Three on Thursday

It's a good thing the Three on Thursday link-up doesn't have a theme other than that we're supposed to list three things, because I got nothing today.  I'm having one of those days where my thoughts and to-do list tasks are all whirling around in my head, swirling a million miles an hour and going way too fast for me to capture or be aware of a single one of them.  I need a list. Except, I have a list, and that's the problem.  My list is 80 pages long so instead of working the list, I keep looking at it, getting overwhelmed by it and then I sit down and eat cookie dough and knit.  And of course, when I'm eating cookie dough and knitting, I'm not knitting Christmas gifts, I'm knitting random stuff.  Stuff that's not even on my Someday I'd Like to Knit... list.  Good grief!

So, three Very random things...

1.  Lots of people commented on my yarn bowl that was pictured in yesterday's blog post.  So, thank you!  I love it too.  I got it from Knit Picks and it was very inexpensive, as yarn bowls go.  I love how shiny and smooth the polished wood is.  It's light enough to toss into my knitting bag and, unlike the several ceramic ones I've had, my Knit Picks yarn bowl has not broken when I've dropped it.  Knock, or more like bang, on wood.  And if you hurry, Santa could bring you your very own wooden yarn bowl.  But you'll need to hurry.  The Knit Picks website says if you want it by Christmas, tomorrow is the last day to order with standard shipping and the 20th with expedited shipping.

2.  I apologize in advance for the rant.  This is probably a big part of why my thoughts are so out of control at the moment.  And I don't mean to stir the political pot.  This is a knitting blog, not a political blog and I refuse to discuss politics here.  But....  Neither my husband nor I have health insurance through our jobs and we don't earn a ton of money.  We get our "free" ObamaCare, which for the last few years has cost us several hundred dollars a month.  This year, however, our wonderful government has decided that our mandated health insurance is going to cost us 69% of our gross salary.  Sixty Nine Percent!  Of our Gross pay! What in the bloody Hell??  If we were to pay it, we wouldn't even have enough left over to pay our most basic utilities.  Of course, we wouldn't need to make utility payments because after a few months, we wouldn't have a house anymore.  Just, Bloody Hell.

Moments before I pulled the tree over on myself....
(Random Christmas photo added for interest)

3.  I really need to move past my current swirly thoughts/Christmas denial situation and do some Christmas baking.  You know, actually bake the cookie dough instead of eating it raw, by the bowl full while I knit and watch Hallmark movies.  We bake so many cookies that I make the dough in advance and freeze it.  On Cookie Baking Day, I take the dough out of the freezer while I'm waiting for the coffee pot to percolate and by the time I have a couple of gallons of caffeine in my system, the dough has thawed and is ready to go.  Looks like this year, I need to go re-buy the ingredients and start over.  Oops.

Every year we make snickerdoodles, rum balls, regular chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip and pumpkin cookies.  And this year, because I'm in total Christmas denial and think I have all the time in the world, and because I found the forgotten recipe while searching the blog for the other recipes to link to and, it just so happens that I discovered two large jars of peanut butter shoved into the back of the pantry the other day, I just might make chocolate chip peanut butter cookies too.  Besides, if I'm going to put us all into diabetic comas, I may as well go ahead and do it before our health insurance runs out.

Join the Three on Thursday link-up over at Carole Knits.

Creepy Kids

Take a look at what I found in my mailbox the other day.

Creepy Kids Tin

It's a little tin full of fabric clips.  The kids on the tin are pretty darn creepy but the clips are fantastic!  I just wish I remembered ordering them.  I can't decide if I should be embarrassed or worried that I don't remember ordering them.  And why in the world did I choose the tin with the creepy, chubby-cheeked, weird-eyed, lipstick wearing kids on it?  I see Amazon has several different choices and some of the others are adorable. Oh well.  Even though I have no recollection of ordering them, the clips are great and will come in super handy when sewing up sweater seams.  I may even dig out my old Honeycomb sweater (last mentioned here) out of the UFO pile and finish it just so I can use the clips.

So, what else have I been up to besides possibly shopping in my sleep?

Hat in progress

I've been shopping at Knit Picks.  Something new and different for me.  Ha ha.  I finally ordered myself a new yarn bowl.  My MIL had given me a ceramic one for Christmas years ago but it got dropped and a chunk broke off.  I was able to glue it back together but it wasn't the smoothest of joins and the yarn would sometimes snag on it. Anyway, I'm now the proud owner of a beautiful and extremely smooth, snag-free, wooden yarn bowl.

I'm also knitting another hat.  My poor Etsy shop is practically empty and the Christmas shopping season is almost upon us. (Scary thought!!)  I need to buckle down and focus on knitting for the shop for the next few weeks.  Poor Sarah.  I'm never going to finish her blanket.

Want to see what projects others are working on?  Join me at the #CraftingOn link-up.

Baby Blanket Progress

I'm making progress on the set of twin baby blankets.  Well, okay, I'm making progress on the first of the blankets.

I've got 10 pattern repeats completed which puts me slightly ahead of schedule.  Which I probably should never have mentioned.  Something disastrous is bound to happen to it now.  Not to mention, I said it on a Friday the 13th.

A few things I'll point out just to stretch this post out a bit....  Yes, that blue, green & purple pile of knitting there behind the baby blanket is the same pile that was there for the last photo session.  It's a scarf.  A scarf that's been awaiting having it's ends woven in for a few weeks now.  It will probably still be sitting there in a few more weeks.  Weaving in ends is not exactly my favorite thing to do.

See that yarn bowl?  I LOVE my yarn bowl.  My mother-in-law gave it to me for Christmas this past year & I've blogged about it before, here.  I still love it and use it daily.  Sometimes it holds paper clips & Post-It's instead of yarn, but most days it's full of yarn.  I like it so much I'm thinking about buying another one.  A bigger one.  One that will hold a great big skein of yarn.  I wonder if anyone makes them in a hotdog shape so that it would hold a long skein - like Lambs Pride comes in.  Google, here I come.

And there's my coffee cup.  I LOVE that coffee cup even more than my yarn bowl.  It's huge.  It holds a little over two cups of coffee, the handle fits my hand perfectly and the cup itself is thick & substantial without being too thick to drink from comfortably.  I worry about my cup though - it's got a crack on one side from where some horrible, disrespectful family member put it in the microwave.  It doesn't leak though so I continue to use it and guard it with my life.

And of course, there's a bottle of wine and a box of crackers.  Doesn't everyone keep wine & crackers on their desk?