Finished!!! Hourglass Sweater

As you may recall, I had a hard time with a very simple sweater pattern: the Hourglass Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I was working on it in the car and couldn't find the stitch key in the book (it's there, just not at the beginning or end as I had expected), so I had to fudge the ssk, which I apparently did wrong, because the raglan sleeve decreases did not come out as planned. So I stuffed it in my knitting basket, promtly left town and then the country, and didn't look at it for a month and a half. Coming back to Winona mid-January, I decided I was ready to try again. So I frogged the whole top part, re-did the ssk stithces correctly, and Voila! My completed Hourglass Sweater: I used Katia Scotch Tweed yarn, which is 65% silk, 26% wool, and 9% rayon in the smallest size with size six needles. Since many people had problems with the boatneck stretching out, I did not follow directions and keep them live, but rather bound off and folded it over, as I had done for the bottom hem and sleeves. I've been wearing this all week, and the neck has so far kept it shape well. I've been wanting to knit a sweater like this for over a year- something I can just pull over my head that would be slouchy but still femenine and shapely. The yarn makes it a year-round weight, too, as those Minnesota and Maine summer nights can get chilly.

With temps falling to 10 below today, however, I have had to layer underneath. And what is it I'm wearing? The cutest tee shirt that Lisa gave me for my birthday the year before last. It says, "Knitting is Knotty" -super cute, right?

After a little hiatus, we've gone back to the weekend pizza nights. I had been using a dough recipe from Cooking Light magazine, but this time I tried Barefoot Contessa's mini pizza recipe from Parties!. It makes six individual-sized pizzas, which we really liked, since we could add whatever we wanted- lots of cheese and meat for Juan, tomatoes and basil for me.