Home Sweet Philly

After a six hour drive Simon and I arrived back in the city of brotherly love last night. Its great to be home, our evening, post unpacking, was spent eating vegetable and watching our Netflix DVD we got in the mail. We are horribly behind the times and just signed up for Netflix last week.

I have this week off and Simon and I are home today and then head out again, only this time to Gettysburg! This trip is a mini honeymoon, and I am really excited to be going back to Gettysburg. I went when I was a junior in high school with my AP history class, and absolutely loved it.

Sadly because of our trip to Gettysburg this will be my last post for the week. I might post a special Saturday Blue Betty Blog post after our return to the city so make sure to check back! Oh and if I do post there will be pictures.

Blog Giveaway

Just a quick announcement to all, I am doing a giveaway with Pink Dandy Chatter! There will be two winners, One will win a Coffee House Cowl and another will win a pair of slouchy fingerless mitts knit with some of my hand dyed yarn.

If you are interested in joining the giveaway head over to the Post on Pink Dandy and get all the details!

Tomorrow Simon and I will be making the long car ride home so sadly there will be no post from Blue Betty on Monday, but On Tuesday I will have some photos of Shanty Town Christmas at our family friends home. I will also hopefully have a new project on my needles to share with everyone.

Black Friday

My black Friday isn't spent waking up at the crack of dawn (I actually slept in to 11am) nor is it spend running around trying to get the best deals on electronics. I have mostly been spending the day watching the History Channel with my dad and brother, knitting and promoting my etsy sale. Pretty laid back. Lots of coffee and leftovers.

I mean I love shopping and I love a good deal, but there are somethings that i just don't think are worth doing, like getting up by 4am to get in to a sale that only lasts 5 hours. Or staying up and going to the outlet mall at midnight to get a jump on all the good sales. First off i try to buy most my gifts locally in Philly or on etsy. I like the idea of handmade gifts even if it homemade fudge or a nice bar of handmade soap. I want to be a part of that handmade community so I want to put as much back into that community.

So, if you want to support handmade, pledge to buy handmade this holiday season. Go to buyhandmade.org and pledge to buy hand made! After that go to Etsy and check out all the great artists out there. If you are looking for a toasty hand knit stocking stuffer or some fun hand dyed yarn check out my shop,

Tonight is our annual Shanty Town Christmas with our family friends. I am hoping for some great gingerbread house photos for the blog tomorrow.

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Turkey Day!

Things are winding down here at the Family home up in up state NY. We are full of turkey and pumpkin pie and are all relaxing, like a cliche, next to the fire. Simon is playing guitar and I am working on my etsy. (Even though its a holiday I don't seem to get a day off.) All the family members have headed home and now it is time to sit back and let the tryptophan take hold.

The reason I am diligently working on my etsy is that I am preparing for a holiday sale. All of that shop knitting I did was for some fun and warm fingerless mitts that I am listing in my shop. Also with little bits and bobs of yarn I knitted up some fun hair bows. All of these plus more will be on on sale in my shop for 25% off and will be shipped for free starting today and running through to late Monday night. Also all yarn will be 10% off and I just listed some great Alpaca Silk Fingerless Mitt kits. Check my etsy or my etsy on sale to see all great items on sale! Make sure to check back tomorrow for a few surprises that I have in store!

Pictures and Packing

The title of this post pretty much sums up how I've been spending my day. Editing photos and packing for my trip up to my parents.

I still have a ton of yarn photos to edit, back to picnik for more editing.

Finished Projects

Simon and I had a photo shoot yesterday. This means I finally have photos of things I have finished.

This was my Oz plan ride project. It is a modular shawl. It was a lot of fun to knit and super easy you only ever had 60 sts on your needle. I finished this while I was in Australia sometime in March.

The lace Ribbon Scarf, I knit this last Thanksgiving! I never blocked it till after I got home from Oz and now its finally chilly enough to wear.

This one is a design from No Two Snowflakes. The pattern is the Katrina Ballerina Layering Lace Cardi. I knit this almost two years ago...almost...ok maybe more like a year and a half. I finished the knitting in June of 2009, but didn't sew buttons on the thing for almost 6 months.

This is one of my favorite sweaters that I knit. It is the February Lady Sweater and I knit it last January to wear on the plan to Australia. I can tell you right now that I didn't wear it at all in Oz. This sweater also had an extended stay in Oz. I couldn't fit it in my luggage so it stayed in Australia till Simon brought it back with him in August. Much like the lace ribbon scarf I am excited that the weather is perfect for this sweater.

This piece is more recent. I blogged about it in October in the post Get Knitting, where I lamented the errata in the pattern and the yardage being off and needing a solution for my lack of yarn. Well I solved that by using some black wool and silk I bought at Nangellini. The rest of the red wool was added to my sleeves and then I finished the sleeves and button band in black. I like the contrast and think it looks much nicer than using all one color.

I was especially excited about the buttons I found, gold with black in the center I think they give me sweater a very sophisticated look. I block this sweater a week ago and just sewed the buttons on Saturday. I am definatly taking this up to my family's house for Thanksgiving this week.

Homemade Bread

Today I put my to do list Slightly on hold. I really didn't as "learn to bake bread" was on my list of things to do. And guess what I did it! I found a great site called cookingbread.com and found a simple white bread recipe in their extensive lists of bread recipes. The one I used was the Hungarian White Bread I omitted the anise and fennel seeds. Above is my dry ingredients all ready to go waiting for my yeast to activate.


Here is my yest activating in some luk warm water.

All Mixed up and ready to rise!

This was after about an hour and a half it was double its original size. At this point in the recipe you had to "punch down" the dough and cut in half

I did exactly that and placed my two halves in loaf pans. Here I covered them and let them rise for about another hour.

They doubled in size again and puffed up. Now it was time to bake them for 50 min at 350. As the loaves baked the wonderful smell of baked bread filled my apartment. It made our place seem so warm and cozy.

50 Minuets later I had this!

Here they are out of the pans after a few minuets of cooling, I couldn't wait to slice into one and see how it turned out!

Delicious! That's how it turned out! Bread was a lot easier to make than I thought. I think the part that makes it seem hard is the yeast and waiting for the bread to rise. This was more an exercise in patients, but I can now proudly say I can Bake bread. I think this may become a weekly thing.