for the long blog silence, but Laura and I are excited about renewing our crafty exchange. I have been really busy making new designs for knitted and felted toys and getting those patterns ready to sell are at the top of my to-do list. I am also excited about the new year and its gardening potential. Michael and I have started a blog together here, it's about our work to make a tidy homestead in town. Since we live in a rented house and are gardening on borrowed land, we are in for a challenge. It's exciting though and I think it's good to make another blog, as there are lots of other things I am interested in that don't really fit in to this crafting blog. Please do go check it out!

My sister Abby has a couple blogs, and I just found a photo set she added to her Flickr account of old slides of my family. Here's my favorite- it's me and Laura cheesing it up of course!

Don't ask us who is who, sometimes we can tell, but it's usually a toss up! My mom did resist the urge to dress us in matching clothes most of the time, but I probably couldn't have passed up the matching red raincoats either. My mom's been sick this fall (she's on the mend now) and to help out I just spent 10 weeks at my parents' farm in Pennsylvania. The boys and I were 10 hours from Michael and our home, but I miss the farm when I see this old photo:

This was taken years ago but everything is pretty much the same except the trees around the house have died and been cut down. See that big hill on the right? When Michael came up for Christmas, that's the one he and I tried to cross country ski down. It was a no-go, we stuck to the flat trail by the barns instead.

The first crafty thing I did this new year was knit a hat:

Wow, I really hate taking my photo- but Avery wouldn't pose. It's silk garden and some gray wool, this pattern. Not surprisingly, I didn't do a gauge swatch, and predictably, the gauge was off. Even though I took out a bunch of the charted pattern at the crown, it's still too big, but I don't care. It's soft and warm and colorful and I love it. I have a skein of Noro sock yarn that I want to knit up, but am scared to work with that yarn, it's sooo fragile looking. I am starting a pair of plain socks with Lion Brand Sock Ease instead. I am having a hard time with them. I don't mind knitting the smallness of sock yarn, but I think the final product that I really want is chunkier- more like boot socks.

I made some folded paper window stars for our windows to jazz up the dreary January view, I am posting a tutorial about how I do it- stay tuned!