a finished project!

Finally, blogger decided to cooperate! So here are the remaining photos I was able to take before my camera batteries died. (Technology is not working in my favor today!) Look! It's a finished scarf! That NEVER happens here at Meg's Knits! I love kniting "My So-Called Scarf" and I enjoy wearing it even more! The Malabrigo Yarn is so soft. Here's a picture of the other windowsill in our kitchen.... this one is wheatgrass. I think it'll look interesting, and maybe make my own wheatgrass juice. 3-5 oz per daily can supply the daily vitamin and mineral needs of an adult!

knitting, celebrating, cheering, eating, and gardening!

What a great spring break this has been! It's been an awesome fun-filled week! So first I want to show my progress on my sweater: The photo is quite bright so the color is pretty off (it's a beautiful, but cold, sunny day here in Boston today!), but you can see that I've made some progress.... I now have 12 cm done... only 21 cm of the body to go! Happy belated St. Patty's Day! We had a party here at our apartment Friday night to celebrate both St. Patrick's Day and my birthday (which is the day after... so we celebrate at midnight). Dave made this sign for our living room and Anne made a yummy cake. Great food and fun company! And of course several Irish car bombs! (the drink, that is) ;) In addition to all the festivities, we had college basketball to cheer for as well! Our beloved UConn Huskies played both Friday and Sunday in great (nerve-racking, at times) games. Can't wait til next Friday night for the Sweet Sixteen!!! GO HUSKIES!!! When we weren't eating, drinking, and cheering this weekend, Dave and I took a trip to the hardware store on Charles Street to get the essentials to do some indoor gardening. We got wheatgrass, chives, and basil to start. I'll see how these seedlings do in our apartment and maybe get some more! (yuck, we really need to get on our landlord about getting a window washer!!!) AGH! Blogger won't let me upload more pictures! I guess I'll have to leave you in suspense until next time.... I'll post more gardening and knitting pics. Stay tuned....

my icelandic sweater

Here's all the yarn I got at Alafoss. I love the color combination! And here's the progress I've made on the sweater so far! The edges are curling up, so I'm hoping that they will eventually flatten out. Now that I'm just doing the regular stitch in circles, it goes much much quicker! I can't wait to get to the pattern. Only 29 cm to go!!!

my iceland adventures!

Wow, it's been a really, really, really long time since I've posted on my blog.... Well, I've been pretty busy since then with school and all. Oh, and I just got back from Iceland! My mom is there for a month and I went with my gramma to visit her for a week. We stayed at a place called The Blue Lagoon and it was absolutely amazing. The landscape, the sites, and the people were all fantastic. It was such a great way to visit a new country, escape the real world for a while, and just relax. Here are a few photos of our trip: CLICK ON THE PICTURE FOR A LARGER IMAGE. This is where we floated around in the water all day. The water was so warm and blue, and there was always steam coming from the water because the air was so cold. Here I am with the silica on my face -- it's filled with tons of minerals that are great for your skin and is an excellent exfolliant. My mom's friend owns a hotel there and this is the view of the snow covered lava fields and mountains from her restaurant. We took a drive up the coast the day after a snow storm. What a view! Oh! And I got back into the knitting groove!!!! Iceland is well-known for it's sheep and yarn. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting the Alafoss Factory Outlet where I purchased a whole bunch of yarn to make my first sweater! I absolutely love the Iceandic sweaters, and some the Icelandic women we met at The Blue Lagoon helped me with a pattern and get started on knitting one of my own. Everyone was so helpful, it was wonderful. Especially because my pattern is written in ICELANDIC!!! One of the women brought in her daughter's sweater so that I could try it on: This picture was taken on the deck right out of our room. You can see that I'm practically standing in the moss covered lava fields! What a gorgeous view to wake up to every morning! Oh, so about the sweater I'm wearing in the picture... I'm going to make the same design, but with different colors. My main color (the body) will be charcoal and the colors in the pattern will be white and a natural wool color (light brown). I'll post pictures of my yarn and the progress I've made later...... stay tuned....

the official martini of the season

Presenting: The Pomegranate Martini! This was a hit all season long we were drinking these! Did you know that it's one of Oprah's favorite things?! :) It started when my mom and I were watching Oprah and she had Rachael Ray (gotta love her!) help her put on a party. And Oprah was so into these martini's that we just had to go out and make them. Who knew you could be helping your body (with all those anti-oxidants in pomegranate juice) while enjoying a fantastic drink!? Click here for: Oprah's Pomegranate Martini Recipe Each year my mom and I have a new drink we serve at all our holiday parties (two years ago we did Cosmo's and last year was the White Grape Martini). My mom is a piano teacher and has a Christmas recital where all the kids play Christmas music and we have a party afterwards. And of course she has to have a theme! This year it was "The Christmas Story"... all the songs were related to the story of Christ's birth and she decorated accordingly. It was beautiful. I wonder if Alex has pics of the recital too... hmm???

Where have I been???

Okay, so I've never been a very diligent blogger, but this time I went off the deep end. When was my last post? November?!?! Where to begin.... Christmas at home was great! I had my 2nd annual Christmas party the night before Christmas Eve. A bunch of my closest girlfriends from high school all came over. We got dressed up, ate great food, and lots of wine and drinks! It's always great to have those girly parties. We celebrated Christmas Day at my Gramma's. Dave joined us this year :) I got *some* of my Christmas knits done ;) I'm still working on completing a few more promised gifts. I did get my mom's red scarf done a long time ago, my brother Alex's felted clogs are almost done (one is complete and felted, the other needs a finished sole and to be felted... to do this weekend!), my brother Drew's ginormous hat is half finished (I'm going to rip it out and start over!), my Gramma's scarf is 3/4 finished, and my dad got a couple balls of yarn (promised to someday become a hat!). So yeah, I wasn't so successful in the knitting department, but they WILL be done eventually. I did get a bunch of great knitting related gifts. A few days after Christmas, the whole family went to see the musical White Christmas in Boston (a Christmas gift to my Gramma). It was fantastic! And dinner afterwards in the North End just topped it off. And then the next day, I had another party at my place in Boston for New Year's! My brother and a bunch of friends from home and college visited... another successful night :) But I'm finally up in Boston again. I was home in CT for most of my winter break. It was so nice to just hang out at home with nothing to do. Unfortunately I always had my Master's research, apartment hunting, and a summer job search nagging me in the back of my mind. And I was successfull at getting some of that done. And now I'm gearing up to get back to school for the second semester of my second year of grad school. Dorky me, I'm actually excited for classes to begin next week. My brother Alex has all the holiday pictures on his digital (which is in CT), so hopefully I'll be able to upload and share them this weekend... stay tuned.

now that's ONE HUMUNGOUS FOOT!

If you are one of my brothers... DON'T READ THIS POST! I doubt that will be a problem because I don't think they care enough about my knitting habit to read my blog unless I tell them to :) So I got the pattern for the Fiber Trends Felted Clogs in the mail yesterday. I'm making two pairs -- Christmas presents for each bro. I must admit that the pattern seemed so daunting at first, that I almost decided to do a different project instead. But once I got going I realized that it's really easy. As long as you keep track of your stitches. Counting every single stitch can be a drag, but oh well. So I started the sole last night and continued on the toe and instep today. And it is turning out to be one GIGANTIC slipper! I am so tempted to give them the slippers without felting them, just to see their reactions! Every now and again I pause to take a look at my progress and I actually laugh out loud imagining a foot that big. Anyhoo... I have spent way too much time on knitting today... back to the books.

this weekend at the movies.....

I haven't kept up with the books as much as I used to -- I read the first two Harry Potter books when I was teaching in Stamford because that is all the kids ever talked about. It was basically a necessity in order to have a conversation and interact with the kids. But going back to school hasn't helped in keeping up with my pleasure reading. Thank god for the movies though. We saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire this weekend on IMAX and I thought it was by far the best of the first four movies. As the characters grow up, there is a more of a comedic side to it, and there is definitely action and suspense. Definitely check it out! Meg gives it two thumbs up :)

Turkey Day!

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! It's always so nice to just chill with the fam, cook and eat great food, drink great wine, watch football for hours, and visit with old friends. I love the holidays. This year we all seem to be getting into the Christmas spirit a bit earlier than usual. Who cares... it's fun! I didn't get much knitting done this weekend (actually, I should say that there was no knitting at all this weekend, oh well). But I have been doing some cooking! We all go to my Gramma's for Brunch/Appetizers after my cousins run the Manchester Road Race Thanksgiving morning (I've only run once, but it was a lot of fun... you can usually find me at the HS football game instead!) This year we made a yummy breakfast casserole. I added the link for the recipe on my sidebar. It was definitely a hit! Then we went to my aunts for more apps and dinner. I made my party specialty -- Spinach & Artichoke Dip. Love it! Since I've been eating healthier, I've definitely gotten into cooking a lot more. But don't be mistaken, these two recipes are the farthest thing from healthy. But it's the holidays and they taste so unbelievably good, so I opt to just not think about it :) After too many days of doing nothing and hanging out, I gotta get back to the real world... the books and studying await...