Deep in the Christmas Knitting

I have made my list of Christmas knitting, and I'm well into getting it done. Sweet Hubby's company always has a White Elephant gift exchange at the annual Christmas party. I have decided to make a gnome for one of our gifts. His name will be Filmore, and he will be a Christmas gnome. I got this much done yesterday.


I'm using something new I've not tried before. Caron Simply Soft Eco yarn. It's a worsted weight acrylic and polyester yarn made with recycled plastic bottles. How cool is that?


It's incredibly soft, and is knitting up very very nicely. I think I will be very pleased with the results.

The only thing I can't seem to decide is what color beard to make him. Originally, I thought I'd do a traditional christmasy white beard with some leftover Cello, but I don't have much of it left. In fact, I don't think there's enough for a beard. I don't want to purchase any more yarn (the gift is supposed to be cheap), so I dug in the stash. I found a ball of black Fluff, and a skein of silver Bernat Disco. The disco has metallic silver in it with the fuzzy silver, so it's quite glittery. I don't know if that would be too much or not. Let me know what you think? Some help with this decision would be nice.


In the meantime, I'm gonna dig some more in the stash. I know there's got to be other colors in it somewhere that would make a good beard. I vaguely remember bringing home several skeins of S.R. Kertzer Fizz in copper when I still had the shop. A red beard would be cute.

By the way, I have found out that these yarns are discontinued. So I better find a clearance sale and stock up. I have no intention of stopping the Gnome production.

My weekend was busy, then not. On Saturday I went to Costco to stock up the pantry. It had been 3 months since my last trip, so the pantry was getting pretty bare. I figure if I can walk around Costco, I can walk around the Tulum Mayan ruins in Mexico. Well, I did it. I walked all over Costco, loaded my cart with all the necessities (and some wants), and came home with a leg so swollen it was downright ugly. Sigh....I'm not liking this.

Saturday night was a big birthday party for my niece, Heidi. I can't believe she's 40 now. That means I'm gonna be 50 pretty soon! Anyway, the party was a lot of fun. Mostly family was there, and many of Heidi's friends.

The cake was a tradgedy though. It is an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.


The order was for a cake with those funky pink candy dots on it and pink lettering. This is what we got. Brown and Pink roses. And what is with the bright orange 40? Huh????? I took this picture right after Holly (Heidi's sister) accidentally dropped it on the floor as she was carrying it to the kitchen. Fortunately, it fell on it's bottom, instead of flipping over and landing on it's top. Or maybe unfortunately?

We ate it anyway, since none of the cake actually touched the floor. It was delicious. Here's the birthday girl blowing out the candles, with some help from Jacob.


I took a lot of pics at the party, but these are the only ones I can show the public. (I am so adept at catching everyone with their eyes closed-even without a flash!) Here's one of daughter Ruth that turned out pretty good.


Yeah, that's my sock bag on the end of the couch. I worked on my sock while I was partying. My family is used to seeing me knit at these gatherings.

On Sunday I felt like a Zombie. More from staying up past 1am than from drinking. I didn't drink enough to get drunk. I had every intention of doing so, but just couldn't do it. I hate paying the price the next morning. I don't know how people can do it. I feel bad enough in the morning as it is! Anyway, I felt like a Zombie, and my leg was huge and ugly. So I sat in the hug with my leg up, watched DVD's, and knitted all day-more or less. I knitted between naps. I had a hard time staying awake all day.

By Monday morning, the swelling had gone back down on the leg. What a relief. Gonna have to be really careful though. Maybe I won't hoof it all over Tulum after all.

Have a great day.