Happy Holidays

The holidays always seem to be the longest & shortest parts of the year. It's a chaotic mess of weather, driving, and shopping, which seems to go on forever. And then, around Dec 27th, I'm at the mall still waiting for the wonderful event... Wait - Christmas is over? How did I miss it? I suppose better planning would help me feel more relaxed around the holidays, but the one year I power shopped and got everything bought way ahead of time, it felt like I skipped the hustle and bustle part that I enjoyed. Well, that was before I had kids and lived, worked and shopped 20 miles in different directions! And since we have multiple families to celebrate the holidays with, and I have to work both Christmas Eve & Christmas Day, we're actually doing our christmas with my kids tomorrow after work. Then, hopefully, I can at least see them open the gifts from me and my parents. I spent Tuesday night programming "Know Your Name Elmo" so that he says "Courtney" every other sentence, and intermittently mentions the people, animals, colors and foods she likes. The damn toy is for my 20 month old and has a USB port - What is the world coming to??? Johanna is getting a Dora discman and a Chicken Little Cd & book. Hopefully we can find more books on cd for her, and I doubt dh's family took the suggestion and got her some. We tossed around the idea of getting her a mini dvd player, but she watches so much tv that I just didn't want to encourage her spending even more time watching movies. Maybe when we get our tax refund we can get her Hooked on Phonics, if they've come out with a cd version - the BJs & Sams near us only carry the cassette versions and we don't have a tape player for her.

The past few days I've been working on my Gauntlets from the cover of Not Just Socks by Sandi Rosner. I'm using yarn I got from Knitpicks.com, Simple Stripes in the Sweet Tart colorway. What I love about the pattern is that it makes the striping yarn look as if it's actually some sort of entrelac or modular knitting, but it's just the stitch pattern's wavy-ness. Although the stitch pattern is very simple, I find it takes some amount of concentration, and working k2tog with size 2 needles and fingering yarn is somewhat of a pain. I sort of wish that I'd used the plum parade yarn which is sport weight and would have worked up quicker, but on the other hand, this light weight yarn will still be good for these gauntlets although the stitch pattern is a little airy and I'm not using as small of needles as I would if this were a sock project - this yarn would probably require size 0's for socks (it reminds me of the Opal socks I made myself a couple birthdays ago - very thin yarn), but I'm using size 2's. I just hope to have them finished before the cold weather is over.

A few weeks ago I bought Mindy, a girl I work with, some yarn & needles and cast on her first sock project. It's actually her first knitting project period. Well, she hasn't gotten anywhere with it, primarily because I spent about 6 mins with her on a break trying to show her knit & purl. The good news I got today is that we seem to be working the same shift starting at the end of January, so I will hopefully have a knitting buddy on my team. Dh thought I would be upset, he got the same hours as me, 7:15-4:15, but he's off Mon/Tues and I'm off Thurs/Fri. While it's not exactly what I wanted, which would have been both of us off the same days, we're getting 1/2 of what we were looking for - we'll be able to drive together Wed, Sat & Sun, we're both working day shift so we'll have nights together, and my mom will have one of us home 4 days during the week. It sucks that we both have to work weekends, but this will hopefully only last until april, and then we're going to try again for the same shift. Alan keeps focusing on getting thru to our vacation in March/April. We really need that break and the time to spend together. Dh asked what knitting projects I'll be bringing along. :)