I decorated

The back window is even less impressive. (I doubt the lights would even show in a photo.)

Privacy frost is currently privacy condensation... weather's been warm the past few days.

I am sooooo tired! I only got home a few minutes ago... my students had their exam tonight, and there was some work I *had* to do before I went home. Ugh.

Buses make good time after midnight. I even had a good connection. (Shockingly.)

The number of stroller-age children out and about at this hour of night was also shocking.

g'night...

Christmas Tree

Tonight I decorated Mom and B's tree:


While going through the ornaments, I checked the stained glass ones I made way back when I was a kid:



I'm thinking the reason I couldn't remember if there were two or three is because only two (the bird and the house) were still intact and able to hang. The sailboat needs some repair.

Julekuler

I knit my first Julekuler (Arne & Carlos Christmas ornament):




Of course, since I didn't check the gauge before going yarn shopping, this ended up rather large... about the size of one of those large navel oranges or a grapefruit.

I'm going to try the same yarn on smaller needles to see how it looks.

Lessons Learned

Earlier this season, my brother commented that my reusable bags were really nice. I decided to make him a couple for Christmas. I finally had time to buy the fabric a week before Christmas, and washed the fabric that night at my mom's. However, I didn't end up having time that weekend to cut and sew the bags. I worked up to the 22nd, came down with a cold, went shopping with my dad on the 23rd, went to his wife's for Christmas Eve... and came home that night to bags that were still looking an awful lot like a wrinkled piece of fabric. So I started cutting and sewing.

Finally, shortly after 4:00 am, I had a Christmas gift ready:

(I bought 2m of fabric to make 2 bags, since cotton canvas tends to shrink a lot, but somehow still had enough fabric to make three bags. Bonus!)

Lessons learned:

1. Sewing takes way longer than I think it will.

2. Buy lots of thread... sewing takes way more than I think it will. (And stores aren't open at 3:00 am on Christmas morning.)

"I don't need to buy thread," I thought, "I have matching thread at home!"

It was true... I did have matching thread at home:

However, it ran out half way through sewing the top on the second bag. My back-up green was a greyish green, and looked plain grey against the lime green fabric:

So I tried a contrasting red that matched some of the design. Unfortunately, either my seamstress skills suck, or there was a reason the sewing machine only cost $100. The above photo is the wrong side. The right side looks rather worse:


(And here I thought I could sew straight lines on non-slippery fabric.)

Oh well... they're sturdy, and will carry groceries just fine.

Next time I promise to try to remember to buy extra thread.

Crafty Stuff

What I've been doing with my thrift store thread spools, and beads & buttons from Michaels:

Christmas ornaments:


Stitch markers:


(There were *two* duds in the package of lobster claw fasteners!)

Thrift Store Finds

I stopped off at the thrift store on my way home yesterday. (On my way to work I saw a spinning wheel in the window, and I wanted to check it out... but the auction had already ended and the wheel was gone by the evening.)

I already have a hammer, but this one was so strange (and only $2.99), so I brought it home with me:

It appears to have a *bone* handle! The handle *looks* original to the hammer. I had to find out more about it. (I may end up selling it to an antique store, or taking it to the lake, but at worst, it's at least $2.99 worth of entertainment.) Has anyone heard of bone-handled hammers?

Next up, a 100% wool (handwoven!) scarf to felt and use for rug hooking:


I've already stitch-ripped the wide hems up both edges of the scarf. I'm going to sew a narrow zig-zag along those edges to prevent it from shredding in the wash. It's so pretty, I feel a bit bad about stripping it... but it will make lovely strips, and it was only 25 cents. Plus, I noticed some small holes as I was seam-ripping it. (Moth? I'm not sure... but multiple hot washes should take care of any danger from that area.

I'm a sucker for vintage ornaments:

Especially since the ones on the right are just like some ones that my mom has from her grandma. I paid 80 cents. I carefully peeled off the price tag when I got home (and put it on a blank spot on the package, to preserve the history of it's journey), and found that the original price was 49 cents. Hee! :)

Two pretty glasses, 60 cents each:


Fun buttons at two cards for 25 cents:

These are for my thread-spool Christmas ornaments I'm making. (I decided the package of buttons I bought from Michaels didn't have enough variety.) I've taken photos of the first two thread-spool ornaments, and will show them in the next post.

Other things I picked up, but didn't take photos of:
• two *gorgeous* silk ties (for the fabric; I had already put them in the laundry basket, and forgot to take a photo),
• a pair of GE metal mixing bowls (I wanted smaller bowls with steep sides, these appear to be from a stand mixer),
• a Christmas tree stand that can hold lots of water, and adjusts small enough for ditch trees (pricey, at $6.99, but in good condition, and either difficult to find or expensive when new),
• two tins (one for muffins... previous tins are either way too tall for one layer but not tall enough for two, or not quite tall enough for one layer; one for odds 'n ends)
• a pretty fork,
• a grapefruit spoon that my grandma might want for peeling oranges (if not, it was only 10 or 25 cents, so no great loss),
• a 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon for my plant fertilizer (I have no idea what happened to the original scoop, assuming there was one),
• a "belt": a synthetic ribbon that would make pretty handles or a strap for a bag (80 cents),
• a yard or so of fabric that may or may not be cotton, but will make decent reusable bags ($1.10).

I think that about covers my purchases. Total: $26 plus a bit of change.

Thrift Store Fun

Thrift Store Fun

$6.87

Darcy's Arc Thrift Store definitely has better pries than Value Village. A lot less selection, but better prices.

I was looking for another glass pitcher (for my milk substitute... I'm not sure I'm getting the plastic ones completely clean), but didn't find one. Instead, I came home with two doilies, two china plates, a lunch plate, a Fire King dish that I'll use as a pasta bowl, a saucer that's so pretty I'll use it as a dessert plate (there was no matching teacup), a teacup and saucer (a splurge at $3, but very pretty), a ball of 100% wool yarn, a Hershnerr's kit for making crocheted bells, a book (The King's Grey Mare by Rosemary Hawley Jarman), and some Doubl*Glo Icicles. They say "Flameproof", but also "no lead content"... so I think they're still metal, but not the awesome old lead ones. (I didn't notice the "no lead content" until I got home and was googling them.)

Box of Chocolates

Box of Chocolates

My caretaker had a stroke recently, and was told he has diabetes (or something), and to cut back on the sugar. That meant I couldn't bake him cookies for Christmas. (Not that I've had time to bake cookies.) I found some sugar-free chocolates at Scoop N Weigh that looked tasty, so I made a box for them, and gave him that for Christmas instead.

I passed on the warning that the owner's husband gave to me.

Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you have a wonderful day, filled with family and/or friends!

Last Minute Gift Knitting

Present due: tomorrow (now today)
Present finished: today (now tomorrow)

Will the recipient like them? Hopefully. I had no clue what to get her.

The problem with Noro is that I'm not sure anyone who isn't a knitter will believe these both came from the same skein of yarn. Also, Noro softens with washing... but there definitely isn't time for them to dry by tomorrow afternoon. (Not unless I want to risk toasting them in the oven... but I'd rather go to bed.)

I goofed on the first, and so had to undo the grafting and add a repeat. The second had a knot in the Noro, so both ended up with an extra set of ends needing to be woven in. I had *maybe* three feet of yarn left over when I was done.

The hand portion is fine, but the arm portion is way too tight on me. Hopefully it will be fine on the recipient. (If I ever make them for me, I’ll make them “straight” rather than shaped.)

Sleep Debt

Wow... it's amazing what your body does when you turn off the alarm clock when you've been running on a sleep debt. I woke up briefly at 10 am, then slept until 3! Perhaps I'll need to use my alarm the next few days so I don't miss Christmas dinners with my families!

Brrr!

It is *nippy* out there! Winter seems to have arrived.

After sleeping all day again today, I ventured out to knitting tonight... as organizer for the stocking swap, and no decent alternate dates before Christmas, I felt I had to be there. Plus, I was treating it like a trial run for going back to work tomorrow. I seem to have survived, so back to the grind tomorrow. (Plus I figured I'd sleep better if I got out for a bit.)

Well, I need to go wash some dishes so that I'll have a clean bowl for breakfast. I was successful with two bananas, some bizarre toast-like things, wild rice, and (breaking the rules) *orange* juice, so I'm going to venture having a bowl of cheerios tomorrow morning. (I'm debating having one tonight as a trial.) For lunch I plan on packing the rest of the wild rice I cooked tonight, a banana, plain bread, and (crossing fingers) my homemade hummus. Given that I'll be at work late tomorrow (*sigh*), I'll need *something* to subsist on. I *won't* pack yoghurt though... H says milk products are a no-no until later (I use a substitute on my cereal), plus, with my intolerance, yoghurt messes with my system a bit anyway. (I plan on throwing out the last three snack containers of yoghurt... they are "best before" November 27th, and *should* be fine... but why risk it, what with my intolerance and recent illness.)

Sorry for the boring post!

Pinky and The Brain

Insufficient sleep has resulted in toasty brains recently. With severely limited brain power, when I *do* manage to knit, I want *simple*. Like icord. (Anyone need sparkly icord garlands for their Christmas tree? I'm happy to convert balls of yarn into yards of garland for you.) I made a red sparkly icord garland for myself last spring/summer. Predicting I'd need more icord-level knitting, I bought a sparkly teal ball on clearance for $2 at Ram Wools before term started. (I wanted silver or white, but those were around $7-8 per ball. If I can find the time, I'll visit Michaels with a 40% off coupon.) I'm trying not to go through it too quickly, but I've already knit somewhere between a yard and a half to two yards of icord.

I can also handle seed stitch. So I'm back to working on a hand towel out of linen yarn that I frogged a while back when the original hand towel suffered a break at a weak spot in the yarn, and I decided I didn't like the gauge I knit the towel in anyway. (Sorry for the run-on sentence. If I wasn't in a hurry to go to sleep, I'd attempt a re-write.) The original towel had a fancier pattern out of the first MDK book, but I can't handle that level of fancy right now. I did put a couple of stockinette squares in the seed stitch near the beginning, but the rest is just plain seed stitch. I'm around half-way done the hand towel out of the old yarn, so I picked up another skein of linen at Ram Wools yesterday. (At full price. Ouch. However, I am essentially working three part-time jobs right now, so I felt justified.)

New linen tends to be stiff, so I decided to use Pinky to quickly knit it up into a form that I could wash several times and then re-ball.

Pinky has got to be the crappiest knitter I know.

I got better at making pinky not muck up as much after a while. However, I'm still using the thickest yarn it can really handle, and would you look at that loose gauge? Sheesh. Yes, it was faster than I could hand knit an entire skein of linen... but it still took about three hours while vegging in front of the TV, and was also awkward and tiring to hold and crank. Oh well... it'll do. I just need something where I won't end up with a tangle.

Time for bed. Good night!

The Heat Is On

Literally. The radiators started gurgling earlier tonight, and they felt warm when I touched them. Hopefully this'll help with my knee. (Stoopid arthritis!)

Speaking of the seasons changing, Sara is having a give-away of crocheted snowflakes to the first 15 people who sign up. :) She loves having blog hits and comments, so go say hi! (And recently she's been having contests for yarn! I won two skeins of sock yarn!!!)

Finally, to those locals who may have been wondering, I will be hosting a Christmas swap again this year. I'll post to Ravelry... hopefully soon. (But not tonight, I need sleep. The only reason I made it to this late is because of the naps I've been having all day.)

Merry Christmas!

(Spring? What spring? There's a lovely Christmas snow falling, though...)

My new Gortex hiking boots are handling this "spring" weather beautifully. :)

Yes, I was more successful this weekend at changing nearly all my pieces of green paper for clothing... not only did I get boots that can handle ice-lined puddles, but I also bought four long-sleeved shirts, one t-shirt, a spring coat, and those spiked rubber thingies that can give traction to regular footwear. I sweet-talked my dad into driving me around the hard-to-bus-to stores near the airport. :)

About the only clothing I still need to get I won't need until summer. My sandals are wearing out, if I remember correctly, and I suspect my shorts suffered the same closet-shrinkage that my spring coat did. (Once all this silly snow goes away, I think I'll try plopping my ass on a bike. However, that'll be a while yet, from the look of things.)

No wonder my time disappears...

So, after my shower, I went downstairs and started my laundry. (Yay! The facilities were not in use!) As I was sorting laundry, the building caretaker came in, and we started chatting. He started off by complaining about the tenant whose suite he's repairing right now (the pipes in that section were replaced in early December, he's finally finishing the patching now... and yes, the tenant complains about the caretaker too), and we started talking about stuff that people do that we don't like. I mentioned that I can't wait for one family to move out, because they're heavy smokers, and the smell gets into the hallway. That reminded me of something in the bathroom, and, after moving my first load into the dryer and starting the second load, I took him up to show him. (You'll see it in a bit too, I've got a post coming about it.) Then I showed him the damage that the ice caused, gave him a candy cane from my Christmas tree (yes, I know), we talked about how the tree was growing, he asked about a painting I'm working on (post coming), then he noticed my spinning wheel. I ended up demonstrating spinning with the wheel, spinning with a spindle, yarns have different thicknesses (etc) depending on what you're making, then explaining about the fact that there's different sheep breeds, and different breeds have different qualities. That moved on to the fact that there's different breeds of chickens (I happen to have an old calendar with photos to prove it)... and then I think my buzzer buzzed to indicate it was time to go down and retrieve my first load from the dryer. We continued to talk while I switched that load, but he let me go afterwards.

Now it's 7 pm, I still haven't washed my dishes (or taken down the Christmas tree) or had dinner. (I need to wash dishes to eat tonight.)

Time sure has a way of evaporating. (I did a bit of blog reading too after changing the wash.)

(Conversations with my caretaker are a bit of work... he's partially deaf, and somewhat simpleminded. You have to talk loud, slow, and explain lots. Kind of like when I'm running the help centre.)

Well, I suppose I should go attack those dishes so that I can eat. I'm hungry. Perhaps I'll steam some broccoli first... that pot is still clean. I'll just eat dinner in shifts. Whee.

Thank you!

Thank you, for all your hugs! I do appreciate both the hugs, and all my online friends. :) (Sometimes I just need someone local, you know?) I thought I should let you know that I'm feeling a lot better today than I was the other day I posted, and one of my friends with commitments has found time to squeeze me in next Friday. :) (I think she likes it as much as I do, but it's all those dang commitments, you know?)

So... today is for laundry, taking down the Christmas decorations and tree (I *know*!), and sewing up some of the things on my list, so that I can put the sewing machine away. Plus dishes... I don't think I've washed them since last Sunday, when I had my previous marathon washing. (At least this time I was able to eat relatively normal meals with the dishes I had.)

If I get the sewing machine put away early enough, I'm going to do a little painting too. (I have to show you the *awesome* easel box my mom and Bob gave me as an early birthday present!!!!)

It would have been nice to go skating too, but at -21C, my dad chickened out, and I have a few too many things to do to go by myself. (If I have other people's schedule to work around, I feel justified in putting off chores. Otherwise I don't.) I did get out last weekend (I'll be posting that on the Swatchy blog soon, I hope), so that was nice. :) My new skates are *wonderful*!

Okay... off to take care of business. (First up, showering and getting dressed. Then I can start the laundry. I enjoy a slow start to my Saturdays.)

Christmas Tree Growth

Christmas Tree Growth

I find this quite fascinating. (Yes, I still need to take my tree down. So sue me.)

How Curious...

Okay, so I admit that I probably should have taken my Christmas tree down already, but it hasn't been dropping many needles, so I really wasn't that worried about it. It's been a really long time since I've had a live Christmas tree. Do they normally grow over the holidays?

At first I just thought I hadn't noticed the buds when I brought the tree home, but now they're definitely getting bigger, and many of them are opening!

PS: Mom/Bob/Santa: I used my new tripod to take this photo.

Mmmmmm!

Christmas was fantastic!!! Christmas day at mom's was wonderful (I got wireless! and a ball winder! and everyone loved what I got them!), and so was boxing day with the dad side of the family here! There was no fighting or even unpleasantness, everyone *loved* the food (boy, are we stuffed!), and my brother set up my wireless for me too. :)

The walnut roll turned out *perfect*! It's not quite the same as my grandma's... mine apparently tastes more "walnutty", and mine was sweeter too (which my dad is a *big* fan of... as are the rest of us), so I count that as a success. Shelling the fresh walnuts did taste a lot better than the stale bag ones... even my dad noticed the difference. (He had been a non-believer before.)

Mmmmm! I think I'll roll in for an early bed tonight. ;) The dishes can wait until morning. (My dad's fiancée offered to help me with them, but there aren't an unreasonable number, especially considering the amount of food, so I thought it nicer to relax with family after dinner, and I'll attack them tomorrow.) My finger even seems healed enough that I can wash dishes without gloves!

I didn't get all of the cleaning done that I had wanted to do... but the place was reasonably presentable, and I'll get to the rest over the course of the next week. (Which I plan to be more relaxing than the past week!)

My intentions for this next week of vacation: Do the rest of the cleaning (or as much as I can manage while still relaxing), make some more bobbins and shelves with my dad, finish the desk, and have my mom, Bob, and grandma over for New Years dinner. (I figure I should feed them too... but I won't get as elaborate as I did for tonight. Lighter fare will be nice, I think.)