Whoever said this was the most wonderful time of the year was wrong. This is the most stressful time of the year. Whew. Maybe on December 26 I can breathe again.
Still working on Cobblestone. Honestly, I thought I'd be very done with this by now. But keeping an eight week old puppy from chewing everything in the house lessens the uninterrupted time I can spend on whipping up this sweater. There was one problem though. I either misplaced a stitch marker or didn't read instructions carefully and had to rip back a few rows at the yoke, including the rows joining the sleeves to the sweater, and you know how much of a downer that can be.
Or maybe not, if you're a knitter with mad skills. But having those live stitches out there was no problem. This Beaverslide yarn is thick and doesn't easily slip from where I've left it. Any thoughts of finishing any other holiday knitting projects for others quickly eroded from my mind.
As usual, I'm far behind on Holiday cards. You know, the signing, addressing, stamping, and sending part. I'm already thinking that next November, I'll start on those and get them out by December first. Or, go with my alternate plan of sending out New Years cards instead of Winter holiday cards.
Because I have five days off between Christmas and New Years and I could crank them out then. Seems like less amount of time off this year between those two holidays. I look forward to it every year.
Anyway, the one thing I managed to finish by its due date were the ornaments for my swap, the cake + pie swap. My original idea of trees made of wire didn't pan out. I didn't spend enough time exploring it, but when the first two or three types of wire I used failed to hold the tree shape, I moved on to another idea. That fabulous idea was snowmen.
first prototypes on right, changed ones on left
My first three attempts made me change my game plan. Originally I thought to sew right sides together and pull the sucked inside out and then go with that. But it was difficult, tight, a lot of effort. And Ian snickered that they had any resemblance to snowmen.
I justified these fruits of my labor by saying that they were Melting Snowmen. Not certain he bought it, but I changed my plan of attack and decided to stack and sew. You see, the material I used appears quilted, but actually what I did was buy a quilted pillow sham from TJ Maxx, then trace my snowmen shape onto it, and cut them out. Also traced my snowmen shapes onto canvas cloth because canvas in the middle makes anything stand up, or hold form.
After picking through my selection of buttons, I found some for eyes and larger ones to run along each snowman's front to embellish his otherwise drab appearance. Thoughts of a stovetop hat meandered through my head, but I banished it quickly. But a snowman is not a snowman without a nose. Most point in one direction, but some point in the opposite direction. I changed it up depending on how the individual figure struck me. Then there was ribbon tucked and sewn between the layers so that he can be hanged on a tree.
Still, Ian looked upon my snowmen with question in his eyes. Then I explained that my particular gift, if you will, is in the design and construction of items I like to call Quirky Primitive. Yup, that's my style. I'm drawn to sleek, or Scandinavian designs, but usually cannot pull them off in my projects. So I'm left with Quirky Primitive, and I guess that's okay with me.
Please project positive thoughts my way this evening at seven o'clock (EST). I'm playing "We Three Kings" on accordion at my very first ever recital at the Cranberry Thistle in Jonesborough, Tenn. Linda offered me other recital opportunities in the past year ever since I began taking lessons from her, but I declined. I didn't feel confident enough. And c'mon, recitals are for kids, not adults. My mom and Ian are coming. I didn't want to invite anyone else. It's just one song, afterall. And I promised my sister-in-law that I'd bring ye olde accordion over on Christmas day to serenade our family with my songs. She said something like "An accordion serenade on Christmas Day makes the day complete." She's sweet.
I snuck in an extra lesson with Linda this week to fine tune my playing. She told me that I'd picked a challenging song. Of course, this was like weeks after I made that initial decision and it was way too late to second guess myself. She also said that most of her students don't challenge themselves, or push themselves, so seeing me go for it was nice.
Happy holidays to all!
