Friday Favorites

Happy Friday, friends!  How are you doing this week?  In sunny Los Angeles, it’s hard for me to believe that Christmas is just around the corner!  As of now, I’m not doing any gift knitting (I often wait til I have a week to go to decide to try to churn out a hand knit pressie), and I’m feeling pretty okay with that.  I love giving handknit gifts, but I just haven’t gotten my act together for it this year.

I’ve rounded up a batch of favorites (some of which are holiday-ish) this week, so let’s get to them!

Fiber

Clockwise: [1] Image (c) A Yarn Story [2] Image from sweetappledesigns.com [3] Image (c) Clare Lakewood

• The Rainey Sisters featured these adorable pompom wreathes on their blog — what a fun decoration they’d be!
• I love these colorwork mitts by Clare Lakewood, and fingerless mitts can make great last minuted knitted gifts!
• I stumbled across this amazing sheep mug on Instagram yesterday.  Some aggresive googling revealed that UK-based Wool Warehouse sells it, and, for those of you in the US, their international shipping appears to be very reasonable — a perfect gift for the knitting/sheep fanatic in your life!  (I don’t know about you, but I find sheep wearing sweaters to be pretty irresitible!)
•  Not really in the gift category (unless you think you can make an adult male sweater in less that three weeks – if so more power to you!), but how gorgeous is this sweater?

Sustenance 

From left to right, images from Food 52; Smitten Kitchen; Webs Yarn.

• I love this recipe for roasted and poached pears to pare (ba-da-chump!) with a holiday cheese plate.
• Combining fiber and sustenance: how great are these knitterly cookie cutters, which my mom told me about a few weeks ago?
• I trust Smitten Kithcen in all things, and she says this is one of her best entertaining recipes — I think it’d be perfect for a December dinner party.
• And this soup, I think, could be the perfect antidote to holiday party overindulgence — spinach and leek, yum!

You can see previous Friday Favorites (which are chockablock with knitting gift ideas, should you need them) here.

What are you up to this weekend?  Last minute shopping or knitting? Cooking?  I’d love to hear in the comments!