bows bows bows

I've discovered a great new hair accessory that I love to knit...bows! You might remember I made a cute little purple one for Whitney back in September for her 22nd birthday. She has big amazing curly hair and bows look perfect on her head. I noticed she wore that purple one a lot so I decided a box of more colorful bowiness was a must for Christmas. Her gift was actually the first of my Christmas knitting I finished.


I tried to incorporate every color of the rainbow in her box-o-bows and I think I succeeded. She loved them and I get a thrill every time I see her wearing one. They're the perfect accessory too because her work uniform is all black but she can wear whatever she wants in her hair. Now she can show off some of her funky style at work :)


I posted the pics of her bows on etsy and got a custom order within the first day. While in New Orleans last week I knit the 4 new bows for the custom order, she just got them today and loved them. yay!


They are still posted on my etsy and I'll accept orders on here or facebook as well if anyone wants any! I love knitting these and there is no end to the color combo possibilities!

go buy now!

I have loads of free time now and I keep forgetting ot update this :) I plan to post pics of all the gifts I made for Christmas but first...

I updated my etsy!!

Go check out the new custom hair bows and see some of older merch that is still just as cute as ever! If you're someone I see in person feel free to order on here or facebook and I can skip the shipping business :)

done done done!

my sister trying to steal my graduation glory :)

I officially graduated from college! finally. I now hold a bachelor of science in family and consumer sciences in family and consumer sciences (nope I didn't type that twice on accident) and a minor in fashion merchandising!

That qualifies me to knit for a living right?.....right?

I need to go to bed, just wanted to give a quick update on my doneness with school...for now :P

I also just ripped out one of my Christmas gifts for I think the fifth time and I think I finally found a pattern I'm happy with. This was a nice positive note to sleep on tonight since I have to rip out my dad's present tomorrow due to it ending up too small...blegh.

ok night!

the end!

Today is officially my last class day of my undergraduate career! And yes, it has been a career, haha. I'm so ready to graduate! All I have between me and the stage are my physics and history finals next Thursday and Friday, and a presentation I have to show up for on the 15th.

I just got an email from my physics prof with a list of some key terms to know for the final. Seems nice right? There are over 400 "key" terms on the list. what. the. heck?! blegh!

Anyways, I have no idea what I'm going to do once I'm done so if any of yall have any ideas for someone with a bachelor of science in family and consumer sciences and a minor in fashion merchandising...let me know :) I am thinking about seminary, but that won't be for another year and a half I think, unless I take a class or two online, which could be fun. We'll see.

On the knitting front I've finished three of my presents! Well almost, I still need to weave in some ends in my latest completion. At the rate I'm going I might actually finish everything before Christmas.

Ok and one last thing. It's supposed to snow tomorrow! I really hope it does and all this hype isn't for nothing. Apparently it's only snowed six times in the past years in Austin. Poor Austin and it's lack of pretty white snow.

Ok I'm off to do whatever while I wait for my LAST class!

ps. I wrote a hat pattern so I might be posting that soon...we'll see :)

kitty kittens

So I can finally show yall something I've been knitting this semester! I have some dear friends in Sydney, Australia who I decided to send some love to in the form of a package full of goodies. Naturally I had to knit something and I thought Ysolda's kitty stuffies would be perfect.

I picked a neutral variegated yarn I had lying around and had originally planned to add faces in dark brown. Once I finished the kittens I loved their simplicity too much to bother with faces, but I still wanted them to have a little something something extra, ya know?

A bowtie!...and a cute hair bow! Perfect :) One kitten even turned out a bit taller than the other.

I hugged them lots and then packed them away with others goodies, including one of my little knit hearts and sent them around the world. They got the package last week and now the kittens have a cozy loving home. I love knowing something I made with my hands is being loved.

I have officially finished two of my Christmas presents, one I finished tonight and I love. Get excited about all the pictures I'll get to post after Christmas!!

say yes to the...

Ah black Friday. What a lovely day to spend at home watching wedding shows and figuring out all the gifts I plan to make....and not buy :)

Wedding shows. They are my weakness. Not because I'm wedding crazy or super anxious to have my own (though I am excited about mine someday) but because I just love what weddings are about. The joining of two families, outward symbol of love, the commitment to friends, family, the church, each other, and most importantly God. It's so beautiful.

In watching all the wedding shows I get caught up in I've noticed that the core of what weddings are all about has gotten lost in white tulle, matching linens, party favors, and custom designer cocktails. What happened to love? Where did the feeling of community go? Where is God in our weddings? Scarier yet, where is God in our marriages?

Oh right, I'm talking about weddings, marriages are an entirely different topic that I could go on and on and on with.

So on this show Say Yes to the Dress women go to a huge bridal store in New York and try on designer dresses that are thousands of dollars. Usually I'm just whatever about how crazy expensive these dresses are because if these girls want to pay that much, go for it. But, one girl just went on about how and her fiance are teachers and on a budget and she doesn't want her mom to have to pay too much for her dress so she has a tight budget of $3,000. Another bride just got laid off so she wants to keep her dress under $5,000.

Three to five grand for a dress you wear for maybe 7 hours and then never put on again and leave in your closet. I understand how special this dress is, and that the pictures last forever...hopefully. I just can't understand spending so much. I was raised with a thrifty dad, I've learned I'd rather make things than buy them, I'm getting a degree partially based in finance...all these make me gasp at a dress for thousands. I'd like to have an entire wedding under three thousand dollars, not just a dress.

What really bothers me is not the price of these dresses, that's not the heart of the matter. I'm so discouraged by these brides that make a wedding more about a dress, or a cake, or the perfect venue and not about the marriage they are going into. The commitment to love and become one with the man in their life somehow gets lost in the fanfare of the party.

I'm not sure what this post was supposed to accomplish, maybe I just needed to get that out so I could continue to watch my wedding shows, haha.


Anyways, I need to clean, knit, put some Christmas lights up and hopefully meet up with an old friend later!

so...

I know I know...I've been everywhere but here!

Here's a brief list of what's going on with me.

• graduate college in 25 days (only 3 more class days!)
  
• lots of Christmas knitting that I can't tell you about yet
• trying to figure out what God's will for my life is
• lots of time with David
• helping out at my church a lot
• mania practice starts very soon
• no swine flu...yet

So I haven't been on here much because I can't really post pics of anything I've been knitting or planning. I hope to have lots of pictures and posts after Christmas though. Maybe I'll sew something tomorrow in between three writing intensive assignments...we shall see though.

love!

community

A magazine I subscribe to and enjoy is Relevant Magazine. They also have a ridiculously funny podcast that has made me look like a big weirdo on the bus numerous times.

Last year the people at Relevant started a new branch called Neue which is targeted toward church leaders. They put out a quarterly book zine with some pretty inspiring and thought provoking articles. I just read one today and it really made me think. Here's an excerpt from the article about community by Jimmy Spencer

"Community is simply the network of relationships that are birthed from working together. This important work is to reflect Jesus and His message so strongly that it compels those we encounter to ask us why we are so unique. We at The Sherma Movement call this Viral Jesus. Unfortunately, we spend so much time motivating and training people how to do the work of the Church, we often have little time to actually do the work. I would implore leaders to get workers into society and allow them to experience, and sometimes fail at, being Jesus to others. This work builds the Kingdom, matures us and produces real community amongst those who participate. This is the Kingdom of God.

We should be conforming people to the image of Jesus. Not ourselves. God community is a beautiful mosaic of different people and practices. Adding unique people to our community refines us into who God intended us to be."

As a leader in my church this really spoke to me. The community we are building in our college group....is it for fun, or for the Kingdom?

Five of us are going to New Orleans this weekend to help the baptist mission there hand out candy to kids on Halloween and to help get all their Christmas decorations up. This place demands a lot of hard work and a heart for that community, and I love it. Every time I go though, I'm reminded that I need the same heart for the people of my own community in Austin. I need to yearn to love those that others don't, but who Jesus would go straight to. I pray my church develops this same yearning that I so desire.

We are beginning a campaign to raise money to build a new sanctuary in our church in an effort to reach out to our community more. I pray that in this process we, as a body, grow closer together because we are all working for the same cause. I pray we remember that it's for the Kingdom of God, and not just for a newer bigger building.

This was long, I hope some of yall made it to the end. I guess I should stop reading articles that tug at my heart and read some for my class in a few hours, haha.

ps. I graduate in less than 8 weeks!
pps. I've been thinking about seminary lately and I feel very drawn to marriage and family counseling or something along those lines. If you think about it, pray for clarity in listening to what God has for me :)

full of oops

My blogging is getting really spaced out...oops!

I'd like to say it's because school is getting hectic (now that I'm so close to graduating!), or that I'm super busy at church all the time but it isn't and I'm not. Considering I have two writing intensive classes and a science, my work load is pretty easy, and I haven't gotten behind on anything which is just crazy for me, ha.

Church activities do keep me busy but not in an insane way. Our college group is going through a growth spurt, but I don't mean in the size kind of way. We've all grown so close together. Such a great way to grow in a church :) Even though I'm graduating in less than two months I plan to stay in the group until next December when David graduates (hopefully!!)

The rest of my life is filled with far too many Disney tv shows, food network competitions and whatever else David makes me watch. Don't get me wrong, these shows have their advantages. There are NO skanky girl commercials on late at night on Disney and the content and language is always clean. Though my humor level and knack for intelligent conversation maybe lowering, I find it refreshing to not have my mind bombarded with the level of sex, language, and violence that society has deemed normal for prime time television. When I do watch adult shows it's usually just the office, haha.

I say all this to then say, I'm still knitting! I just have this problem lately of starting a new project before I finish another one, so I never have pictures to share of finished projects. Soon I will be making my Christmas knitting list and knitting like a crazy grandma up until December 24 at midnight I'm sure.

My biggest project is that blanket I mentioned a few weeks ago. All I have is this pic from my iphone to show you, but I think it gets across how awesome it is. It's super soft too, I love it.

I'm almost done with a gift for some special friends and will post pics when they get to their new homes, hopefully sooner than later. I might also be doing a little halloween accessory knitting this weekend, we'll see.

This post was random and longer than I planned, oops!

I'm crazy..

so the other day i got sucked into trying to crochet again. It wasn't that bad and I understood what I was doing so I had the crazy idea to look into crocheted blanket patterns. I've always heard crocheting is faster than knitting so it seemed like a decent idea to crochet a blanket. after looking, falling in love with, and obsessing over the blanket idea I did a swatch run to see if I could even manage the crocheting.

I did. but. It was soooo slow! In the amount of time it took me to crochet a chain and then the first row on it I was able to do an almost full knit swatch.

So, I started looking for zig-zag/wavy knit blanket patterns and found a great free one on lion brand's ravelry page.

I went out and bought yarn and new needles for this project on Friday and I'm already through 2 5 inch stripes! I'm not sure why exactly I thought it was a good idea to start a new big project right now, but I did...ah well.

It's light gray, turquoise and peacock (so light and dark teal) and I love it. The yarn is from hobby lobby, called I Love This Yarn!, and is so stinkin soft. I'm hoping I can get it done in the next few weeks in time for the cooler weather that I'm hoping i coming soon.

81 degrees at 1am in October is just not acceptable!