Christmas Presents

This week has been quite a good week for knitting as I've managed to finish my first present for Christmas, a baby blue Tammy beret for Corinne and I'm cracking on with a second. (I'm halfway through the second of a pair of mittens for Angie.) It's also been quite an interesting week on the IT front, as I've switched from Safari to Firefox so that I could run MSN Messenger on my lovely old Mac.

The need to update has come from the wonderful event of my Mum and Dad heading off for a grand adventure in Southern India for the next six months. The plan is that Mum, Dad, my sister and I will all keep in touch through a weekly webchat. I'm quite tempted to set up a blog for them, so that everyone back here will be able to follow their travels. In fact I think that could make an interesting Christmas present for them as I know that they won't be taking much with them and that's a present that wouldn't weigh anything at all!

I've also set up a group on Ravelry called Kids Lit Knits for knitters working in children's publishing. It's mostly made up of the lovely knit-chicks from work, but we have had a couple more people join already.

We're holding our charity craft fair at work this week, and I've just finished my last button bracelets. I've made four with larger buttons and twelve with smaller ones. Everyone who's seen them so far has been really flattering about it, so here's hoping that I can sell some of them and make a little bit of pocket money to buy Christmas gifts with.

I ♥ Buttons

Here's a photo of my button box:


I've got a bit button-crazy over the last few weeks. We're holding a Christmas Craft Fair at work on the 2nd of December, so I've been beavering away at making some button bracelets to sell. I can make a couple of bracelets on each train journey into work and so far people really seem to like them, so here's hoping that I'll sell a few on the day...


It's been great fun going through my button box and sorting them all out into colours that compliment each other:

On the knitting front, the Walker Knitting Club have finished the baby blanket for Fi's baby. She came in this week and we presented it to her. She was absolutely delighted, which was just brilliant! I'd spent most of last weekend sewing all of the different pieces together (which was quite challenging as they were all in very different tensions!) and adding a cream border to bring it all together and finish it off properly. I'm afraid that I didn't manage to take a photograph of it, but here's very poor quality photo from my phone that gives you an idea of what it looked like!
(Back row from from left to right: Sarah, Cheryl, Jenny, Gemma
Front row: Me, Fiona, Angela, Stephanie
Missing from the photo: Judy, Caroline and Jenny J)

New York, New York

And what an amazing city it is!

From the taxi journey in from JFK to the top of the Rockerfeller Centre, David and I had amazing few days in New York. There is something quite wonderful about seeing the New York skyline for the first time. It's really breathtaking, and yet at the same time there's something incrediblt familiar about it. I managed to keep our destination a secret right up to check-in (which quite frankly amazed me) and I'd give anything to see the expression on David's face all over again!

Our hotel, The Gershwin Hotel was brilliantly located in midtown, two blocks up from the Flat Iron building and just a short walk from Greenwich village, where we ate most nights in some really wonderful restaurants.

We crammed a lot into our four days in the city, visting Central Park, the Guggenheim, Battery Park, Greenwich Village, Macy's and Bloomingdale's. We saw Times Square, travelled on the Staten Island Ferry, went ice skating in Bryant Park, watched a Little League game and took the lift all the way to the 'Top of the Rock'.

Top moments for me were, the ice skating, listening to Bach's Mass in B Minor at St Paul's Chapel (near Wall Street), seeing raccoons in Central Park, eating pizza by the slice and drinking the most fabulously extravagant Apple Martini in Tavern on the Green in Central Park.

Here are a couple more pictures; one of me in Times Square, the iconic telescopes that are on top of the highest buildings and a long exposure shot of the ice skating, with the Empire State Building in all her glory in the background...