On the Needles, Dec. 21, 2013

I've done it again, and here it is Saturday, And I'm doing Friday's knitting post. But there's something about this time of year that makes my already bad procrastinating habit even worse. I finished up all the customer quilts that needed to be done before Christmas on this past Wednesday.
Since then, there have been lots of grocery shopping trips, optometrist appointments, stocking stuffer shopping trips, and pajama pattern tracing, then pajama cutting out and pajama sewing. One pair is completely finished. I did manage during all the driving around, to get some knitting done, and am making good progress on my Cowlie. There is a treatment for the front of this piece once all the rest of it is done, and I really hope it does something about folding the front part back a bit, because right now it is really long and hangs over my face. It's the right gauge, so I'll just have to wait and see what developes from here. I've started the ribbing shaping for the transition from going horizontal to vertical. After that is done, it gets joined at the front, and then knit in the round to form the cowl neck part. It's a pretty fast and easy knit. And I learned something new doing it, the magic loop  cast on. I like learning new stuff.

The rest of the time yesterday was spent baking. My wonderful husband has been expressing a desire lately to learn how to make pie crust. Yesterday was the day. He made 4 dozen mincemeat tarts. By the time he got to the second batch of tarts, he was getting there. By the last dozen, he had it nailed. While he was doing that, I was baking up some Soft gingersnap cookies, and some no bake cookies the we around here call Mud Pie cookies. I also made up another batch of dough for more of the soft gingersnaps, since they need to be refrigerated over night, and they are soooooooo good. I can see the first batch being gone in no time at all.
And best of all today, our son Noel is coming home today, and he'll be here for 5 weeks. That's not great for his pocket book, but it's wonderful for this mom to have him around for a bit. So, I'm going to link up to Judy's On the Needles, and then get back to the baking. More ginger snaps without the snap, some coconut macaroons, and maybe some chocolate chip cookies too. I'll see how the day goes.