Christmas Crash

December 26th...and I don't think I've ever been this freakin tired in my entire life. We've been on the go non-stop since last Thursday and I have not had a good night's sleep in about 2 weeks. Last night I was tucked into bed about 2 minutes after I got my munchkins down for the night, and my husband graciously let me doze until nearly noon today. I could still use about another week or two of sleep, but I'm functional for the moment.

Uh...this is a long post. Grab a coffee before you start.

We started our Christmas festivities at my mom's place, and like every year we discovered that Santa had secretly dropped off an early present for each of us...



Grace received a giant stuffed dog, which she named "Sam" after one of my parents' dogs, and a little make-up kit. Cameron got two dig a dino excavation kits (a block of sand that you chip away at to find the dino bones hidden inside) and Gabriel received a big soft truck. My gift was a mug that read "Goddess: A woman whose great charm or beauty arouses adoration" (lol!) and some fancy hair clips. Phil's was a car organizer kit (but we'll see who gets their cd's in the visor clip first, mwahaha!).

Christmas morning our children were woke at the perfectly reasonable hour of 8am (although, we had to persuade Grace to get out of bed, she would have been content to roll back over until we told her that Santa had brought her presents...Gabriel we had to wake up altogether and he was not impressed by the presents at all)



This is our tree, loaded with presents from friends and family


And this is the Santa haul


Gabriel quickly got to work dissolving the wrapping paper


Grace was pretty excited about her kitchen


While Cam was most excited about his jersey


And Gabriel enjoyed some more paper


All in all, we did very well. Phil got me tickets to see "White Christmas" at Neptune (and I secured a babysitter so he can even come with me), and my mom bought me some much needed winter boots (they are a very pretty blue colour).


This took me a little while to get tidied up. But I had the best motivation to clean ever...Phil was making a tasty breakfast with bacon, eggs and pancakes, so I got an awesome reward once I was done. Mmmmm..Christmas bacon...

Before I go slink off to grab a nap (lol) I'll show you the items I knit as Christmas presents. Now, it's not a lot, certainly not as much as some people knit, but as I started way late (beginning of December), I think I did very well for finishing on time. I had no intentions of making any knitted gifts this year, but some stuff happened that made me want to...anyway, here they are:

For my Nanny, who is a Red Hatter I knit an Odessa

She had asked if I could knit her a simple red hat to wear out to coffee with her group, and my original thought was to do a red hat with purple beads, but then she told me that you can only wear purple during your birthday month, so I went with these really pretty red beads.
Yarn: Debbie Bliss Cashmerino, dk
Beads: Blue Moon seed beads (bought at Micheal's)
Pattern: Odessa by Grumperina
Modifications: Only one, I made it a bit longer so it will go over the ears. It's my ears that get cold, and I figure Nan's get cold too (that's why you wear a hat, right?)
BTW...did you check out the Red Hatter site? I totally cannot wait to join. I'm considering going in as a Pink Hatter (you can join and wear a pink hat and a lavendar outfit if you are under 50), but I might be pushing it at 29. I'll wait a few more years. But if you've seen these ladies out and about...my gosh they are having so much fun and I wanna play too!

Next up, socks for my aunt and uncle. If anyone deserves some handknit socks, it's these kind and generous people!

For Aunt Booboo (aka "Helen")

She told me over the summer she likes ankle socks and that she prefers cotton...these are perfect for her! Now, the pattern does not show up as well on me since my feet are slightly smaller than her's, but it's quite cool when it's stretched a bit.
Yarn: Opal cotton in "Denim"
Pattern: Breeze by Jennifer L. Appleby
Modifications: By the toe,I was a bit tired of fussing with it, so I just did a standard toe instead. I like how it looks though. If I were to make these again I'd follow the pattern for the toe, but I might not bother with a cabled heel, and I would extend the pattern up the leg a bit too.

And Andrew's socks:

This was a very close finish. I still had most of the foot to go when we got in the van to do the 2hour drive to Booboo and Andrew's house to deliver their presents. But Andrew is a trucker and he was away, so I figured if I ended up finishing this one while we visited, no big deal. We arrive and I ask Booboo to confirm Andrew was away, and was told "Oh no, he's almost home. He'll be here in a hour!" I was almost to the toe, so I immediately passed off the baby and knit like a crazy woman. I was just about to graft the toe when a familiar face walked by the kitchen window. I snatched up my gear and ran into the dining room, shouting "Hi! Don't come in here!" I've never kitchener'd that fast in my life! I then wrapped it up in tissue with the little handmade tag sticking out and put it into the bag with Booboo's wrapped socks (the tags had fibre content and washing instructions on them). I got a call with big thank yous and yes-they-fit-greats on Christmas morning, that made it all worth it.
Yarn: Paton's Kroy in "Flax"
Pattern: Treads by Kimberly Fairchild (Son of Stitch 'n Bitch)
Modifications: Whoo, boy. I kept the cable pattern, but only did 2 repeats of it instead of 8. I used a heavier yarn, so I went up to a 3mm needle instead of 2mm. I had to make big mods to the cast on number to accommodate the needle change, and continued the ribbing down the foot. I did a sl1,k1 standard heel, instead of a short row (I don't care for short row heels myself, I know lots of people love them, but they are not for me...might be because my first experience with them was the hated Falling in Love socks) and I did my regular toe instead of the short row toe (which I don't mind, I just did not want to do the math). These look more like Tread's cousin rather than the pattern itself...same family tree, different branch.

The last thing off my needles was my dad's thrummed mittens:

I initially wanted to make Dad some socks, but he said "no socks, but I'd love some mittens." I thought at first that I would make him Dashing, but continue up to make full mitts, then I saw the thrummed ones and asked mom what she thought about mini furnaces for my dad's hands. She thought they'd be great for snow shovelling, so I went in search of a kit. The lovely ladies at LK totally hooked me up. Once they were finished I tea-dyed them (my kitchen smelled like a barn) to minimize the little hearts that the thrumms make. I also included a note explaining the mitts and washing instructions which included the line "call your daughter and she'll bring over some wool wash and wash them properly for you" (I have nightmares of these mitts going in the washing machine and the dryer and being rendered a felted, useless mess).
And now...I'm also going to make a pair of very warm booties for Gabriel, Cam wants a pair of thrummed mitts and I think Phil needs a pair too. And I might make a pair of thrummed socks for Cam, since his feet get so cold when we go out in winter. And I would like a pair, but black with pink roving. Thrumming is going to be all the rage over at the Neily house.
Yarn: Briggs and Little Heritage, in grey colour
Pattern: Family Thrummed Mittens by Catherine Vardy
Modifications: Just one. I did not care for how the decreases were going, it was messing up the thrumming pattern. So I did it similar to a sock toe decrease and felt much happier.

I also made another Jayne Cobb hat for Cate (this one destined to warm the noggin of a friend of Mr No Sheep). Mr No Sheep was brave enough to enter the Knitter's Den at the Wired Monk on a KOL night to pick it up. Poor man made the tactical error of carrying in cookies...he's lucky he escaped with his life (knitters, feeling the Christmas crunch, hopped up on caffeine...scented the cookies and attacked).

And now on my needles is Tussie Mussie for my mom. She asked for a sweater, and we looked at some patterns and she chose this one, and chose the yarn (Knitpicks Cotlin in Key Lime) For Christmas I wrapped up one of the balls and the pattern, and gave her some really luscious chocolates to eat in the meantime. She knew when she first requested a sweater that she was not getting for Christmas, so it was not a suprise that she got some of the yarn...but my Dad and my brothers had a really good laugh at the "in progress" gift!

So...that was our Christmas. Hope yours was great too!