And the title of most creative goes to. . .. .

Mari!!

Last night was the Yarn for Breakfast Christmas party. It was a particularly fun time, and part of the party was a gift exchange. We did a bit of a mixed up Pollyanna exchange, where people could steal gifts, but no one opened the gifts until the end - so you were stealing based on what you THOUGHT might be in the package. I started out with a package I knew had malabrigo in it (how could I resist!) but I didn't keep my mouth quiet about there being malabrigo in the package, so it in turn got stolen from me! BUT, the package I then got to keep ended up for sure, the most creative gift. The super prettily wrapped (but not photographed) package contained a box of cookies and a box of yarn. Cookies and yarn would be yummy enough, right, but she got CUSTOM DESIGNED COOKIES that MATCHED the yarn!



Like, matched exactly!
Yes, this photo contains only one cookie, but it's not because I ate the other two cookies, I shared them with the two other people who had the package before me! The yarn is Cascade 220 Quatro and is a gorgeous blue-green. I haven't opened the cookie to eat it yet, but Mari sampled one before she bought the cookies and assures me they are delicious.

Super cute, right?

Copper, it is!

Goodness the days get away from you at the Holiday's, don't they?? Last I knew I was pot shopping, now here I am 16 days from Christmas and very little knitting progress has been made. Yikes!!

So most excitingly, I ended up with the copper pots. Here are an array of photos of me opening them. Can I just say how cool the friggin' box is? It's real wood, with the logo burnished on it.

This weekend was Christmas decorating time. I adore the Holidays and I love decorating. My least favorite part is putting the lights on the tree, though, so Jake did it this year. In like 15 minutes. . . . it takes me like 2 hours. . . .I was only slightly bitter that I clearly have been doing something wrong!! I haven't decorated the mantle yet, hopefully one day this week. I've also decided to try my hand at making my own wreath. We have holly trees in the backyard. So I bought some wire wreath frames and my plan is to snip branches and Voila! have my own wreaths. My pine wreaths died in like 3 days last year, so I need something more hearty! The trick will be in seeing if I can make two that are close enough to identical that they won't look ridiculous hanging on the double doors. The most bizarre thing happened while decorating, though. It was like a scene straight out of the birds. There were, without exaggeration HUNDREDS of black birds. These pictures really don't convey it, but it was unreal. They would fly from lawns to roofs to trees and back down to the lawn. It sounded like a small plane taking off when they all began to fly together. There were so many you could still hear the squawking even when they had flown away where you couldn't see them. They stayed near our house for a good 10 minutes and Jake & I stood on the porch and just watched in awe. Thankfully, unlike the movie, there were no attacks by the birds themselves nor by their 'byproducts' :) (If you're interested, you can view the individual pictures here.)

Knitting wise, I've made woefully little progress. The only thing I've worked on is mom's purse. I've got about 4 inches completed. I still have to block Anna's Endpapers and finish off the ribbing on Tricia's. I also have to get back into the swing on Deb's socks, but since I have to sort through the yarn to find the right stripe to start with, I've been avoiding it!

Hope you all are progressing as desired on Christmas Knitting AND shopping :)