Robin's Holiday Survival Guide

Merry New Year!

Wow was 2007 a fun ride. It's always nice to ring in the new year with a bang but I find having all the holidays piled up at the end to be a bit stressful, like finals. So here are few things I do to get me through with all my hair still on my head.

1. Drink responsibly. Take time to sit down with a cuppa with friends and family. There's nothing more sad than having a cup of hot cocoa alone at 1 am to take the edge off.

2. Decorating is a team sport. Have the kids help out, they like it, and when you go to put everything away after the holidays they can help with that too.

3. Wrapping gifts is a team sport too. I like wrapping presents, really I do. But when you haven't gotten anything wrapped at all and it's 2 days til Christmas Eve it's time to call in the troops. Thank you Shelley!

4. It's not all about the food. I love to cook. I love to feed people. I love baking for the holidays. I had no time this year. Believe it or not this is the first year I have ever worked full time for the holidays. I didn't do any baking this year and I felt deprived until I realized I also did not gain any weight either. That's 5 less pounds to shed this year. Go me.

5. Knit responsibly. Never take on more knitting projects than you can finish.

6. Be careful what you promise to knit when giving knit certificates. On the card I said hat, mittens or a scarf. Len wants a hat, no problem. Lisa wants a Doctor Who scarf. Have you seen how long those things are? Next year it's going to be a one skein limit.

7. Pick a day to just sleep in. This one is a life saver. You will have to do some pre-planning to make sure you get your day but it's so worth it.

8. Christmas ornaments are not eternal. You are going to lose or break at least one every year. This year Jarret broke one of the good blown glass ones and the kitten got a pear, a teddy bear, a fish and an apple. At least I can fix the kitten's ornamental depredations.

9. Play games. This one is self explanatory. We really like Munchkin Blender.

And I finished Quinn's sweater in time for it to be a Christmas present. Mom's sending me a picture of it soon.

So happy to have a minute to blog

Can you believe its almost Yule!

And to start the Holiday season my daughter and her choir class got to sing for us. She's the curly headed one in the middle top row. They were very good. The orchestra was painful but the choirs rocked.


In my house we have a bunch of different Winter Holidays. My ex and my son James do Hanukkah, sometimes he takes the other kids out to his Mom's too. Then my husbands family does Christmas Day. My family has always done Christmas Eve and Yule. But this year... no Hanukkah because Great Grandma and Grandpa are both in the hospital, and I can't find Jamie's menorah. No Christmas day with my husband's family because of health issues with his Mom, see the above mention of hospitals again. And my husband is working Yule and Christmas Eve. Time for plan B.

We are doing Yule, without the Husband, on Saturday. Sad, but still, he never does ritual with us anyway.

My Mom works Christmas Eve and just found out that her daycare is closed, so we will have Quinn all day. Not a worry but all the prep needs to be done before hand. Chasing toddlers and doing last minute present wrapping don't mix. Pass the eggnog!

Christmas Day, which Husband does have off, we are going to my soon to be new home Shelley's. There we will play games like Munchkin Cthulu and Zombie Flux. We will eat and talk and see what happens if you mix the Stoner Flux deck with the Zombie Flux deck. We will also play Last Day On Earth and Haunted House 1, 2, 3 and 4, Illuminati and Empire Builder. Ok, so we're gamer geeks....

As for Yule knitting, some of the fabulous people on my list are getting Knitting Promissory Notes. This is basically a card and a box with yarn in it an a promise to make the knitted object in question. My Husband is getting a Hat Promise. Hat promises are also going to a couple of friends. My kids (who do read this blog) are getting surprise promises.

Quinn's sweater is still not finished. I sewed the sleeves on and found that despite measuring twice, and counting the exact number of stitches, twice, that I had arsed it up completely and had to rip out the whole sleeve and start again. I had to do this on one of her previous sweaters to. So the sleeves are still not sewn on and the whole thing is waiting for me to be less irritated at it.

Ryan's socks are, but the pic for them is at home.

I cast on for a new pair of gloves. I gave the last pair I knit to my Mom.
I'm making Deborah Newton's Twisted Stitch Gauntlet's out of Interweave Knits Holiday issue. These will be for me. If I ever get enough knitting time to finish them.


That's my holiday wish to every knitter.

May your days be filled with love and joy, and more time to Knit!

It's the Most Busiest Time of the Year... come on, you know the words

Shopping and Wrapping and snow on car, it's the most Busiest time of the Year!

I've also been making ornaments and trying to finish UFO's to round out the Yule gifts. The sheep ornaments are to cute for words, and came out so well that later I'm going to put up a step-by-step tutorial.

Sheeps in Space. It's a sheepy constellation.













Baa, a whole sheepy galaxy.

Ok, so the light from the chandelier doesn't help a whole lot.

But aren't they cute with there little roving faces and their little roving tails and their wild arse colors.

I like me some Bright colors in the winter. For those of you unfamiliar with the great Pacific North West, especially the Puget Sound region, we don't actually get to see the sun for six months of the year. I doesn't rain the whole time, despite popular media myth, but it's overcast and gray. From October to April the Puget Sound is a big bowl of storm clouds, drizzle and fog. The only color we get out of nature is the green from the trees, if you can see them. It also gets dark at about 4:00 pm and doesn't get light until 8:00 am. I drive to work in the dark. I drive home in the dark. I combat this with bright screaming color.

And chocolate. And wool. And technocolor sheeps.

Tomorrow, or later today, the Saga of Quinn's Sweater...

I want to be Stephanie Pearl-McPhee when I grow up.

She's my hero. She's funny and fiber addicted and can manage to blog almost every day. I want to be able to dedicate my life to knitterly pursuits like that. I just love her and she makes me laugh.

I, like many of you knitters out there, have taken to having poor helpless people hold my knitting to have their picture taken. We can mostly all blame this idea on Stephanie. But the cake must be taken by this fabulous knitter, Tracy, who got Barack Obama to hold her sock in progress for pictures. She has way more balls than I do.

Yarn Balls! I meant yarn balls. Really. :)

As for me, I'm back to teaching knitting at Michael's. As if I needed more to do with my Saturdays, but I figure teaching knitting is a public service. If everyone knew how to knit just imagine how much better the world would be. Everyone would be a lot warmer for one thing.

If every one in the world knew how to knit...
... no one would freeze to death because they did not have hats, scarves, sweaters, gloves, mittens or blankets.
... you could get yarn at your local stockists and there would be more yarn shops than 7-11's.
... no one would question your need for alpaca.
... no one would ever walk up to you and ask if that's knitting or crochet.
... no one would just assume that you could whip them out a sweater in a couple hours and that it was reasonable to offer you $20.00 for it.
... no one would be offended if you said 'could you wait until I finish this row' or 'just a second I'm counting stitches'.
... there would be knitting contests and knitting awards and more knitting shows on TV.
... you could get more yarn in more fibers in more colors.
... kids would pay attention to math in school and stop asking the teacher 'am I ever going to need to know this?'
... it would solve world hunger, improve the world economy, end illiteracy and promote world trade.
... there would be peace on earth and good will towards men because everybody would be to busy knitting to go out and kill each other. It would damage your needles and mess up your yarn, not to mention seriously cutting in to your knitting time.

So some day the world will be a better place because more people know how to knit. And I'm helping.

...and then I got sick.

First of all, Thanksgiving was fabulous.

I love having a whole day dedicated to being with family and friends and eating a metric ton of turkey. Ok, maybe not quite that much turkey, but the bird was over 20lbs. We stuffed it with fresh cut oranges, onions, carrots and rosemary and thyme. It's a good thing I'm a beefy girl or I never would have gotten it in the oven by myself. It was a very tasty bird.

After the sleepy coma turkey induces I got a sinus infection, and an ear infection, and then my eardrums ruptured. Which just sucks. I didn't even get back to work until today.

So this is one of those "I'm not dead" posts. With no pictures, because I am humble, and can't find the cord for my camera... Tomorrow we will have more posts, with pictures.

Yes, you can plan a whole vacation around yarn!

My friend and adopted sister Shelley and I went on a pre-holiday yarn crawl. We generally do this twice a year and our favorite destination by far is Port Townsend.

Port Townsend, Washington is a picturesque little Victorian town on the Strait of Juan de Fuca.







We always stay at the Palace Hotel.













Port Townsend is a great get-away spot. In the off season the room rates are really low, the restaurants are open and not to crowded and the two yarn shops get in there winter wool. Did I mention the yarn shops are only a block apart. And just to make it even more tempting Port Townsend has fabulous restaurants.

The first place we invaded was Diva Yarns. The ladies there are always so happy to see us.









We shopped and then went to the adjoining bead store












and the store that sells trim. There was a lot of shopping going on.












The fabulous lady at Diva even held up my traveling scarf.












Then she made me hold it up and took my picture. Sneaky woman. Apparently , as I am a large woman, stuffing a lot of things in my pockets and then looking down makes me look like a pear with triple chins. Did I mention I'm not keen on having my picture taken.













After the shopping fest at Diva we took ourselves to lunch at the Fountain Cafe, another favorite place. One of the best things about them is the total lack of a deep fat fryer in the kitchen. They have great soups, great salads, and incredible grilled sandwiches. Try the turkey rueben.

Then we went to the Twisted Ewe, and got more yarn.















And candles.
















This is Shelley going 'why are you taking my picture, monkey?' She learned that look from my cats.










The very nice lady at the shop did not hold the traveling scarf for me.









But I got lots of pictures any way.

I love yarn shops.














After an amazing dinner at Fins and some much deserved rest, to sleep off the amazing dinner, we set out the next day for Bainbridge Island and Churchmouse Yarn and Tea....

Happy Halloween!

Joyful Hallows!

Merry Samhain!

Here's a bunch of cat pictures. Sorry no knitting content today.












Why do cats like to sleep in the sink?













Kitten in the kitchen. Isn't she to cute.













This is Crystal. My beautiful hairy white menace. She's gone. I lost her. She hasn't been home in 10 days. I'm hoping one of our neighbors took her in and loves her as much as I do. I like to think that she is safe and warm and happy and not part of some coyote's digestive system.




OK not a lot of knitting content.



I have to finish Ryan's socks by tomorrow so she can take them to Fall Encampment this weekend. This is the second sock! It's not as bad as it looks, I just need to do the toe.

I still need to block my shawl and I need to finish Quinn's sweater before her next growth spurt so she can wear it for more than two minutes. Girl grows way to fast. At least I finished the back, now I need sleeves.