the two-day thanksgiving mitts... and a poem ;)

Twas Thanksgiving Eve
so my brother and I
skipped our last classes,
and instead took a drive.

Homeward we headed,
with eyes set to the west,
prepared to eat turkey
and give thanks that we're blessed.

We left at two-thirty,
quite a nice time indeed, 
but normal hump-day traffic 
was multiplied by three!

So I in the driver's seat,
with Will by my side
took on Thanksgiving traffic...
What a terrible ride!

First was the woman
whose turn signal "broke..."
Next, we were stressed
by a slow older bloke!

But finally, ah!
The end was in sight.
Good old Three-Ninety-Four
but by then twas near night!

With Carey and Crosby, 
and Groban and Ives
we sang Christmas carols
til the time we arrived

Home! We knew we were,
from the beacon of light
beaming from St. James
in the dark of the night. 

The end.

So, I figured I owe you bit more effort after not writing a proper post for ever and ever. Thus, the poem.

Other things I've been doing this lovely holiday break from school: knitting. Honestly, that's it! I started AND finished a pair of pink fingerless mitts in 2 days, and now I've begun a pair of gloves... I'm only knitting Christmas presents from here on out, so you'll have to guess who they're for!

Simple, yet adorable. #mystyle

My fav part? The scalloped cuff.

Happy Thanksgiving! Oh, and Happy Small-Business Saturday, which happens to be tomorrow... Not sure if that's just a small-town thing, or if it's nationwide. Probably just a small-town thing.
 

{my 21st birthday}

Soooooo for my 21st birthday this past summer, my boyfriend Trevor and I decided we would go camping at Wild River state park. I was super excited because I was living at home last summer and I didn't get to see him except for on weekends, so having an entire three days with him was really awesome :) Anyway, so we got all packed up and drove an hour northeast from the cities. Sunday was my birthday, and he had a day full of fun things planned...

We went hiking at Taylors Falls (so beautiful!)

 

 

The river boat! Someday I wanna go on this, it looked like a lot of fun :)

This was in one of the caves at Taylor's Falls. 

 

So after we went to Taylor's Falls, we realized we were really close to the Wisconsin border, so we drove across the river to this tiny little tourist town to grab some coffee for Trevor (he's a bit of a caffeine addict ;) ) and some lunch, and then we went to a winery for a private wine tasting! We ended up buying a bottle of my favorite wine to go with our delicious steak dinner later.

This was my favorite part of the trip, it was so classy! And they gave us the glasses as a souvenir!

 

After the winery, we had a delicious campfire steak dinner :)

Campfire steaks just aren't complete without roasted corn on the cob!

After dinner we had smores, and I was really excited because I had kind of been anticipating something life-changing happening that day... So, at this point I'd had a few glasses of wine. My mouth was speaking a little more freely, and so mid-smore I asked Trevor when I would get my ring! Trevor replied, "Oh, not today, baby. I didn't want to take away the excitement of your 21st birthday. You'll probably get that a different day." So that was that, I had a second smore and decided to forget about it as we cleaned up the campsite to get ready for bed.
But then, we went for a little walk to this beautiful prairie overlook. There was a bench there, so we sat down for a little while, watching the stars and the moon, and then Trevor started fumbling around in his pocket, pulled out a ring box and asked me to marry him! Of course I said yes :) It was pretty dark out, so he had to use his phone to show me how beautiful the ring is. 

white and yellow gold with 4 tiny diamonds and a pearl :) I love it!

So the past few months I've been wedding planning, getting ready for this coming spring! It's gonna be legen...wait for it... and I hope you're not lactose intolerant because the second half of that word is DAIRY. LEGENDARY. 

Love you all! 
Kayla

as i promised, owls.

That's right-- pics of my owl sweater for you to enjoy, and to be inspired by! 

I know it's hard to see the owls in this picture, but it gets the color so perfectly that I couldn't help but include it. 

Anyway, I'll be posting regularly now that school is out. I hadn't had time to blog (or even knit for that matter) this past semester. Being involved sucks your life away. Don't do it if you value your lazyness. So anyway, hopefully you'll be seeing a lot more of my work... Unless of course my TV show list grows any longer. I don't think I can keep up with any more shows... HIMYM and Sherlock are pretty demanding.

Cheesy smile much? Jeez, self. Oh, and note the lovely wood paneling in the background. My father's handiwork :) 





 

owls!

While I was on vacation in Colorado the past few days, I was able to make it to a yarn store called "My Sister Knits". It's an adorable shop built in somebody's back yard. With some inspiration from my friend's cousin, who my friend and I stayed with all week, I decided to make a sweater. I bought some bulky weight yarn and downloaded the pattern "Owls" from Ravelry. It's a cute sweater, and it knits up rather quickly (or so it seemed... I finished the entire body in one day. Granted, I was knitting basically nonstop since we were driving through the mountains...). So far it's been a great pattern choice for the first sweater I've ever made. I will post photos later, but I sort of want to put it all together first so you can actually see the finished product.

not too busy to knit...

 Remember that blue hat I made? Well, I loved it so much that I decided to make one for myself too. That way I wouldn't have to keep coveting Austin's one :) I wear this thing to class and it keeps my ears warm in the entire two days of this harsh Minnesota weather. It also kept my ears warm early in the morning a few days ago when I helped build a nice snowman for the neighbor boys :)

 Why YES that is my roommate's ottoman, and it made an excellent showcase for my hat! Thanks, Chelsea!

 If you look reaaaaally closely you can see part of my roommate's boot collection in the background.

The full hat :)

Looking hopefully toward the ceiling fan... Idk. I was in a silly model-y mood. 





Next time hopefully I'll have a completed pair of matching baby bootees! Emphasis on the matching... I may or may not have accidentally made one of the pair too big. Whoops. Nothing I can't fix. With an entirely new bootee.

blue sweater mittens

I had made another pair of sweater mittens for myself a looooong time ago, like before Christmas, and I just remembered I didn't put any pictures up. Here's a picture of my lovely mittens :)

voyageur's toque

 Here are the pictures of that hat I made for my boyfriend's brother. Pretty neat huh?? 
 

 The tassel was the most fun to make, but it took me a couple tries. The first tassel I made was too thick, and my sister ended up tying it on a string and using it for a cat toy for my adorable kitteh, Peanut.

What a handsome fellow! :) He looks like a real live voyageur!