Crafty weekend!

Yesterday my sister came here to visit, and we finally used our soap making supplies that we bought over a year ago! I ordered them from Panduro, a Swedish crafts shop, so that we could make some as Christmas gifts. For last Christmas! We just haven't gotten around to it yet, but yesterday we finally made them. We started out by melting the soap base, then added scent (we had bought apple scent) and colours (we made two batches, one green and one purple). We then poured the liquid soap into some ice trays that I bought at Ikea with this in mind, plus Sanna had a tray that makes robot shaped chocolates that we also used.

They came out looking so cute!

It was pretty fun, even though Sanna did most of the job (I did the dishes while she stirred the soap mixture), and I can definitely see myself making more soap.

I have also been knitting a lot this past week. Thomas has been away for three evenings, so I've had plenty of time to knit undisturbed after work. I've finished all the knitting on the Companion Cube, and I've duplicate stitched the first of the squares. 

I haven't cut them yet, I think I'll block them before I do that. I am very satisfied with how the pink stitches came out, I think it's looking pretty neat. I really hope that it will hold up better this time, because I'm definitely not making another one! I'm contemplating actually making reinforcement seams on a sewing machine this time too. 

I've also knitted a lot on my Serina cardigan, as I would love to finish this one before Christmas. I bought a very pretty dress last weekend, and I would love to be able to wear it with the green cardigan on Christmas Eve.

The colour is a little off in the photo, as I took it late last night with a flash. It's much more green than it looks like, and not at all yellow-ish. I haven't tried it on for a while, but I think I'm almost ready to start the ribbing at the bottom. After that it's just sleeves and the button band. I'm going to make the sleeves full length, as I have much more use for that than the 3/4 sleeves, so I think I'll do those before I start the button band. I'm thinking of adding a small shawl collar to it too, as the one on the Dark and Stormy cardigan (which is another pattern I really want to make), but I need to see how much yarn I have left. I'll let you know what I decide.

I haven't picked up the Omelet shawl or the Christmas ball decorations in quite some time. I think I'll have to rip out the Christmas ball, as I've made the increases at the bottom of it a bit too tight. It's no big deal though, it's only about an hour's work, so I think I'll have it back pretty fast. But I want to finish the cube and the Cardigan first.

And I haven't started any new socks! Megan and Amy of the Stockinette Zombies podcast, are having a KAL that's called the Crazy KAL. You're supposed to make a goal that seems crazy to you! Amy is knitting monogamously on one project at a time, as she is a very polygamous knitter otherwise, while Megan is doing the complete opposite and have cast on for lots and lots of projects simultaneously. I think I might want to join in, and my Crazy will be to finish all of my projects before I cast on for anything new. I very rarely have fewer than four projects going at once, so it will be very strange for me if I actually finish all four of them before I start something new. Hopefully I'll manage to finish all of them before the end of December, when the KAL ends.

This weekend is a very nice one for me, as I have both Monday and Tuesday off from work. I took two vacation days, and I'm just going to spend them at home, knitting lots and cleaning some too. I just felt that I needed some time to relax, and as I have several days of vacation left this year I decided to use two of them. Today though, I'm spending the day with Thomas, probably mostly hanging out on the couch, playing video games and knitting (I'll leave it up to you to guess which one of us will be doing what :)

/ Jenny