#8. Finished My Hat! and #11. Coconut Apricot Icebox Cookies

Things here are pretty busy these days, with the store's busiest season coming up and us going out of town for a few days for Thanksgiving. I did have time to get a lot done this weekend, though, including these two projects:

1. I finished the hat I've been working on! I made my maiden voyage to Windsor Button on Saturday, and found a cute button to go with it, so I sewed it on last night.

I actually think this hat is really cute, so I'll have to make another one sometime for myself! Next up, though, I'm going to tackle a multi-color project: a cute take on a basic striped scarf. Knowing me, it'll be about down about mid-April....

2. Greg surprised me by bringing home a food processor earlier this week (it's no dozen roses, but almost as good!), so I had to try it out this weekend. I'd been wanting to try the Coconut Apricot Icebox Cookies out of Great Cookies for a while now, but didn't have the patience to chop either the coconut or the apricots by hand. The food processor worked miracles! The cookies were still a little labor intensive, but they're delicious (like little apricot-studded macaroons), and remind me a little of these little apricot bites I used to get when my mom ordered from Sweet Energy.

I'm not baking for Thanksgiving (thanks so a Groupon for Petsi Pies, our Thanksgiving pie commitment is taken care of), but I'll be making more cookies for book club next week. More pictures then!

#8. My Goal Sweater

I only started knitting last winter, when my grammie gave me a basic knitting kit for Christmas. Since then I've made a few dishclothes, and a pair of fingerless mittens. The mittens I sadly didn't finish until about April, just when I stopped needing them for the summer, but I've been making good use of them the last month or so.

Now that the weather's starting to get colder, I'm getting excited about knitting projects again. I'm just about done with the hat I started at the end of the summer (yeah, I'm still pretty slow). I'll post a picture next week when I find a button to finish it off. This one won't get much use by me either, though, since it turned out a little small. Christmas present for one of the nieces!

I haven't figured out yet what I'll do for my next project. The ones I've found lately that I like either seem a little too difficult for my skill level, or require a bigger yarn investment than I'm prepared for at the moment. I have to find something this week, though, because I'm off to Windsor Button next weekend to finish up that hat, and I'm hoping to pick up some new yarn too.

In the meantime, I did find a sweater that I aspire to making. I'm not sure it'll be my first (and therefore the one I get to check off my list), but it looks cozy and totally doable, if a tad complicated. Here's a photo from berroco.com, which has the pattern posted: