now what?

Well, I have finished the Christmas knitting. The last package ships tomorrow. I’m not sure what to do now — there’s the hat in my purse, a wool bag I’ve started, a rippled shawl I started a year ago and got distracted from, and the blanket I’ve been working off and on for the Little Guy for some time.

But then I found this awsome pattern in Craft Magazine for a purse, knit with vinyl thread, using washers and bolts and other little bits of hardware like beads. I probably have enough little bits of hardware on hand, in our toolbox, right now.

And then there’s this book of knitting patterns I got the other day. It’s lovely, and tempting. Even Miss Baby appreciates it — today she was flipping through the pages, pointing at the pictures of knitting, and then hugging it to her chest and smiling at me. I could make some scarves or washcloths with the different patterns, just to try something new…

enough already

We’ve had Christmas all week and are about worn out. Not that it hasn’t been nice, but all this festivity is wearing. We had our own nice relaxing family time on Christmas day. The little people received an ocean of gifts from relatives: as the Little Guy said, “It looks like the Christmas tree is going to float away on the presents.” On Thursday, Grandpa and Grandma showed up with more gifts. They stayed until today, and the little people have had a great time playing with them. They even babysat one evening so my DH and I could go out — if I recall correctly, for the first time since they were last here.

I don’t know how we could keep this up for twelve days.

a figure of speech

So, I got Knitting Rules, from the Yarn Harlot (well, not personally, directly from her). Excellent, amusing reading. But she uses an excellent phrase to describe someone who’s a little nuts: “a few skeins short of a sweater.” My brother used to say, “a few tacos short of a combination.”

So, what other phrases like this have you heard? Shall we start a collection?

And what on earth does one call this figure of speech?

it’s not knit until it’s re-knit

So, this last Christmas project — a little scarf. I got oh, about two-thirds of the way through it, and decided that I didn’t like the stockinette stitch. I’d thought that it might not curl in so much, since I’m using three strands of yarn. Nope, it curls so much it looks like rope. So, I’ve undone it and am reknitting in garter. I can’t mail it until Monday anyway.

so now i can talk about it

So, I’ve been knitting furiously on unbloggable projects, but now that everyone has opened their packages, I can brag about the plethora of hats and scarves I have produced. I’m especially pleased with the long scarves, which I knit vertically, so that the stripes would be vertical. This means that you knit a scarf in only 40 rows, but each row is 300 stitches long. I tried different stripe patterns, using colors from the recipients’ favorite sports teams, and I have to say, I was pleased with the result. You can see one of them here, at my BIL’s blog.

I am still actually doing Christmas knitting. We have some folks coming the day after tomorrow, and I need to wrap up my first-ever cabling project. Then I need to make a little scarf to send to a friend’s child. And probably a scarf for my aunt. Maybe a hat — that would be quicker. I actually have one partially done, and in colors I think she would like.

Christmas prayer

As the Little Guy prayed at dinner tonight:

“Thank you for the time Jesus came, because Christmas is my favorite time of the year, and without Jesus, it wouldn’t be Christmas, it would be about something else.”

vicarious pleasures

Well, that sounds more saucy than it is. My BIL sent me a link to this lovely page: Handbell hero. Enjoy.

Then get yourself some white gloves and sign up!

it’s a mystery

We park on the street, generally. We have a garage, but there’s no way to put a car in there. Recently, I’ve taken to parking in the alley, by the garage. It leaves more room on the street for the neighbors, and it’s a little safer loading up the little guy for school in the morning. Well, for a week or two, the car’s alarm was going off in the middle of the night, every night. I theorized that a neighbor (we have a few neighbor who reside in their garages) was trying the door handle every night, figuring that I would eventually forget to lock it, and they could take off with my Thomas Guide and Mag light. So I started parking on the street, but it went off every night there, so I’m in the back again. I think it isn’t the neighbors; I think it’s something funky in the alarm system. One of these days I will need to call the alarm company and get it straightened out.

polite angels

So, the Little Guy made a little paper pop-up in Sunday school. It depicts the angel waking Joseph to tell him about the baby Jesus. He likes to speak on behalf of the angel: “Excuse me!”

back up to friday

So, on Friday we went out to dinner at Ruby’s on the Huntington Beach pier. It was nice to get out and about, and to walk up and down the pier. It was cold and windy, but we bundled up and watched the surfers on the way down the pier. It was a clear day — you could see all the way to Long Beach on the north, Catalina in the west, and the Newport Pier to the south. We watched a lovely sunset during dinner. Miss Baby got one grape, then turned the fruit bowl upside down and dug through the fruit and picked out all the grapes and scarfed them. After dinner, we admired the full moon reflecting on the waves.

A lovely evening.