Almost ready for Santa

There has been a lot of Christmas progress around here over the last few days.  And thank goodness for it!  I was in quite a panic up until last night.  But you know how when you have WAY too much to do and you're all stressed out about it but then  you sit down and map out an actual plan, a plan with priorities, a plan with sensible priorities, and then you focus on that plan and start following the steps and it suddenly all comes together and you realize you are actually going to survive as long as you can remain focused...?  Yeah, that happened.  I just hope I haven't forgotten anything because one single missed task and my whole world is going to fall apart again.

Anyway, the tree is up and decorated and Leroy is hanging front and center where he can be seen from the 'good' chair.  I painted Leroy when I was a young kid - six or eight years old, I'd guess.  Dad named him Leroy and he always had to hang where Dad could see him from his seat on the couch.

The gifts are all wrapped.  Well, most of them are.  Okay, 90% of them are wrapped.  But the rest are things that will most likely go in gift bags so not a hugetime consuming issue.

I thought I still needed to go stocking stuffer shopping but I met with Santa yesterday and it turns out I already have more stuff than I need.

Nine batches of rum balls have been made.  I need to make four more batches but I ran out of ingredients and what with the traditional shot of rum between each batch, I wasn't in any condition to go to the grocery store.

This set of miniature stockings has been completed...

And the final knitted gift is on the needles.  I'm afraid to say it but I shouldn't have any trouble getting it finished in time.

There's still 8,000 batches of cookies to bake but thank goodness for awesome daughters who volunteer for that duty.  She even gets the first five or six thousand made without complaint.  Ususally.

So what's left to do?  

I still have to deliver the gifts.

And of course I need to finish wrapping the gifts.

We need to go ride around looking at other's lights.

I need to help Hayden make gifts for her parents.  I really want that to be a tradition.  Have a Christmas Craft Night (or day) with her each year so that (A) we can have craft time together, (B) she can hand-make something for her parents and later in life, her friends or whoever she wants to make for, and (C) it will give her parents an evening or afternoon to go do adulty things.  Growing up, I had that tradition with my God Mother and I have some wonderful crafty memories.  I want the same for Hayden.

I need to do the final Christmas dinner shopping and some last minute baking.

And of course, I need to finish that last knitted gift.

Oh, and I should probably at least vacuum before Santa arrives.

I have two days off from work between now and Christmas.  I should be able to get all that done, right?

Right??

I sure hope I haven't forgotten anything.

And since I can feel the panic starting to slowly seep back in, I'm going to go ahead and make the decision to take next week off from blogging.  I hope you all have a wonderful, safe, fun and happy holiday.

🎄MERRY CHRISTMAS🎄

On the needles

First, we finally have a house full of pumpkins and candy corn.  I just Love autumn!

I am so happy to have cooler temperatures and pumpkins.  My jeans, sweaters and boots have been dug out of storage and we've even turned on the heat.  I love fall!

I'm still frantically knitting for this season's Christmas bazaars.  The first one is on November 12th so I have some time but unfortunately, work takes up a lot of my time.  And then there's the whole house selling thing.  Cleaning up all my crafty mess, putting it all away, leaving the house for an hour or so, then coming home and getting it all back out again takes up a surprising amount of time.  I shouldn't complain.  Having lots of interest in the house is much better than having no interest.  Amazingly, according to Zillow, the listing has had 2,268 views in 13 days.  Thankfully not all those people have come to see the house, although it does feel like I've dumped the trash cans and mopped the floors that many times.  😄

At the moment, I'm focusing on knitting fur headbands.  They were extremely popular at Winterfest last year so I decided to make them again this year.  They don't look like much until you put them on  but they are super comfortable, soft and warm.

I wore one pretty much the entire time I was working Winterfest last year.

What have you been knitting?

Christmas is how many days away?

 I feel like I'm totally failing Chrismtas this year and I'm not sure why.  I think that it's more like I'm not really enjoying it.  Normally the rush and the hassles and the days and days of pure panic mode get me in the Christmas spirit.  I seem to enjoy the frantic pre-Christmas life.  

But this year, because of the Winterfest booth, I've had to be a little more organized and I've had to get things done in advance instead of doing Every Single Thing on December 23rd.  Yes, normally, I find ways to busilly procrastinate until at least 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve Eve and then PURE TOTAL PANIC kicks in, along with a little Christmas magic and I get it all done.  Yes, I have hemmed, cross stitched and blocked hats and gloves on the car radiator vents on the way to the recipeints' house, but I've always gotten it all done.  And I kinda love that Christmas stress. 

But this year, with the exception of Christmas Eve and Day, I will be working at the Winterfest booth every single night starting tonight and going through January 2nd.  Every. Single. Night.  And by night, I mean I leave home around 1 p.m. every day and get home around midnight.

And because I am NOT a morning person and I have enough trouble leaving the house at 1:00 p.m. every day, I don't accomplish much in the mornings. So, I've had to prepare a little bit in advance this year.

So...

The gifts are bought.  And wrapped.  I've even taken them off the wrapping table and put them under the tree!

The hand-made gifts are made and finished. Gasp!

I've taken the annual tacky Christmas lights tour with Sarah.

The Winterfest booth is stocked.  Maybe not as well stocked as it was on opening weekend, but it's stocked with a decent selection of items.

The cookie dough is made and in the freezer in little balls just waiting to be baked next week.  (Thank you Sarah!)

The rum balls have been made and the kitchen cleaned up.  It never fails to amaze me just how far powdered sugar can fly!

I have either watched or pre-recorded my favorite Christmas movies so I can watch them while I'm having coffee and waking up in the mornings.

And Amazon delivered the last of the packages yesterday. 

Hmm, maybe I'm not done making gifts after all.  Yikes!

And, because I promised myself I wasn't going to kill myself worrying about getting last minute stuff done while dealing with Winterfest every day, there's a very good chance this will be my last post for 2021.  Well, that's not true.  I've written a couple of Sunday Supper posts in advance.  But other than that, this is probably my last post.  So,...

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Christmas Gift Knitting

The Christmas gift knitting continues so no knitting photos today.  Not even black and white ones.

We had a visit from Jack Frost during Winterfest this past weekend.  Everyone in our booth loves it when the various Christmas charecters stop by for a photo op and to say Merry Christmas.

But back to talking about knitting...

Boy!  I am so far behind on the knitting schedule.  So very, very far behind.  But, I've revamped my calendar, made a detailed plan, and if I don't have a single interruption and I can manage to focus on the knitting rather than the Hallmark Christmas movies, I think I can get it all done.  All it will take is zero interruptions and a small Christmas miracle.

And, since I'm so far behind on gift knitting, I'm even further behind on the Winterfest sweater project.  I'm actually now two full, gallon Zip-lock bags of yarn behind.  Two very, very full gallon bags.  Luckily, that sweater doesn't have a deadline.  Well, actually I guess it does now.  A little boy stopped by the booth this past weekend was quite concerned about when it would be finished.  He wouldn't settle for "a long time from now."  So, I now have the deadline of March, 2022.  And a six year old boss.  😁

On the needles

Besides that Winterfest sweater, I have a few other things on the needles.

There's the Merry Xmas Tree shawl.  The yarn is actually called Merry Xmas Tree and I love the way it is knitting up.  I bought the skein at a fiber festival several years ago and am excited to finally be knitting with it.  The yarn has just a bit of sparkle in it as well as tiny dots of color.  There's no pattern, it's just a heart shaped/triangular shawl with a few eyelet rows thrown in for interest.  I can't wait for it to be finished.  I'm dying to wear it to Winterfest.

And there's a little bit of gift knitting happening.

Can you guess what it is?  I hope the recipient can't.

And so that I'm not closing with a black and white photo...

I'm sorry for the blurr.  It was dark outside and the car was rolling through the line...  

But, have you ever noticed that the stop signs at Chick Fil A have a different font than normal stop signs?  I'd never noticed it before.  Apparently it's a thing.

I hope your Christmas knitting and/or crafting is going smoothly.

We're gonna need a bigger tree

 

We're definitely going to need a bigger tree!  

Guess that means I need to pause the mini mitten ornament knitting and go root through our storage units to find the Christmas stuff.  

It's starting to look like we may still be in this house for Christmas anyway so Mike can't complain but so much when I start dragging boxes of Christmas decorations in before Halloween. 

Meanwhile, I'm focusing on knitting mini mittens this week for Winterfest.  Thank goodness for my over abundant Wool of the Andes collection.  My love of buying random colored skeins is coming in handy!

And... Writing this post reminded me of the book, The Mitten.  Nana better be buying a copy for Hayden and adding a pair of mittens for her to the knitting list.  Actually, these ornament mittens might actually fit her. I'll have to check that out.

On and off the needles

My knitting has been all over the place lately.  The pinched nerve in my back is still pinched and I'm still taking massive quantities of extra strength Tylenol and the occasional muscle relaxer.  And, CBD gummies.  I'm not sure I want to admit that here, but they are legal and they were purchased at a real store and I'm over 18....  A friend suggested I try one because the massive quantities of Tylenol and muscle relaxers aren't solving the problem.  They help, but I still can't sleep or walk properly because of the cramping and spasming muscles.  Anyway, the CBD gummies actually help.  It may all be in my head but they do give me some relief.  Each gummy takes 20 minutes for me to feel and the sense of calm and relaxation lasts for about an hour.  The muscle relaxers simpley make me foggy headed for hours on end and only half-way help with the muscle spasms for about 30 minutes.  

Anyway, the result of all that is that I have another orthopedic appointment this afternoon and I can't seem to concentrate on any one project for more than a few minutes.

The lack of concentration has produced two F-bombs (poorly photographed as usual) instead of the planned 15 to 20.  I plan to list them in my Etsy shop and to sell them at Winterfest.  They seem so silly but everyone who sees one seems to want one, or more, to give as gifts.  Apparently lots of people have siblings and co-workers who would appreciate asocially acceptable way of dropping the F-bomb.

And two Christmas gnomes rather than the 20 or more I want to have on hand.  These guys are simple but extremely fiddly to knit.  I'm not 100% sure I'm going to ever make 20 of them.  But I did buy all the supplies so maybe when I'm not so foggy headed...

And I started a glove/mitten/fingerless glove during Sunday's football game.  I haven't decided what exactly it's going to be yet.  I'm also not sure if this will be for me or the shop.  I'm supposed to be concentrating on knitting for Winterfest but...  I really like this color.  It's an unusual green and I love anything tweedy.  "Tweedy" is a word, right??  The yarn is City Tweed  Artichoke, it's DK weight and should knit up relatively fast.  

Well, that glove would knit up fast if I only put down the cookies and picked up the knitting.  Again, it may be all in my head, but CBD gummies give me horrible junk food cravings.  At least I'm blaming the gummies and not the fact that I am Seriously sick and tired and totally over this pinched nerve nonsense.  I'm really not sure if it's CBD or pity party junk food cravings that I'm experiencing.

Anyone else out there tried CBD products?  What's your experience been?
 

I won!

 I'm pretty excited!

I finished the pink gradient shawl.  I finished two days ahead of schedule, and, I won at yarn chicken!  I was sweating it out once I'd bound off the first half of the shawl. Even my hands were sweating over the last quarter.  It was only over the last five or six stitches that I began to calm down and have a little faith that I'd win the game.

I hope my mother-in-law will like it.

Pink is her favorite color and she wears head to toe, multiple shades of pink most days.  She even has pink shoes, a pink hat and even a pink coat.  The shawl should complete her outfit.

Oh, and did you notice - I finished it then got it blocked two whole days ahead of schedule!  I don't know what to do with myself now.  I don't think I've ever finished Christmas gift crafting early.  Ever! Normally, I'm sewing seams or blocking things on the car heater vent on the way to deliver the gift. How am I supposed to fill those extra two days I've created?

I want to have a special #ChristmasEveCastOn project but I don't want to wait until Christmas to knit something.  I also don't want to knit on anything from my UFO pile.  Should I start something new that I won't finish?  Do I force myself to knit something I don't want to knit?  Or should I just go eat rum balls and cookies for the next few days?

Decisions, decisions!

Three on Thursday - Eight Days

It may be Three on Thursday but we only have eight days until Christmas.  Eight!  Where are the days going??

I'm feeling pretty good about it though.

The stockings are lined and hung.  I didn't do the best job in the world hand sewing the linings but the stockings will only get used once a year and I made sure to, at minimum, make my stitches small enough so that a Barbie shoe couldn't pass through.  I couldn't think of anything a young lady might like that was smaller than a Barbie shoe.  Maybe beads, but I figured Santa wouldn't be dumping loose beads into a stocking.  If Santa does ever decide to give something smaller than a Barbie shoe, he'll just have to put it in a box.

I finished four pair of beaded socks for Hayden and Fred is enjoying showing them off.  I will make more at some point - either when she requests a certain color or she's moved up to the next size socks.  That girl is growing like a weed so it will probably only be a matter of months, if not weeks, before she needs new socks.

The shawl for my mother-in-law is coming along and should go much faster now that it's the last Christmas item on my list.  I'm not sure I've ever posted a photo of it before.  It's a Very pink, very simple garter stitch, triangular shawl. 

I'm using Stroll Gradient Duos in BFF to knit the shawl.  My MIL's favorite color is pink and this colorway is very pink!  To make the shawl, I started using the yarn from the outside of one skein then from the inside of the second.  I've just made it to the middle shade on the second skein but the idea is that the shawl will fade from light to medium to neon pink, then fade back to medium then to light pink.

The last shawl I made for her wasn't received well but she is ALWAYS cold and pink is her favorite color.  This one is definitely pink so hopefully she'll like this one better.  But just in case, I'm not bothering with any fancy lacy bits on it and thankfully, the yarn is machine wash and dryable.  Yay for that!

I hope your holiday projects are going as well as mine, (Gosh, I probably just jinxed myself with that shawl!) and I also hope you'll join me over at Carole's for Three on Thursday.

Eight days and counting....

Tiny Tea Leaves

Tiny Tea Leaves is officially finished.  It's knit, it's blocked, it has buttons, and it's even wrapped and under the tree.

I'm not sure why I'm using a black and white photo when I've already shown other in-color photos but...   ...And, the yoke lines up much better than it appears in the photo. 😊

This was a great little design and I'm so thankful Karen from Pumpkin Sunrise gifted me the pattern a while back.  Despite it taking me ages to complete, it's a simple little cardigan with easy to follow instructions.  The pattern is written for sizes ranging from 2T up to preteen and I can see myself making many more of these in the years to come.

I used a heathered yarn for this one but the pattern is designed so that you could use just about anything and even multiple yarns.  I'm thinking it would be really cute with the yoke and garter edging knit in a different color from the body.  I'm also thinking Hayden will need one knit in her favorite sports team colors.  Her mom and I will have to battle it out over who her favorite football team is though.  Hayden's mom is just as sweet as she can be but she has very poor taste in football teams. 😊

Crud!  Now I'm thinking about all the color options I could knit and I'm about ten seconds from tossing aside my next assigned project to cast on another Tiny Tea Leaves cardigan.  Aack!

On the Needles

Just a quick OTN update.

Remember Tiny Tea Leaves?  It got shoved down to the bottom of the knitting bag while I knit Christmas gifts.  I only have a sleeve and a half left to knit.  And well, I guess the button band.  The point is, I should be able to knock out this baby in time for Christmas too.  I better!  Hayden is only eight months old, almost nine, and already wearing 18 month size clothing.  She's slim but tall.  Anyway, I thought I had until late summer of 2021 to get this little 2T sweater knit but apparently not.

If you're interested, I'm knitting it with Blossom Heather Wool of the Andes.  I'm not normally a big fan of pink - I may have mentioned that a few times before - but I LOVE this Blossom Heather colorway.  I have knit many, many hats and mittens for my Etsy shop as well as for various gifts.  I'm not sure it will look too good with my skin tone but one of these days I'm going to knit myself a sweater with it.  It's just such a pretty, pale heathered pink.  It's just perfect!  It's a delicate, pale pink without looking the least bit babyish. And after I knit the sweater for myself, I just may knit a blanket and some pillows and maybe a skirt.  Thankfully it will take me a lifetime to get all that knit because if I'm going to wear a knit skirt, I'm going to loose 100 lbs first.  I have time!  😊

That time of year

 It's that time of year...

That time of year when all the knitting photos are in black and white.  

I am officially done with the Smitten mitten ordeal.  I was starting to think bad thoughts and wish the receivers ill will so I decided one Advent garland a year would suffice.  The extra little mittens I'd managed to knit will become ornaments and/or package toppers and the rest of people who were supposed to be getting Advent garlands are going to get something store bought.  I decided store bought is better than giving them ill will vibes.  Even if I have no earthly idea what to buy them because I am THE worst at gift shopping.

To add a little color to this post,

I have a new friend.  His name is Fred and he sings and dances.  He sings and dances about as well as I do, which is not saying much!  I can't wait for Hayden to meet him, although he may terrify her.  He looks like he's going to break a hip when he dances and his singing isn't much better.  But I think he's adorable anyway.  I can't quite decide what he is though.  I think he's supposed to be a lama but his face looks more like a camel to me and his body/fur looks like a sheep.  Whatever he is, I love him!

And then there's our tree.  Our Griswald/Rockefeller tree.  

I don't know what happened this year.  First, my husband usually buys Christmas bushes, not trees.  Second, he normally waits until just a few days before Christmas to buy it - which might explain why he always ends up with a bush sized tree instead of something decent.  But this year, the morning after Thanksgiving, he went out and bought this monstrosity.  

Don't get me wrong.  The tree is Gorgeous!  It's perfectly shaped and definitely Not a bush.  But good Lord!  There aren't enough lights in Walmart to light the thing up.  We put 1,000+ lights on it and it only barely lit half the tree.  We bought another 1,000 lights and now it's fairly well lit, except for the top three feet.  We can't reach the top three feet with a five foot stepladder.  We're going to need a real ladder.

I really can't get over the size of the tree.  It's either going to be The most gorgeous tree in the history of trees or it is going to be the most ridiculous looking tree in the history of trees because it won't be decorated or lit at the top.  Only time and my nagging my husband to bring a ladder home will tell.

A light at the end of the tunnel

 There's a tiny little light at the end of the tunnel.  The Christmas gift knitting tunnel, that is.

The hat is finished, blocked, tagged with washing instructions and placed in a box waiting to be wrapped.

All that's left is six pairs of beaded socks for Hayden, those #$&&#! never ending Smitten mittens and a shawl.  Oh, and I still need to line the stockings for Hayden and her mom.

It's a good thing Hayden is so adorable because she's a lot of work!  😊

Actually, Grandma Nana (I'm having trouble getting used to being Nana) is always happy to knit for Miss Hayden.

Good thing I'm happy to knit for Hayden because I just remembered there's a sweater on the needles in the bottom of the knitting bag for her.  Best get that finished too.

So yes, that light at the end of the tunnel may have just dimmed a tiny bit but there's one good thing keeping my spirits up.  I am NOT the one that's going to have to wash the sticky candy cane out of that fuzzy blanket!

Happy December knitting!

Christmas knitting

Remember the scarf for the eight year old?  Well, I finished it.  And even blocked it!  Then promptly packed it up and put it away in the Christmas gift box.  Notice a missing step there?  Yep!  I completely forgot to take a photo of the finished scarf.  Oops!  Maybe my great niece will send me one after Christmas.

I quickly moved on to knitting a hat for her younger brother.  Not to be left out, he's getting "special" yarn too.  I'm using some fingering weight superwash merino from Neighborhood Fiber Co.  This yarn had also been in my stash for a while.

I'm pretty excited about my Christmas knitting all coming from my stash.  Well, okay, I bought a few skeins of Wool of the Andes from Knit Picks back in the late summer with the intention of maybe knitting the Smitten mittens but I hadn't even printed the pattern at that point.  There was nothing firm in my plan and honestly, I was thinking of knitting socks, not mittens.  Because the yarn sat in my stash pile for more than two months, I don't count it as "new" yarn.  It's stashed yarn.  And that means every gift I've knit, or plan to knit, this year will be from my stash.  I'm pretty dang excited about that!

As for the Smitten mittens status, I've knit 24 so far.  Only 48 more to go.  I'm fairly certain I'm not going to make that goal.  99.9999999% sure of it in fact.  But I'll keep knitting anyway.  Maybe there'll be a Christmas miracle.

Meanwhile, I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.  I'm so excited to not be excited about it this year.  We have a couple of dishes that we always serve that never get made the rest of the year and I'm always so excited thinking about the food.  But remember the new meds I'm on that take away my appetite?  Well, they are working!  Thankfully the over active butterflies in my belly have disappeared and I'm feeling pretty good.  And not the least bit hungry.  Well, that's not true.  I do feel hungry occasionally, but a very small portion fills me up.  And I'm not craving all things sweet and carb filled.  All I really want is raw green vegetables which is VERY, very not typical for me.  While I am looking forward to that turkey sandwich on Friday, just the thought of all the Thanksgiving food is kind of making me queasy.  It's pretty cool and quite exciting.   It's going to be interesting to see how I actually do on the day.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Smitten

 

Seventeen and a half down, fifty-four and a half more to go.

I'm not so sure how smitten I will be at the end of this Smitten mitten project but I am happy to be using up lots of odd balls and bits from my Wool of the Andes stash.

NaKniSweNope!

Are you doing NaKniSweMo?  I'd planned to.  I had the yarn and pattern picked out and at the ready.  I'd even balled the skeins of yarn, swatched, and set the proper needles aside for safe keeping.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I swatched!

And then I realized the reality of my pre-Christmas knitting.  NaKniSweMo quickly turned into NaKniSweNope! 

I'm knitting a pink Stroll Gradient shawl for my mother-in-law.  Pink is her favorite color.

I'm knitting the Mountain Colors scarf for my great niece.  And if I'm knitting something for the great niece, her brother will need something handknit too.  

The not so great cowl for Sarah got frogged.  She says she'd rather have socks.  It's a dammed good thing she likes to cook and grocery shop!  

There's the poinsettia needlepoint that needs to get finished and turned into a pillow.  

There's the two Christmas stockings that still need to be lined.

And last but not least, let's not forget the seventy-two Smitten mittens I need to knit.  And as if seventy-two mini mittens wasn't enough, I'll need five garland cords to go with them.

Yeah, NaKniSweMo is definitely a nope this year.  But hey, on the positive side, I've already got my Christmas Eve Cast On project ready to go.

Three on Thursday - Don't hate me

 Please don't hate me... But I've been thinking about Christmas knitting.  I have that new granddaughter and she'll be needing a Christmas sweater at a minimum, not to mention a stocking and I really, really want to knit her an Advent thing.  Okay, let's rephrase that last bit.  I really, really want to give her an Advent thing that I have knit, I just don't actually want to knit it.  Little tiny fiddly things aren't really my jam and the idea of knitting 24 of the same thing sends me straight to the bottom of a bottle.  But every child needs an Advent thing so...

Anyway, I've been thinking about Christmas knitting.  Knitting for Hayden and even little gifts for friends and family.  And since I intend to do Soctober because I'm in desperate need of some new socks that only leaves November for Christmas knitting, so...  I need to get on the ball!  And quickly!!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Smitten by Emily Ivey here on the blog before.  It's a free mini mitten pattern on Ravelry and the pattern includes quite a few suggestions for how to make the display cord.  I think these little mittens are adorable and would be perfect for stuffing with a tiny little gift or candy for each day of Advent.  Or, just knitting five or six little mittens, putting them on a cord and using it as a simple garland somewhere in the home. 

I've also been tossing around the idea of knitting little miniature socks and doing the same thing.  Which would be easier/less complicated?  Thumbs or heels?  I can't decide so I do nothing.

If I was a better Grandma, I would knit this garland designed by Frankie Brown.  This is another Ravelry freebie.  I really like the idea of each item being different.  The different items provide so much more display opportunity than 24 of the same thing but....  It's awfully fiddly.  Unless I'm wheelchair bound and pain-free for several months, I highly doubt I will ever knit this.

But then, this little angel is adorable too.  And it's also a free pattern from DROPS.  And I'm 99.9999% sure I WAY over-ordered white yarn for my poinsettia needlepoint.  I could use the leftovers from that project to make a bunch of these little angels.  I could even give her some arms to hold the Advent number sign or just give her a necklace with the number written on it.  Angels wear necklaces sometimes, right?

Argh! Decisions, decisions!  I'm so bad at making decisions.

Feel free to send me your input.  Meanwhile, I hope you'll join me over at Carole's for today's Three on Thursday.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, Happy Knitting!

Friday the 13th

A little break from tradition.... or maybe not.  It's that time of year when I'm knitting secret Santa stuff and can't post photos of my projects.  Or, if I'm honest, I simply don't have time to take photos this year.  Actually, it's a little bit of both.

I thought I was pretty much done with my gift knitting but then I took a good look at my list.  Okay, not so done after all.  While I'm busy knitting four ____; a ____ and two pair of _____, I'm showing you random, unrelated photos.

The road we live on now.  I'll admit, it's nice to be able to go for a walk and not worry about being run over or falling into the lake while trying to dodge speeding cars.

Our house faces a part of the Chickahominy Swamp.  If I braved the imaginary alligators and hiked through the swamp about an eighth of a mile, I'd hit the river.  We are so close, but oh so far away from that river front property we dream of.

And two night's ago, as I pulled out of the Arby's parking lot on the way to my knitting group meeting, a beautiful full moon was rising and the radio was playing the perfect Creedence song.

Happy Friday 13th and happy Christmas gift knitting.

Three on Thursday

I'm joining Carole for today's Three on Thursday, or at least I hope I am.  I completely forgot to link up with her last week.  Doh!

My ideas for three things and my time are both running a little low right now so bear with me and my no photograph post.  I'm determined to stop complaining so much though and those of you that know me know I don't exactly live by the 'if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all' rule.  But again, I'm determined to keep it positive.  So, without photographs...

1.  I'm loving my Christmas/Holly Berry Stashbuster shawl.  If all goes as planned, it will be off the needles before this blog post even goes live. (Yes, I'm typing about 14 hours in advance.)

2.  My little desktop Christmas tree.  The poor little thing has seen better days and I didn't even take the time to unfold its plastic branches properly, but the lights were still on it from last year, they work, and it lights up and casts a warm, Christmasy glow across my desk.  

3.  Knit Picks'  free Santa's hat pattern. It uses Fable Fur (which I have in the stash pile) and bulky weight yarn (which I'll make by holding two thinner strands together) so it should knit up super quick.  I'm hoping to get a few knit up by the end of the weekend.  And, because I'm so positive and non-whiny these days, while searching Knit Pick's site for the Santa hat, I also discovered a miniature, ornament sized Santa hat pattern.  I might have to knit a few of them too!

And now, I'm off to knit, knit, knit.  There's only twelve knitting days left before Christmas.  Yikes!

(I'm not complaining, only panicking!)

A Christmas Miracle

This is a Christmas miracle post, otherwise known as the post in which I do not complain.  

Sorry folks.  Even I'm sick of hearing myself whine.  My life could be so much worse and the fact that I lost a hand towel....  Well, all I can say is that I've had the emotions of a hormonal 12 year old girl lately and I'm sorry.  Next time I start to whine, call me on it.  Tell me to buck up and act like an adult.

Holly Berry Stashbuster Shawl

Something that has helped me buck up is the Stashbuster Shawl.  It's four short set up rows then you repeat the fifth row over and over again until you have just enough yarn left to bind off.  The picot edging is knit as the shawl grows rather than having to knit all those little picot things at once on the cast on or off edge.  It's so simple, so quick and so perfect for knitting while watching The Grinch with the family.  

And let's clarify, the 'real' Grinch, not that awful Jim Carrey movie version.  (Sorry Jim Carrey, but you can't improve on perfection and you should never have tried.)

And yes, the shawl will match my Christmas socks because yes, I broke my no new yarn rule once again.  Having a knitting group meeting at the knitting shop is a dangerous, dangerous thing.

And then,

The coolest thing happened.

I stepped out of the shower and could hear all kinds of unusual activity on the train tracks out back.  (Yes, when I say we live on the tracks, I pretty much mean it.)

The CSX train crawled by at the slowest possible pace while a track-hoe with a claw on it rode on top of cars, unloading replacement trestles on each side of the tracks.  

Once the track-hoe-claw machine finished unloading, the train stopped while the track-hoe pulled itself to the end of the train, then it lifted itself down onto a lower bed on the final train car.  And then the train slowly pulled away.

How cool!

I'm SO wishing we were still homeschooling and the kids could have been here to see it because it was definitely one of those weird, fun homeschool learning moments.  

I'm also SO hoping that Mr. CSX guy standing back there at the back of the lower bed of the train didn't happen to look over and catch me standing buck-naked in the window taking pictures of him and his train.