Decorations are nice

but I'm always glad to have them put away for another year and to get my house back to normal. Once Christmas is over, I'm almost frantic to have everything put up. I mean, it's over, so store it away already. (I feel the same way when it's Thanksgiving, but in reverse, I can't wait to get the house all decked out.)

Now I'm ready for 2008. Bring on the New Year!

A Gift, and Knits

This is the absolute coolest knitting gift I've ever received. Given to me by the lady I knit the Swan Lake Stole (MS3) for, she did what any non-knitter would do: walked into the Loops yarn store in Tulsa, told the friendly Loops Troops there about her knitting fool of a friend, and asked what could she get me as a Christmas gift? They had the best possible answer: buy something a knitter would always want but might not buy for themselves. Are you ready? Here it is, and I LOVE it:

Looks kinda like a burrito, doesn't it?

What is it, you ask? Well, if you knit, you know what it is, if you don't you might ask, what is it?

Don't you just love the pattern? My friend and I call it Sedona, because it reminds her of the colors of the sunsets, the hills, the vegetation... (actually it's called Hip to be Square - Mocha)

The burrito unfolds.....

And this is the wonderous inside! A place for all my needles, circs, straights, and dpns, and notions and gauges, and Everything! You can see my new KnitPicks Harmony Options in the bottom row, and the pair of size 10 straights she gifted me in the top row, middle. I was giddy about it, and still am. It's from Offhand Designs, the Deluxe Clutch.

Knitting has taken place, and now that obviously the batteries are working in the camera, I can share.

My first pair of socks using self-striping yarn. This is just about the niftiest thing, the way the yarn makes its own stripes. Almost magical. It's from Cascade Sassy Stripes, size 1 dpns, the basic sock pattern from Silver. I'm pretty chuffed with how the second sock is spot on in lining up the stripes.

And lastly, the progress on Skin of the Sea. I can see the homestretch. Short rows come next, plus the edgings, and of course finishing, washing, and blocking. This is grand!

A Christmas Eve tradition

Long ago my grandparents gave my brother a book of children's Bible stories. It's been well loved and used, the spine is a bit cracked, and the pages are brittle and yellowish. Somehow I ended up with the book many years ago. When my son was born, I began a tradition on Christmas Eve of reading to him the four-five page story of the Birth of Baby Jesus: The First Christmas. Then along came my daughter and we added her to the mix. This is the last thing we would do before turning out the lights so they could wait for Santa Claus.

Tonight, for the 20th year, I will sit on my son's bed, with my daughter next to me, and I'll read them the story again. I love doing this. They don't seem to mind, adult and young adult as they are. And when the time comes, down the road, and they have children of their own, I hope they continue this tradition, or even let me have the honor.

Merry Christmas to you all! May you have the peace, love, and promise of the Season, found in the small package of a Baby.

Well drat.

There are no pics of my socks-in-progress, as I can only find one of the rechargeable batteries to go into the camera, and it needs to slurp on the power of two. I have no idea where the other three batteries that belong in the charger have wandered off to. No juicy, no pictures.

Cards away!

The Christmas cards are mailed. What with the ice storm and all, I'm about a week and a half behind, so I apologize now for the tardiness of the cards. Especially to those folks overseas in Germany and England -- yours will be late. *sad face* However, I hope you enjoy my annual Christmas letter. Maybe it's my mind's attempt to help me forget about the no power episode, but I completely forgot to include that in my letter, doh! Oh well.

Just for grins and giggles, I'm going to try and get all my cards done in November next year. That way maybe I'll be ahead of the game and karma will even out these two years. ;)

Got some knitting done

during my son's out patient surgery on Monday. In fact, I got a heel turned, the gusset finished, and am in the home stretch of foot knitting. Sitting in the waiting room is a great place for knitting. He is doing well.

I'm using Cascade's Sassy Stripes, first time for self-striping yarn. It's really cool. I'll get a picture posted tonight.

HUZZAH!!

As of 12:31 p.m. today, we have ----- POWER!!!! And the crowds went wild, there was great rejoicing throughout the land, and if I see a PSO man right now, I might just kiss him!

Thank you for heat!

Day 5

I froze my brain again this morning while washing my hair in the ice cold shower water. And no, the rest of my body did not join my brain: I just stuck my head under the shower and left the rest of me out of it. LOL

Maybe power today. I sure hope so.

Brrrrr! Day 4 and counting

We're in NE Oklahoma, smack dab in the middle of the ice storm that has paralyzed our area. It's been four days since the power went out, and it's been mighty cold at home. All the food in the fridge/freezer, both of them, will have to be thrown out. They keep moving the tentative date when power will be restored, right now it's Tuesday, Dec. 18, at 11:59 p.m.

EDIT: Daughter and I did have some highlights during this. On Monday night, we impaled hotdogs on shish-k-bob skewers and cooked them in the fireplace. That was fun! Then we also bought bags of potato chips and boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes, in order not to starve. LOL. We sat on the couches in our three layers of clothes, double socks, coats, ski hats, and blankets, and talked and read books. Went to bed at obscenely early times, since it was warmer under the covers than not.

Hubby had been on site for work in Atlanta, Georgia, and bless him! Instead of flying home like planned, he rented a van, picked up an 8000 watt generator (which for some reason in balmy 75 degree Atlanta was not in short supply), three heaters, and filled an order for supplies for his co-workers. He left yesterday morning at 2:30 in the A.M., drove straight through to Tulsa and by 5:00 p.m., the generator and heaters were set up and the chill taken off the air in the house. He is my Knight in Shining Armor, and he drove in to save the day for the daughter and me.

We still don't have any hot water or house power, but for right now, heaters are good. Heaters are very good. Hubby might be hooking the generator into the house power, he knows how to. This would give us lights and hot water. But we'll take this one step at a time.

It seems that our subdivision, and the one across the street are surrounded by neighborhoods that all have power. It's like we're an ink spot on the map with other people's lights all around. I hate being cold like this, and I'm starting to get depressed.

Progress

Skin of the Sea is coming along nicely; it starts under the right arm and knits sideways across the back to the left underarm. Right now, I'm at the point where I will knit around the front on the left. The provisional stitches on the right side will be picked up and finished around to the front. Then, somewhere in all this, I'll be doing short rows. Should be tons of fun. No really. I mean it - this is such a fun project so far.

What's a project without some boo-boos, though? Yes, there's a glaring error. But it only became glaring after I had already finished almost the entire back, and therefore it did not get frogged back to the beginning where the error occurred. It's one of those things I've decided I can live with, and will just move along now, citizen.

Wacky Christmas hat

My work is having a Wacky Christmas hat contest, and it took me forever to figure out what I wanted to create and enter. Finally, the Muse of Quirkiness smacked me up side the head and viola!

It's a combination of assorted sizes of aluminum baking pans hotglued together, Hershey Almond Kisses and Miniatures hotglued on the outside, a festive curley que bow, with candy canes hanging around the brim. Since I work for Information Technology (IT), and no IT person is proof against Chocolate, I just know that my hat will do well in the competition. And even if it doesn't, we can all take solace at the end of the voting by ripping the chocolates off the hat and consuming them. Yum!

Merry Christmas!

Yarn and Tunes

Skin of the Sea wip1,
originally uploaded by DragonsChest.

The Indian Cross Stitch knits up quickly, really. And once I got the hang of slipping the long stitches over each other, it's not horribly difficult.

On other matters, my hubby just bought a new toy: a Rowe AMI CD100F Venus Caliente jukebox. He's been merrily cleaning, scrubbing and polishing, and is now engrossed in deciding which CDs to keep (it came preloaded with 100) and which ones to discard. We have quite a selection of our own, so many of them will be added. He bought software to print the playlists and photo paper to print the CD covers and lists on. Hubby is a happy boy indeed.