Zippa-di-do-dah, the bobble cardigan is blocked!
Now, hours of crochet "fun" awaits:
This edging is getting rather tedious! To add some excitement, I am pushing to finish before we ring in 2007. Can I get one more FO in this year? Oh, the suspense!

Oh yeah, and it's really really cold here right now:Off to enjoy the three-day weekend!

I had way too much fun trying to come up with crazy tree photos...


Happy Holidays to all and best wishes for a peaceful New Year!

The only handmade Christmas present I made this year:This is obviously from one of those felt ornament kits. I know they're a bit ticky-tacky but my friend loves Winnie the Pooh so I think they'll go over OK. I guess she can always hang them on the back of the tree!

I got tagged by Jeanne on the infamous "6 weird things about me" thing. Here's my list:

1. Although I can converse with others and although I do have something of a social life, I’m truly an extreme introvert. I just need A LOT of time to myself and I tend to feel drained after social events.

2. My strangest phobia is probably my fear of water. When I say this, people always hold a glass of water up and are like, “oooh, does this scare you?” But it’s fear of large bodies of water. I’ve had minor panic attacks from swimming in lakes and I absolutely refuse to go in the ocean unless it’s very, very calm. I think this started when I was about 5 and I went to a day camp that had an indoor pool (this was when we lived in the city), which I was terrified of. I would try begging off, playing sick, anything to keep me from having to swim but they would always make me go in anyway! Mean camp counselors! By the time I was 8 or 9 I was still with the guppy group (or the “rocks” as my father called them), and I don’t think I learned to dive until I was about 13. On a positive note, I’ve worked on this problem in more recent years and I’m much less afraid of water than I once was.

3. I embarrassed to admit that when I’m alone in the car, I will totally sing along with cheesy modern country songs. Even if they’re really bad (except for the ass-kicking, “I’m so patriotic” songs. I hate those). My indie credibility just went right down the drain.

4. When I was a kid, I hated meat and LOVED vegetables. I distinctly remember a time or two when my parent had to wheedle me into eating “just a few more pieces of meat” before I could leave the table. The spinach and peas would be long gone. This could explain why I eat vegetarian now.

5. I know all the words (in French) to “La Marseilleise” and I frequently sing it in a loud obnoxious voice. I think I need to start learning all of “O Canada” in French so I can add to my repertoire. Also, I know all the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” which is supposedly a weird thing even for citizen of the US.

6. I am obsessed with old (or even not so old), decrepit buildings. Especially abandoned ones. I find it fascinating that buildings get abandoned, and I think there is just a certain feeling to decrepit buildings…like the place has a soul or something. If I can get inside and it’s not too dangerous, I will stand there and absorb that feeling. The best is when there is still detritus from the people who lived/worked there, there's something so banal about that stuff and yet full of a deeper essence. Apparently this fascination is not completely weird!

Now I'm supposed to tag six other people for this, but I'm pretty sure most of my blog buddies have already done it! So, if you are reading this and want to do it on your blog, go for it.

I'm sure you're all getting sick of photos of the lake, but I thought this one was spectacular:

It's amazing how every day this lake has a different mood, color, etc. I think I have about 8 million more photos of the lake from this viewpoint. Maybe I should do a photo mosaic someday of all of them, that would look really cool.

I'll be back before Christmas with some photos of my tree, just didn't have the room today.

Just so you know that I do still knit, here is a photo of an almost-finished sleeve (which I actually finished shortly thereafter):
And a close-up of the groovy honeycomb pattern at the cuffs:Just cast on for the second sleeve. This sweater is rapidly coming to a finish...well, it will until I get to all the crocheted edgings, anyway. I have a feeling things will abruptly slow down at that point.

Otherwise I spent part of today busting my butt to clean the apartment...but only got about two-thirds done. I tend to get distracted looking at things (photo albums, pattern books, magazines, etc.) which makes it hard to finish. I also went to the store to pick up supplies for making Christmas cookies and happened to get the last jar of maraschino cherries in town. Phew, crisis averted!

Not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. At least I am taking Friday off AND I get to skip the cheesy department holiday party this Wednesday due to a well-timed vet appointment, heh heh. So not all is bad!

My Life as a Christmas Tree Saleswoman

Got back late Sunday night after launching my new but short-lived career in Christmas tree sales. A friend of ours owns a big tree farm up here, and while he sells most of his trees wholesale, he does go down to Massachusetts every year to run his own tree stand. G and I got roped into working for him the last two weekends. G also worked for him back in November when they were harvesting the trees. Here is one of the huge tree piles at the stand:
He brought 800 trees down from Maine and by the end of this past weekend he had less then 200 left! And he completely ran out of wreaths. I found it interesting how the first weekend we worked (Dec 2-3) was filled with all those crazy Christmas lovers who buy like 3 trees and 10 wreaths, and the second weekend was the ahem...normal people who just buy 1 tree. Market research in action!

I actually didn't really have to sell anything. My job was to run the cash register out of a camper-trailer, which I was very happy about because I could knit between customers! As a result, I am almost halfway done the first sleeve of the cardigan...pictures in my next post. Another fun benefit was getting a free tree which is in our living room and almost completely decorated...hopefully I can get some photos of that too.

Here is the tree stand at night; you can just see the glowing inflatable snowman looming over the place (he has a red hat):We had a great time, although I was totally tired by the long traveling required.

And oh yeah, we got our new matress set yesterday and can I say I haven't slept as well as I did last night in forever. We had to pick it up and bring it into the house ourselves due to our "outlying location", but it was all worth it. The only problem is that our existing bedframe was obviously designed for the thinner mattresses of yore and this new one (which is only a "plush" top, not even a full-on pillow top) completely swallows our headboard and foot board. I think I need a stepstool to get into bed!

Brrrr....

I've had a wildly busy week here, hence the lack of posts. Oh wait...every week there is a lack of posts, ha ha. Anyway, I spent this week running to appointments, work meetings, shopping (for a new mattress, yay!), doing some Xmas decorating, etc, etc, and I'm beat. I'd say thank goodness for the weekend, but it's going to be just as bad (more on that next post).

Winter has rapidly descended on my little corner of the world. First, some freezing cold temps:Then, a pretty snowfall (I think we've only had about 4 or 5 inches total, but it's blowing around and drifting due to very high winds today):The lake is starting to freeze over. If these temps keep up, and there is every indication that they will, the lake should be hard frozen within a week. I did have time to do some knitting amidst all the busy-ness and now have both cardigan fronts completed. I ended up frogging maybe two-thirds to three-quarters of that one I showed in the last post, but they are really quite speedy to knit up. It only took me a week to re-knit what I had ripped. Well, that's speedy for me anyway, considering I only knit maybe an hour or two a night. This weekend I should be able to start the first sleeve; we'll see how far I can get.

Hope you all have a great weekend!