Knitty fussy knitty

I don't seem to be in a stitchy mood these days.  Winter keeps me going on the knitting right now.  I'm loving the colors in this fair isle scarf as I come to new bands of motifs.

The scarf works so that from that star band at the top, I will repeat the bands below it (E, F, G, H, G, F, E where H is the star band).  Then I'll go back to the older bands again, etc.  Everything gets repeated many times.  A fun scarf to knit!  I've knitted all the different bands now -- it's just a matter of repeating everything in the right order till the scarf is the right length or I run out of yarn.  Hopefully till it's the right length.  lol!

I laid out my fussy cut stars one more time to place everything and put in the half stars.

If you see the star in the bottom left corner, you'll be able to picture how there will be tumbling blocks in between the stars (formed by the white diamonds).

Here is the next star in line sewn to the first.

I hope the tumbling blocks show up well!

I gave the boy child a bit of a trim on the back part of his hair.  It's hard to tell from the pic though.

The back used to be a few inches longer!

I have to mention that I've been enjoying knitting podcasts a lot recently.  So many good ones!  But the ones I've been learning the most from are the Knit FM podcast and the Woolful podcast.  So much interesting and useful information!  They have changed my outlook on yarn and knitting for the better, I think.  Highly recommended!

Thanks as always for stopping by and saying hi.  I hope everyone is keeping warm.  Have a great week!

Dumplings!

I'm afraid there is no stitching for this week.  I stuck to my fair isle scarf.  It's getting longer -- it's very slightly longer than this picture.

I love fair isle.  Love these colors too!

I'm continuing to do English paper piecing on Fridays for a part of the day.  I might work on more than Fridays, but for now I'm going to stick to Fridays.  I've started attaching the white diamonds to stars.  I am hoping to use a variety of fabrics, but we shall see.

When the stars are attached to each other, the white diamonds should form tumbling blocks of sorts.

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know that our family tradition is to make dumplings on New Year's Day.  No rest for the weary for us!

Preparing the meat.

Making the skins for the dumplings.

Stuffing the dumplings.

Cooking the dumplings.

Yum!!

The kids went to hang out with friends for New Years Eve.  They had a bit of bonding time at home too, which is great!

Stolen from the girl child's Instagram feed.

And of course, there is a boy and his cat.

Thanks as always for stopping by and saying hi.  I hope everyone has a great week!

Goodbye 2014

I assembled these pictures for a year in review on Instagram.  So here they are on my blog too.  My finishes, some of my WIPs, and also a few familiar faces.  Enjoy.

Happy 2015, everybody.  May it be a happy, healthy, wonderful year for us all.