Last night Jason and I went shopping for some gingerbread ingredients after I saw this AMAZING post about gingerbread houses that sit on mugs from notmartha.org, and while we were at the Farmer’s Market, Jason realized that last night would be really our only night together until December 29. I have so many babysitting arrangements coming up that we just won’t be able to have any Christmas fun. So while we were at Target, we ran back to look at their trees, found one for under $30 in clearance, and came home to decorate.

I started by making some puff pastry cookies. I wanted to make pie crust cookies, but all I found at the tiny Kroger in Decatur was some ready-made puff pastry sheets. Not a bad thing, though!

They turned out so crispy, puffy, yummy-delicious! I sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar, and was seriously debating pouring milk over them for breakfast.

I used some bite-sized cookie cutters which made them easy to pop on each trip past their resting spot on the stove. Jason almost had to duct tape their container closed.

I also made gingerbread dough for the little gingerbread houses. We used blackstrap molasses, which, along with all the other spices made the dough taste really, really, REALLY strong. The dark molasses also gave the dough a dark brown color that, as I piled up the dough on plastic wrap to rest in the fridge, looked like poo!

We also decorated the tree, but by the time we finished it was 2:00 AM, so there aren’t any pics of the finished tree yet. I did get a lot of pictures of the cats checking it out, though.

Nugget and Fat Stinky are celebrating their first Christmas.

What a fun night!

First off, many thanks to San (www.san-smith.com) who gave me her pass to the Neil Gaiman reading at Agnes Scott. I totally fudged myself by not bringing either of my two Neil Gaiman books to be signed, but I really enjoyed the reading. And I got to see an Internet pal Jessi (www.casual-dread.blogspot.com) and thanks to Jessi for letting me sit with her and getting a great view of Neil Gaiman! We had to wait a good long while to meet Neil (he signed books for every person in the chapel- maybe 400 people!), but when we did get up to him, I said I was an English teacher (ok, little white lie, but I am in school to be one!) and that I was impressed by how his books get reluctant readers to pick up a book (which is quite true!). He hadn’t looked up to speak to nearly anyone before us, but he looked up and responded along the lines that he’d heard that a lot and was glad to encourage young readers.

So yay! That was very exciting and I’m sad that San couldn’t go, but feeling very fortunate that I got to meet him and get a picture with him. I have pictures of Jessi and her friends on Flickr, and she has a picture of us with Neil. Weird camera acrobatics last night.

Anyway. The other thing I wanted to post about today was Lion Brand patterns. I was flipping through some blogs and someone posted a few photos of the wonderful crochet patterns Lion Brand has for FREE on their website. I’m still very biased towards knitting, but the winds may be a-changing now that I’ve seen the fantastic patterns on their site.

I LOVE this granny square scarf. It’s featured with a soft mohair yarn which makes it look cute and modern. Granny squares have a tendency to come off kinda clunky and old-fashioned (or maybe I just always picture the afghans my Nana made in the 70s), but I really like how bright and fun this scarf looks. The picture links to the pattern, but you need to be signed into the Lion Brand site in order to view it.

I also really liked this scalloped, lacy scarf.

Last summer I made a cute knitted dress for a girl I’d babysat with a light linen yarn. This pattern is similar to the dress I made, but I’m really digging the new handpainted yarn from Lion Brand that looks like a Noro colorway.

What a cute little outfit for the winter? I want to make this as a Christmas gift for the little one I’m sitting for now. She could wear a long-sleeve onesie and leggings or tights under it. With a soft wool it would be perfect for winter wear.

I’m hoping to add a few more items to my Etsy shop this afternoon before I go out to babysit for the evening. I’m thinking it may be a much later update, but debating between adding handspun yarn and knitting up some of my handspun. I think there are so many established and popular handspun yarn sellers on Etsy that I may be wasting my time listing just plain yarn. I’ve had a raspberry colored yarn with over 250 yards (!) sitting in my shop since March. I’ve always wondered if I shouldn’t just knit up and see how that goes. I don’t know. Are there more knitters on Etsy or people who want already-knitted items?

One of the yarns I will probably list is a beauty I’ve been holding onto for a long time thinking I would ply it. But I really like it as a single.

It’s a little over-wound in a few spots, but I plan on soaking it and giving it a good WHACK and stretch before listing it. I spun this in January and didn’t intend at all for this to be listed so close to Christmas. It reminds me more of roses and leaves than Christmas. But oh well. Now’s the time.

I better get on with my real life chores today. Have a lovely day!

Finals are OVER and I’m happy to report that I received another 4.0 this semester. I am making up big time for my undergraduate GPA. Also, my professor wants me to submit one of my final exam essays to a peer-reviewed education journal. Cool!

And I gotta tell ya, there is nothing better than coming home on a freezing cold, rainy day to a package. Especially when inside the package you find:

A hand-crocheted Jayne hat! OMG WHEEE! Thank you so much, Julia! This totally made my day.

I will be adding a few new items to my Etsy shop this week. I lowered my prices to make holiday shopping a touch more affordable, and I’m willing to (reasonably) negotiate on what’s still in there. I’ll be adding at least two other scarves and some handspun yarn. http://cassinator.etsy.com

Have a lovely weekend!

I bought bananas from Your Dekalb Farmer’s Market thinking they might quickly brown with the intention of baking something with them. They were about an hour away from black death this evening so I ran by a local chain grocery to grab some pecans, and found some peanut butter swirl chocolate chips at a major discount so I was like, “OH YEAH” and made some “Elvis” cookies! (I took pics with my iPhone, so apologies for the graininess.)

I based my cookies on this recipe from Simply Recipes: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/banana_cookies/

I wanted to share a bunch of things over the past week, but finals are eating my brain. No wonder I had dreams about a zombie attack last night. The zombies detested the color orange… what does that symbolize? Hopefully it’s not bad news about this blanket I started for a friend’s baby.

Ah, Crochet. I misjudged you. It still feels incredibly awkward in my hands, but I’m not giving up on this blanket. I’ve frogged it about 6 times already, but here we are. My fear was that all crochet patterns looked like stuff my Nana used to make- weird Christmas doilies and toilet roll covers. But I realized that crochet comes in handy for a lot of things like grocery fruit bags and flowers and zig zag blankets. This one’s supposed to be in Auburn colors- baby’s mama went to Auburn, as pretty much everyone in her clan did as well. I’ll get back to you on whether I make crocheting a habit, although I’m willing to experiment as I try to learn how to read crochet patterns.

This is the first year I haven’t handmade all my Christmas presents in awhile. I have a feeling most of my gifts will be from Etsy. The only person who’s asked me to make them anything is a friend who sent me this picture from SoHo in NYC:

I told her I’d make her a scaled-down version with chunky yarn. I don’t think I could make a scarf of Tom Baker proportions in 24 days!

Anywho, back to the coffee and finishing this project. I procrastinated all the way to the bitter end on this one and I’m really gonna pay for it, but I’m not a quitter!