Jonathans Christmas Cookies

     As Sam's Christmas cookies are carefully counted out for presents, Jonathan decided to make his own batch of Peanut Butter Blossoms.  He did an excellent job!

Sams Christmas Cookies

 Sugar Cookie

 Peanut Butter Blossoms

 Sugar Cookie

 Sugar Cookie

 Gingerbread Cookie

 Sugar Cookie

 Swedish Spritz Cookies

     Sam has been very busy the past two days baking her famous Christmas cookies. 

Nutella Brownie Cupcakes

     My sister showed me a similar photo of these wee cupcakes and I thought they were fake, until she told me they were real cake in a cup and you put the cake filling into the cups and put them in the oven, wow, fantastic I thought, I have to have them. Sure enough my sister (Betty) mailed me a set of 4 and I made some brownies with extra chocolate chips, popped them in the oven for about 15minutes.  When they cooled I covered them with Nutella yum, yum and sprinkles and I put them on their saucer and gave the children I take care of one each. They loved them.
Thank you Betty.

By Christine Neary

Heathers Scarf (The Ladies Circle)

      I went shopping with my mom (NOT a knitter) at Nancy O's, our local yarn shop. My mom admired this very lacy spirally scarf in a Wedgewood blue-type color. Not her normal kind of scarf OR color. But I took the hint and after I dropped her home, I scurried back to the yarn shop to buy the yarn and the pattern. The yarn was this lovely kid mohair/silk blend, and wouldn't you know the shop was already sold out and had to order it. It wasn't to come in until the 17th (ack!) but they swore this scarf was "one skein, one hour," so I tried not to panic. The yarn came in and I picked it up Saturday (the 18th?). My mom (who the scarf is FOR) was at my house all day and I had to wait for her to leave before bringing out the knitting and getting started. I was getting antsier and antsier. FINALLY it was time. I looked at the yarn in consternation. It was a lacy tube. How would I even cast on? I looked at the pattern in horror. It made absolutely no sense. Make two stitches 5 cm apart and that's the whole row? Depressed and angry, I logged on to Rowan.com, watched a tutorial, started knitting and sure enough...had made the whole scarf in one hour! Amazing! And I think it's lovely!! And the best part was...when I registered (for free) at Rowan, they asked if I was part of a knitting group or circle....I could answer "yes"!!

By Heather

Michelles Scarf (The Ladies Circle)

     I am not a knitter I have been trying for years with the help of my Mum but I just can't do it.  So I thought I would make a scarf on the knitting loom and here is the result. I was so pleased with it that I would like to make another one.

By Michelle

Kathleens Scarf (The Ladies Circle)

     This is my scarf, feel quite proud for my first attempt.

By Kathleen Murchie

Aileens Scarf (The Ladies Circle)

     This was a very fast scarf to knit.  I like the way it sits neatly around my neck or Conroys neck.  I'm looking forward to hearing what our teacher has in store for our next project.  Have a lovely Christmas everyone.

By Aileen Doyle

My Ugly Scarf (The Ladies Circle)

     This scarf caused me a lot of grief, here is how it went.

     My friend asked me to make her a scarf, she also picked the colour Rust (which is what I thought it was).  I decided to do a cable stitch to make it look pretty, so I started the scarf, did a few inches then started to make mistakes, I wasn't quite sure of the cable stitch yet, anyway needless to say I ripped it out about 5 times and was getting very frustrated.  So after I had quite a few inches done I showed it to my friend Alcina (yes, I am making sure everyone see's her name, so no one will knit for her hahaha) and would you believe she had the nerve to tell me it wasn't the colour she wanted, that it wasn't rust and she did not want that kind of scarf, I was set to blow, I argued with her that when she asked me to make her a scarf, this is what she chose and she flat out denied it.  Then she continues to show me scarves that she likes and asked me can I knit her this one or that one, well, I just flat out said NO and told her she is not getting it, scarf anyone?

     Anyway, I continued to knit and knit and knit and dropped stitches,and forgot what row I was on and ripped out and did it again and continued to knit hating every minute of this scarf, and to top it all, it kept curling inwards,i wish i had curled inwards.

      Here is the finished product, just don't let me see it again.

By Christine Neary

Collar Scarf (The Ladies Circle)

     My last project for The Ladies Circle happened to be a 14 foot long scarf, so I decided to go in the opposite direction and make a collar scarf.  I crochet a ridge stitch using some left over chunky yarn; however, because the ridge stitch takes up a lot of yarn, I ran out half way through my project and was forced to buy another ball.  Sam picked out the large wooden buttons for me from her store and with the help of Youtube made my first item that contained working buttons...YAY!

By Suzy Neary

Bettys Scarf (The Ladies Circle)

     Here is my scarf that only took a couple of days to do.  It's about 60 inches long without the fringe.  It's lovely soft wool and very warm.

By Betty McCreadie

Rose Ann And Michael's Handmade Gifts

 I made this coloured blanket for my gorgeous Grand-daughter Phoebe.

By Rose Ann

Michael made this castle for our Grandson Lewis for xmas.

Bettys Kitty

Bettys Tea Cakes

Bettys Handmade Jewelry

I have never made jewellery before but I thought I would give it a go and here is the result. 

By Betty McCreadie

Aileens Blanket (The Ladies Circle)

I enjoyed knitting this blanket. The pattern is very easy. I did have to rush at the end because my sisters all came to visit and I knew I would never have time to knit while they were here.

By Aileen Doyle

Bettys Tablecloth (The Ladies Circle)

This is my tablecloth that I made.  I started off knitting it but the pattern I used made the tablecloth go all wonky...it was very wide on one side!  So I ripped it out and started again with another pattern - that went the same way!  So in the end, I decided to crochet it.  It looks fab on the table and I'm very pleased with the results!

By Betty McCreadie

Kathleens Blanket (The Ladies Circle)

     Here is my finished blanket, also a picture of the wool that I used.  Fell in love with this wool when I saw it. But little did I know the amount of hassle it was going to cause. The original pattern suggested I cast on 80 stitches, but I found that extremely difficult to manage. Then having already tried and ripped it out 5 times, I decided that the only solution was to shorten it. I then took it back to 60 stitches and as you can see there is now an end result.

By Kathleen Murchie

Beach Buddy (The Ladies Circle)

     I was very excited when my Auntie Chris told me about her knitting circle idea, nothing like a needle crafter with a mission!  I decided to crochet a circle scarf using some yarn I already had sitting in my basket.  The last foot of crocheting seemed to take forever but here is the end result.  I took a picture of it on the beach where it will spend most of it's life protecting my face and ears from the biting winter wind.

By Suzy Neary

Shawl We Dance Tra La La (The Ladies Circle)

      I decided to get in touch with my sisters and friends and ask them if they would be interested in a knitting circle where we would all knit something and start on a particular date and end on a particular date.  It was my way of trying to get us all to keep in touch more often, as we were kind of dwindling, well, they all agreed and I set a date for the last week in October and to be finished their project on the last day of November.

     So far a few of us have been keeping in touch throughout the whole project and I sent emails to make sure they were all busy knitting and it turned out to be a lot of fun and a lot of Skypeing.

     Here is my finished project,The Shawl for those chilly knights.  I am very pleased with it and it was very easy, just plain/purl and casting on at every end, I used circular needles as the shawl was getting too big for regular needles.  I dare say I will be wearing it when I am doing my next knitting project.

     Hopefully everyone else will be finishing their knitting very soon and getting it on this blog for all to see.

 By Christine Neary

Ice Plant

This is my ice plant.  I saw something similar in a magazine and thought it looked lovely so I decided to make my own.  I used a pretty tough wire but bendable and some glass beads and one pot.  I would bend some of the wire about 2 inches from the bottom and pop a bead on then about another 2 inches I'd bend the wire again and pop a bead on and so forth all the way up to as tall as you would like, and as many as you would like.  In the pot you would put a piece of oasis foam in the bottom and that is where you would stick all your branches with beads into, then pour the rest of your beads on top of the foam, when I got to that point I had many beads roll onto the floor and beads in places I didn't know until I stood on them, ouch.  I may make another one soon.
By Christine Neary

Halloween Costumes

 Viking Sam

Bill and Monica

Happy Halloween

Our First Frost

Sams Halloween Cupcakes

Using a chocolate cake mix, a container of white frosting colored orange and some festive sprinkles, Sam made these delicious Halloween cupcakes.

Fun Times In Pumpkin Land

Jonathan and Sam picked their pumpkins today from "Pumpkin Town" in Water Mill.

 Sam loves Tinkerbell, she "relates to her personality".

Jonathan (Wolfman) went the traditional route when creating his Jack O'Lantern.

Halloween Kitty

Butterflies

Always too short a visit, the migrating Monarch butterfly spends a couple of days snacking on our Golden Rod, Montauk daisies and the bright yellow Mums before continuing on to Mexico for the winter.

Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin photos by John Neary