Super Secret Christmas Knitting

Ok, it may be just a tad late in the game to be knitting something else for Christmas, but I don’t intend to actually finish it before the big day.  I need the husband’s hand to finish.

I was talking with the husband about knitting projects and he said to me “Didn’t you promise to knit me a pair of 1/2 glove mittens (the kind where the mitten top can flap off)?”  Well, I had.  So I started these lovelies.  I am knitting it out of handspun in a super tight gauge, then when all the knitting is done I am going to line them with fleece to make them extra warm.

Gifts given and recieved

Gift Given

I finished the Promise Tree Socks in time to give them before school let out.  I even had time to knit a small sock ornament for decoration, it only took an hour.  I used the tiny sock ornament pattern from Everwhelming Liz. 

Gifts Recieved:It was a pretty fibery Christmas, which tends to happen when three members of the family are spinners and knitters.  Actually how it usually works is when we go to sales or guild meetings together one of us will say to another ”hey I want this, that or the other for Christmas”  and said item is purchased and wrapped.  It works for me!  The Mother-in-Law got me a cool book on tartans and some beautiful hand carved/turned crochet hooks (which were a surprise). 

 The Bookwranger (aka my sister-in-law) got me the requested one of a kind spindle made by her and fiber. On top of that she got me soap and a really nifty key chain. 

Then on boxing day, which we do not really celebrate I got a super suprise gift from my super cool SIL: 101 glass balls to make more knitted ornaments, I am so excited. 

Merry Christmas

Hi there.  Plaid here, hanging out under the tree.  I thought that while my people were busy playing with all that paper and string (I really like string, especially the soft furry kind) and making all those interesting smells in the kitchen I would try my paw with the mouse and keyboard.  So, From everyone here to everyone everywhere we hope you have a purr-fectly wonderful, blessed Christmas.

Make a Flake

Due to unexpected work this week I am now trying to fit a week’s worth of house cleaning, perfect present finding, pie making, house cleaning, cookie baking, stocking stuffing, house cleaning, present buying, gift wrapping Christmas festiveness into 3 days.  It may not surprise you that the festiveness has a tendency to turn into stressfulness. So when I feel like pulling out my hair and screaming I take five minutes to Make a Flake.  It is loads of fun.  I get the satisfaction of cutting things into little tiny pieces without having to clean up all the teeny tiny pieces of paper.  It’s also cool to see the flake fall from the sky.  Best of all this make a flake site is totally free, I did not even have to register.  It’s lots of fun.  Try it, click on the banner below.

National Poinsettia Day

December 12 is National Poinsettia Day.  It is to commerate the death of Joel Robert Poinsett, the man who brought the Poinsettia to the US. 

Friends, Food, Fiber

We had our annual Christmas Party at Spinner’s Flock this weekend.  I always enjoy this event.  There is plenty of Christmas cheer for everyone.  Everyone sits around in their festive clothing spinning, knitting or doing something with fiber, and of course lots of fiber to purchase for other people, yea, right other people.
 

There is a raffle for lots of fibery goodness.  I did not win anything this year, but it is always fun to see what is up for grabs and the delicious anticipation of who’s going to get this or that.

 
 There was a gift exchange.  I love the way that it is done.  I have never seen this method anywhere else.  Each person ties a long string to their gift (this is quite appropriate seeing that it is a Spinner’s guild)  and the strings are pulled this way and that making a big mess.  Then when it it time for the exchange each person grabs an end and follows it to the gift.  I got a fabulous gift (it included chocolate and a cool handmade sheep pin).  There was food, oh was there food. 
 

Fiber people know how to set up a great spread.  Lots of sugar (cookies, brownies, cake, candy-I really like those little candies where there is chocolate on a waffle pretzel with a M&M on top), also some sandwichy things, cheese, crackers, meats, mmmmm good. As if that were not enough for one day, we decided that since there was a little more time than usual we would go up to The Spinners Loft in Howell (MI).  It is amazing how much great spinning stuff the owner can fit in such a cute little place.  They have a spindle room, really need I say more?  While we were there I got to try a Sonata.  I’m not looking for a new wheel but this is one that I thought would be interesting to own.  I also splurged on a bit of Tencel and a Wild Fibers magazine.  All in all it was a pretty good day. 

Progress

Making progress on the contest sock. It has been so much fun designing. Next step: test knitting. Now I have (almost) knit one sock and (more or less) written the pattern it is onto my test knitter to make sure there are errors in the pattern.  While all of that is happening I will be starting my Promise Tree Sock.  I also figured out how to work out the third pair of holiday socks.

Give the socks pre-knit.  Then I can measure against the actual foot as I knit so we don’t wind up with another birthday sock.  Speaking of holiday knitting I listened to the latest Sticks and String podcast, Proportion and  David Reidy hit the nail squarely on the head.  Holiday knitting should be fun, not stress-full.  I’m not stressing although I am knitting and enjoying these two pair of socks.  (Hmmm, I wonder if I couldn’t work that into a song, based on the 12 days of Christmas?)

Short two wise men and a donkey

The daughter and I went to Mount Bruce Station for their annual Christmas festival.  We had a really lovely time.  There was hot cider and home made cookies, wreathes and other greenery for sale, lots of fibery goodness in their shop and the Pageant. 

Ok what do you do when you are short one donkey.  Why make a sheep in to a donkey, of course.

Ok donkey, check. Oh, but wait, what do you do when you are short two wise men?  Why find your local cardboard elf, what else. 

But in all seriousness, it was a very nice pageant, blissfully short as it was freezing in the barn with carol singing by all.  It had a really nice down home feel to the whole thing.

***No sheep or elves were harmed in the production of this Christmas pageant.  Annoyed, definitely. Humiliated, probably. Harmed definitely not.

Deck the Halls and Trim the Tree

Sing with me now: 

Deck the balls with silk and wool

Fa la la la la la la la la la

Isn’t Christmas really cool.

Fa la la la la la la la la la

Don the tree with bulbs so nifty

Fa la la la la la la la. la. laaaaa

Or use them to be very gifty

Fa la la la la La La LA LAAAAAA.

What a Weekend

Thanksgiving was…ok.  There were too many people in too little space.  The food was good, though.  I  had to make a double batch of deviled eggs due to the number of people.  There was a very interesting sweet potato dish with mashed sweet potato’s under a crust of apples and walnuts.  And cousin Sue made my all time mostest favorite pie: sweet potato and pecan mmmmmmm.

Then came Friday. Saturday was the big holiday sale and I had one day to finish off everything that needed finishing label and pack into the vehicle. Here is my proposed schedule (in regular words) and what really happened (in italics).

6:30 wake up (this actually happened, luring me into a false sense of  this day will work out ok)

7:00-8:00 Quickly run down to Kohls to by the husband Converse Chuck Taylors to replace the ones that died some time ago (Ran down to Kohls, didn’t find any, no not a single Chuck Taylor, laughed at the people in line that went all the way around the store.  I don’t know that I have ever needed anything so badly that I wanted to stand in a line that long.  Went home, called 3 other Kohls stores, nary a Chuck Taylor to be found except for one display model, in the wrong size.)

9:00-1:00 Re-skein yarn (this actually happened)

1:00-3:00 Finish off the shawl pins by making the backs out of polymer clay and maybe make some stitch markers (this also actually happened, although there were many exhortations of “I really need a craft room”)

3:00 – 10:00, or whenever I finished – Labeling yarn, stitch markers, ornaments, spindles and mini stockings. (and here is where it all went horribly, horribly wrong.  I made up my first 5 labels for yarn and pushed the print button.  One neat and tidy page of labels turned into two pages of mess.  I tried printing another file.  Then I called the husband, he said he would look at it when he got home.  He got home late, worked on it for an hour or so and deduced it was unfixable.  We ran down to Best Buy and bought another printed [this is the silver lining: if it hadn't been Thanksgiving weekend we would have not gotten such a good deal on a printer].  It is now 8:00pm.  I  work for two hours on labeling then collapsed into bed only to get up 3 hours later to finish the labeling before going to the sale at 7:00am) 

The sale was good.  It is at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, which are utterly photoworthy.  I wanted to get some eye-candy photos but the only thing I can really do properly on 3 hours of sleep and half a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans is sit, stare off into nothing and spin, which is what I did. 

Sunday (the day of rest, or so I thought) I woke up with a gasp and the thought: today is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we need to put up the Christmas Tree, ooohhhhnnnn there is no way the tree is going up today.  In my mad dash (for the last couple of weeks) to finish what I wanted to finish for the sale I have rather neglected some of the housework, that is to say in the place where we usually put the tree there is a large pile of stuff consisting of  old homework papers, yarn, junk mail, labels and who knows what else.  So I spent Sunday cleaning.  I’m going to spend a good amount of time today cleaning.  I will probably spend some time every day this week cleaning. In the hopes that next Sunday we can put up the Christmas Tree.