The news from the Indian Ocean region continues to be heart-breaking. If you can help, please donate.

Well, this year has been interesting for me knitting-wise. I have gone through a few phases. At the beginning of the year, I was rearing to go with the Little Lambs and Giraffe blankets in January. Then I went through weeks where I didn’t knit much at all and other weeks where I knit a lot. I finished a lot of projects at the end of the year, but overall, I don’t feel like I did a lot of knitting compared to years past. In the fall, my knitting time started to pick up because I was teaching, it really motivated me to start knitting again. I think it pushed me to finish the Giraffe blanket, finish one of the socks for Bryan and work on finishing some of the projects that I’ve had laying around for a while.

One of my new year’s goals (I don’t do resolutions) is to finish one of the long-term projects by June. I would like to finish all of them, but obviously from my past track record, I probably won’t finish them by the end of 2005. I want to finish at least one of them before I start a sweater project that I have in mind - Martha. In addition of course to the other things that I plan to knit during the course of 2005. Another one of my goals is to work through the Simple Abundance book this year and work on journaling more. I guess another one that I could add to the list is try to always be working on at least one square of the Great American Aran afghan. I am working on my 7th square right now. I did 6 squares in two months when I first started, so maybe if I make a goal to finish a square every two months I’ll finish in the next two years. :)

Our moving in August will definitely cut into my knitting time in last July and early August. I just have to have a project that I can pack and unpack easily and work on in my free time. If I’m accepted to library grad school, well, then my knitting time might be hampered after school starts.

I wish everyone a happy, safe and peaceful New Year!

First of all, my heart and prayers go out to all of those who have loved ones affected by the tsunami this weekend. It’s absolutely heartbreaking everytime I hear about more people who have lost their lives or are missing. Donate now to help those who are affected by this tragedy.

It was a very quiet Christmas for Bryan and I. It was my first Christmas away from my family and I am still here and happy. I missed being with my family but Bryan and I had a very lovely quiet Christmas together.

Friday evening, Christmas Eve, we went to Unitarian services. It was my first Christmas Eve service, the church I went to as a child didn’t celebrate Christmas the way that Catholics and others do. The Unitarian services were lovely and the music absolutely gorgeous. I had tears in my eyes at times, especially at the beginning. The first song the choir sang a song out in the hallway, which was so amazing, I was a bit overwhelmed by the experience that I teared up and I wasn’t sure if I would make it through without losing it. I managed to keep my composure and enjoyed the rest of the service. It was pretty traditional, there were songs that were traditional carols from other countries that I had never heard before and they just added to the amazingness (if that’s word) of the evening. Bryan’s dad went with us, I don’t think he was quite sure what to expect at the Unitarian church. With the service being pretty traditional, I think he was a bit relieved, even though he told us he was open-minded about it. We came back to our apartment afterwards and watched part of a Christmas Story, a Lee family tradition. We never sit down and watch it all the way through, we usually just catch parts of it during the 24 hours that it’s on tv.

Saturday morning, Bryan and I slept late and then opened gifts. As you can see in my previous post, there isn’t a lot of room under our little tree, so before Christmas the floor near the bookcase was “under the tree” then the coffee table on Christmas morning. It was really fun to open gifts with just the two of us. I gave Bryan two button-down shirts, two sweater vests and a cd-player clock radio. He was completely surprised by the new alarm clock because he’d been talking about it earlier in the week. His previous alarm clock was no longer working and the cats weren’t very reliable alarm clocks last week. He looks very handsome in his new shirts and sweater vests. I hope to make him a sweater vest in the future. He gave me a new nightgown and a very great cat book called I Am the Cat, Don’t Forget That. From my parents we received an All-Clad saucepan, an apple-corer/peeler (which came in very handy when making the apple tart for Christmas dinner), Odd-sized measuring cups and spoons, a shirt and sweater vest for Bryan and two books - a cooking tips book and a words book. Bryan’s dad gave us a very nice amount of money. We were very blessed this year our first Christmas together as a married couple. Christmas afternoon, Bryan’s brother and his dad came over to our house for Christmas dinner. We had tofu pot pie, mashed potatoes, vegetarian gravy and an apple tart, which was very easy to make and very good. The apple peeler that my parents gave us for Christmas made peeling the apples quite easy!
Christmas night, we went to see The Life Aquatic.

Sunday, we were going to go to Unitarian services, but we missed the 10am service. We arrived at 11:15am, when services are normally held, but they were on a special schedule for the day after Christmas. Oops. So we just went home and I worked on our late Christmas gifts for our family. They will be done soon. I will post here what they are after they have arrived at our family. Sunday evening we went to see Sideways.

My hands have been bothering me and I haven’t really been in the mood to knit the last several days. I did finish the hat that matches the Daydream sweater. I have photos of the hat and will post them soon. Now I need to start a scarf for my nephew.

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday weekend. Looking forward to another three-day weekend. :)

I finally finished all of my holiday cards, which include the 10 extras I had to made because I had let 10 people off of the growing card list. It took me about two hours tonight to cut all of the paper and stamp 10 cards, not a big deal.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any colder, it gets colder. Tomorrow is supposed to be the worst. Well, you live in Chicago, you should be used to the cold, well, I am not used to it being this cold this time of year. According to the guy on the news, this is the coldest Christmas we’ve had since 1983. So see, it’s usually not 12 degrees at the end of the December. Noooo, it usually waits until late January or February to get that cold! It was funny today, but not in a ha ha sort of way, I was outside running errands and it didn’t feel as cold as yesterday and it was colder outside today. The wind chill was colder but I must be getting used to the cold because I was able to walk about 50 feet without mittens on my hands and a scarf around my mouth.

Tomorrow will be a good day to stay inside most of the day. We will be finally hanging the lights in our apartment. We’ve had our little tree up for almost three weeks.

(a bit like Charlie Brown’s tree after they’ve decorated it) (And yes, those are Barbie ornaments in the tree and on the table.) But we haven’t gotten around to putting the lights around the sliding glass doors. We’re having Christmas dinner at our house so I would like the place to look a bit more festive. It’s my first Christmas away from my family (we did Thanksgiving with my family this year) and it’s going to be different. It’s all part of getting married, although I am missing a bit of the Christmas feeling that I have when I am at my parents’ house at this time of year. My mom always has the house so beautifully decorated.

We are attending Christmas services at the Unitarian Church tomorrow night. Growing up our church never had Christmas services, unless Christmas was on a Sunday. And the Unitarian Church celebrates a lot of things in a very unique way, which I love, so it will be a special Christmas for Bryan and I, our first Christmas as a married couple. Just a bit of an aside, the first time we attended the Unitarian Church was Mother’s Day and they had a flower ceremony that was so lovely. Then this past Sunday were Solstice celebrations, it was really cool. I feel like such a spiritual person now, considering that I felt very unspiritual for years.

Tonight was an evening of writing the holiday card letter and me knitting about 10 rows on the baby hat. I have another 3 cm’s before I start decreasing for the top of the hat. I could barely finish the 10th row because my hands were getting so stiff. I think it’s partly the cold and my addressing envelopes, cutting paper and rubber stamping all afternoon.

Here is the finished Daydream sweater. I gave it to my niece, Paige.

Detail of lacework around bottom of sweater.

Update on the Giraffe blanket. All four giraffes now have spots. All four have horns. One has legs.
Before spots.

With spots, horns and legs.

Happy holidays to all! Stay warm. And let’s hope for a very peaceful new year! I will write more soon. If I don’t write before December 25, for those that celebrate Christmas, have a Merry Christmas. I have to write later something interesting that I read in the Simple Abundance book that I’m reading. It’s about some of our Christmas traditions.

I haven’t been doing a lot of knitting in the last two days. My hands and arms have been bothering me. I was able to knit about 5 rows yesterday during lunch on the baby hat but that was all that I could do for the entire day. It’s really bugging me that my hands and arms are sore, but I need to take care of myself. I don’t want to go back to the doctor and have to go through all of the occupational therapy that I went through this summer for my tendonitis in my elbow. Let’s hope it doesn’t escalate to that point.

It’s cold outside!! It was a lovely 13 (Fahrenheit) degrees outside yesterday! Not exactly weather where you want to be outside. Bryan and I decided to stay inside all day. It was a great day to stay inside and just be. Bryan worked on some collages for cards and I worked on my holiday cards. We also watched Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind for the fifth time. We were going to watch 21 Grams, there was a preview for Eternal Sunshine and Bryan said, “Let’s watch that instead.” I think we both were in more of an Eternal Sunshine mood than a 21 Grams mood. We needed a good laugh. :D

Saturday, we had another leisurely day. We went Bryan’s dad’s house to see his sister Alison, her husband Curt and their new daughter Paige. I gave Alison the Daydream sweater. I added buttons and a ribbon through the waist on Saturday morning. I have photos to post soon.

Today, at lunch, I managed to get about 6 rows of the hat to match the Daydream sweater worked. I still have about 3 1/2″ (9 cm) to do before the knitting is finished. I was hoping that I would have it finished in time to give it to Alison with the sweater, but I obviously didn’t leave myself enough time. It’s my priority at the moment.

On the Giraffe blanket, all of the giraffes now have spots! One of them has two legs and now the other three need legs. It took me about 1/2 an hour to sew on one leg, so it’s a project that will take a few nights to finish. I’m giving myself a deadline of January 5, since I want to get the baby hat finished soon.

In planning, I have a scarf for my nephew to do. I’m going to use some left over yarn that I have from a class and hopefully, get a scarf to him before it gets any colder. It’s going to be in Plymouth’s Encore Chunky, so it should go quickly. If I have enough yarn, I’ll make him a matching hat.

Stay warm everyone!

Not a lot of knitting has been done in the last few days. I can’t even tell you what I’ve done the last two nights at home. Ah, now it’s coming back to me. Tuesday night, I kitchener stitched the toe of Bryan’s sock together. I then pulled out the Petula sweater and finished the first side. Then I decided to pick up the stitches along the waist of the Petula sweater, what a pain - 105 stitches. Of course, as soon as I finished picking them up, I realized that I only needed to pick up 97. :( Oh well, I fix it later. I also realized why it’s taken me so long to pick the sweater up again. I hated working with the Rowan Linen Drape on Bryspun needles. The points on the Bryspun needles are too blunt for that yarn, which is made up of about 50 little threads spun together. So I decided the front will be knit using Addi Turbos. I don’t think there will be that much of a difference and if there is well, it can’t be anything that a little blocking won’t help.

Last night, I had a headache and Bryan and I had a bit of a problem with our new baking stone. After dinner, I wanted to do something besides just lay on the couch, so I duplicated stitched spots on another giraffe on the Giraffe blanket. I have one more giraffe who needs spots. I also need to attach legs to all four giraffes and they all need eyes. I’m nearly completion, but I think attaching the legs will be the hardest part. They are all knit flat and need a back seam before they can be sewn to the blanket. I had no idea that the finishing would take so long, I’ve put in about 30 hours in finishing but it will be so worth it when it’s done!

I don’t know why but it feels like Friday. Everyone around work seems to think so too, probably because a lot of people are off tomorrow, wish I was.

I have to teach tonight, so I must run. Happy knitting!

When I was home at lunch I finished the first sock of the pair that I’m making for Bryan. I have to do the kitchner stitch across the toe, but I can do that tonight. I didn’t realize how close I was to being done with the toe decreases until I counted my stitches.

I hardly did any knitting last night, I mainly worked on my project pages. I now have a new gallery page that was mostly working last night but seems to be a bit on the fritz today, at least it was a few hours ago. The headings are still giving me problems on the pages, so I’m going to try to tweak them again later in the week. On a few of the pages, I still need to upload the photos. So I’m slowly updating the knitting pages. I will update more of my site as the weeks go on, probably even more will get done during the days I’m off for the holidays. Maybe. :) While I was waiting for things to load last night, I was able to get a bit of knitting done. I got about an inch of the baby hat that matches the Daydream sweater.

On the real life front, my application to library school is IN THE MAIL!! It went into the mail yesterday. Now I can only wait to see if I get accepted. I will be applying for scholarships and assistanceships while I wait. Bryan is in the process of applying for the scholarships and assistanceships. We’ve decided we’re moving in August. If all goes well, we’ll both be in school starting in August! Bryan has already been accepted to the library program at U of Illinois.

I can’t believe it’s only 11 days till Christmas. Usually, I’m in a holiday mood and so excited about the holiday. This year I feel much different, it’s like the holiday has just snuck up on me. Some of it might have to do with the fact that we’re staying here for Christmas. It’s my first Christmas away from my family, which will be very weird for me. I’m not sure how Christmas will go this year, as far as schedule, but I do know that we are having Christmas dinner at our apartment.