Have yourself a merry little Christmas...

Christmas came a little early at our house this year. We celebrate on the closest weekend that we have the boys, so this year Christmas fell on the 22nd. Friday night we drove to Brooklyn to pick up Rob & Jeff then went Christmas tree shopping. This is what we came home with:

A lovely little tree. After a little time and effort, she looked like this:

Then finally:

Not too bad for a last minute effort.

As you can see - we have not repainted yet, but I think this will be my last year for a mauve and aqua tree. Either way, I wanted to show you a close up of some of my favorite ornaments.
Musical instruments I bought in CVS one year - I don't know why, but I love these. There is this one, a violin and a drum.
These are all crocheted ornaments - I wish I could say I made them, but I did not. I would really like to try to make some of these for next year though, might be a good, hot weather summer project.


This is a lovely bouquet I received from my boss I love the berries and the vase.


This is what I received from David and the boys - the pasta attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer and rice cooker/steamer. I can't wait to try them both out. I am on vacation the rest of the year, so I will have ample time to try them out.

For those of you still waiting to celebrate - Happy Holidays! Hope Santa treats you all well this year!

Don't waste now, precious time we'll dance inside the song

Yesterday was a great day! 2 of my Account Managers took me to lunch - Luigi's in New Hyde Park. It was a truly amazing meal! I want to take David there one night - they serve great Chicken Parm, so he will eat there. It was a lovely lunch, they even had a chocolate lava cake with white chocolate ice cream and a candle for me.

Last night, the LIC Knitting group had a Holiday party at Carolyn's that was great fun. We all brought food - Susan's bacon wrapped almond stuffed dates and Mia's amazing cookies were perfect bookends for Carolyn's Paella! Yum. Not much knitting was done, but fun was had by all.






That last picture was me trying to get a shot of the view from Carolyn's window, instead I got both the view outside and the scene inside the apartment. I liked the effect.

All in all, turning 45 was not so bad.

this is what i brought you, this you can keep

This has been a very good weekend, I did lots of things - just no knitting.

Thursday's dinner with my Manhattan Sales team was very good - We went to Gasparino's on East 6th Street. The food was very good and the restaurant was very pretty - we took up almost the whole place. Most of the Account Managers and my boss where going to a bar afterwards, but I decided I had had enough and wanted to go home to my soft warm bed!

Friday, I had off so I slept in then went grocery shopping. My LIC knitting group is having a Christmas party at Carolyn's place on Tuesday and I am planning to make a Pear Ginger Gallette and in addition to those ingredients, I needed to pick up the ingredients for baked ziti for the Boy Scout Pot Luck and Turkey Sausage for the Escarole, White Bean and Sausage I am making for tonight's Scrabble night dinner.

David and I and really bad around the holidays, we celebrate the 25 days of Christmas, we keep giving each other presents every couple of days - By Christmas Eve there is nothing under the tree but the boys gifts! Friday he gave me a box to open - inside what this:

Good bye FauxPod - I've got an iPod!
I spent most of yesterday downloading CD's onto it - Happy Happy! It is on top of the heated back massager he bought me for my birthday.
Saturday I opened 2 - a lens and adaptor for my digital camera.

I realized I didn't post a very good picture of the Tatami Pattern, I showed you the lovely red envelope it is packaged in, but here is what the pattern looks like:

I love the way Sundara is presenting these patterns!

I also decided that the lovely silk yarn she sent is destined to become this:

from Victorian Lace Today.

On his face is a map of the world...

I really hope that I don't have enough lines on my face to look map like. After all the money I spend on face creams, I would be really pissed.

Yes it is that time of the year again, just 5 more days and I will be 45. God that looks so strange. When I was younger, I never thought much beyond turning 40 and even that seemed like an eternity away: 2001, a new century - who even knew if the would be a world - what with Y2K and all. But that came and went all uneventful like and now 45 - shouldn't I have grown up by now?

Last night I got home from work and there was a box waiting for me - I thought it was an order I placed with elann, so I just moved it aside while I made supper. When I finally looked at it, I realized it wasn't from elann, but from Sudara! It was the finished copy of the Tatami Pattern and a thank you for being a test knitter.


See how pretty it was wrapped! Inside the pattern looked like this:

And that gorgeous hank of caramel-y goodness - Lace Weight Silk!

What a lovely thank you gift!
I am counting it as my first birthday present.

David asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said Jared Leto, I am not holding out much hope.

...it says you ...oh you... you are so cool....

But appearently, not my stepsons.

Last night I took them to Target for some Christmas shopping, they needed to pick up gifts for their mother, step-father, father and baby brother. After spending much time in the computer game and action figure aisles, Jeff tells me he wants a Segway. Images of Weird Al and the the lyrics to "White and Nerdy" won't leave my head.

As if I didn't have enough on the needles, I started a new project. 2 weeks ago, at the LIC knitnight, Helen brought a hat she had knit out of Paton's SWS. It was really lovely yarn, reminded me of Noro, but much much softer. Last weekend when I was out shopping with David, we stopped at the B&N on Rt 110 - there is a Michael's in the same shopping center, so I ran in to see if they carried this yarn. I bought 8 skeins of Natural Earth:


a slightly adapted Lady Eleanor


Pattern: Lady Eleanor - Scarf style
Changes: 5 base triangles i/o 7 on size 11 needles

The best part of this is I taught myself to knit backwards! It makes working the sections really fast and easy, no turning the work around every row.

I really would like to finish this before the holidays - I think it will be perfect for all the get togethers this time of year.

Speaking of get togethers - tonight is David's last NYPD Christmas party. He will get his retirement plaque and stuff from his old unit. It is at Bantry Bay Publick House on Greenpoint Ave in LIC. It should be fun.

Well I want to finish a few more rows on Ellie so it's off to knit I go........

When darkness turns to light - it ends tonight....

The warm weather should finally be ending tonight - of course I have to drive to Brooklyn to pick up the kids in the rain and wind. I should, however get to wear my great ISE scarf and natalya wrist warmers again - yeah!

I just wanted to post an update on my VLT Curved shawl:



and closeup detail:


I really love this pattern, but it requires great concentration on my part not to mess up. I still have a problem on the wrong side rows. I can not seem to get comfortable with reading the chart left to right for the odd # rows and right to left for the even # rows. I was out with some friends last night trying to work on this while listening to the conversation around me. I was doing pretty good till someone started talking about great quotes from our idiot president and brought up his I AM THE DECIDER speech and I completely lost count and missed numerous YO's that I had to fix before I went to bed last night. That you W. As you can see though I did get them fixed.

I love this pattern and can't wait to wear it!

I am really looking forward to this weekend - work has been draining lately and I really need a few days to recoup.

Also thank you to everyone who left me music suggestions for my step sons. If you left a suggestion for me, please drop me an email at knitwitch AT gmail Dot com - I have a little thank you for each of you!

The e e e, that's alll folks!