It's the most wonderful time.......

.....of the year!!!

Yeah, I have been singing that all day 'cause I've been putting up Christmas decorations! Yes, I am one of those. I LOVE me some Christmas! I love the music, the decorations, seeing family, and all of the goodwill toward men going on. Maybe it's me, but everyone tends to seem just a bit nicer this time of year. And I like it!

It's always nice pulling out the decorations. For me, I think alot stems from the fact that I am a BIG day-after-Christmas shopper. I usually horde in on the Christmas stuff and then stow it away for next year. So when I pull out the decorations, it's like early Christmas when I see what I got the year before. It has dropped off a bit, since I don't have a big tree (I had one in my old apartment - this one....well....there's barely room for yarn, folks), but I still go to Dillards and look for new pieces for my Nativity. Several years ago, my grandmother got her children a "starter" Fontanini nativity (Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus). Over the years, they got other pieces, like angels, Wise men, and livestock. The Christmas before I went to grad school, I found a set at the after-Christmas sale and began to collect different pieces. I have Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, The Wise Men, Glorious Angel, and livestock. Which livestock you ask?

Sheep, of course!

Did everyone make it?

Are we all here? Did we survive the holiday? From what I see, it seems everyone had a pretty good Thanksgiving. Hopefully, we have gone through most of the leftovers. For those of you who still have pounds of it left, I am happy to take it off your hands. For me, there is no such thing as too much leftover holiday food.

A few years ago, I did Thanksgiving in my apartment for me, my parents, my bother, and my paternal grandparents (that's 6 people). My parents had just moved to Oklahoma and DFW was about half-way between their house and my grandparent's. It was a little snug in the apartment, but it went quite smoothly. Let me add a sidenote here: Every other Thankgiving I have attended (that I can remember) has been a collaborative effort amongst many kitchens, some having double-ovens, which I highly recommend. Mine was done with a total of one oven, one stove, and one creatively used microwave. To pull this off requires much preparation and timing.

Yes, I got up at 4am to put the turkey on....and then promptly went back to bed. You don't really need to watch a turkey cook, right? Plus, I have a VERY sensitive/good smoke detector, so we were all good. Dishes were prepared in accordance with the available cooking medium, i.e. if you steam green beans, it leaves the oven free for the stuffing. They are better steamed anyways (which is healthier) and then tossed with bacon (which is not).

One of the most notable things I learned that Thanksgiving is something I wish to share, so no one else makes this mistake. When cooking a turkey, it makes the turkey taste REALLY good if you half a lemon and stick it in the turkey. Super tasty!!! However, if you make gravy from the drippings of said turkey, it tastes like lemon-rind gravy. Very much NOT tasty.

On the knitting front, yes, I got pictures taken this weekend, but am still ransoming them from my parents. In due time, in due time.....

I also have a new "dealer", as my dad calls him. You see, I have this uncle, who, you know, happens to be in the wool biz. No lie.....We have chatted and when my aunt learned I was spinning, she sent me some "stuff" she had in her closet. This was some lovely merino (we think) roving that she had LYING AROUND!!! And now, my uncle has begun to bring me a pound or two when ever we meet up. It tends to go something like this:

Hotel lobby morning after cousin's wedding
Me: Morning!
Uncle: Hey Jen....um, would you mind coming by the room later. I have some stuff for you.
Me: Really? What kind of stuff?
Uncle: (eyes shift nervously at my dad) You know, just some stuff I had around.
Me: Oh, *wink wink* Sure! I'll come by later.
Dad: God, it's like he's your dealer.

I love my family.

Turkey, turkey, turkey......

I hope everyone's Turkey Day is going well so far. Right now, it's 10am and I still ain't dressed!! I'm in the queue though....

It will be interesting for me this year cause this is the first year that I have two dinners on the same day. Ugh....

I wish everyone a very happy Turkey Day and no one burn their house down frying a turkey......hmm.....fried turkey........

Did you miss me?

Well.....did you? Yeah, I took a bit of a hiatus from the blog for a bit, but I am determined to be back to normal, posting more. I just never thought about how hard it is to have a knitting blog, with no immediate camera access. Not to worry, though....over Thanksgiving, I plan to steal/borrow my parent's camera and take some shots. But in the meantime, I steal from other folks!!

One of the big knitting events that happened over the past month is that I got to go Kid-N-Ewe with some of my Chicks.

Thanks to Liz for allowing me to steal the pic!

That's me with my fellow Chicks, but by the end of the day we were known as Sheeple. The sheep ears are the official uniform for our SnB, but this was my first outing in them. We all had a great time and got to meet several Ravelers (...Raveleriers........I dunno....). I always find it cool to meet people in real life whom you only "know" on the internet.

Allright, I gotta say. This was my first big fiber festival. Ya'll there was so much fibery goodness!!! Even as I say that, words are not enough.

Brooks Farm goodness.......aka yarn pron exhibit

We were there an hour and Tasha had to sit me down with a Frito Pie so that I could come down from my "yarn high". Several of us, me included, believe we would never last at Rhinebeck. I think it would put me in a yarn coma. Talk about sensory overload!

I did get a bit of fiber (no yarn....fiber gets you more bang for you buck!) and plan on taking pictures this weekend, so I will have some fiber pron next week.

Sidenote: For the Non-fiber folk, I didn't make a typo above. I meant to type pron. Many fiber folks talk about it normally, in terms of really nice yarn/fiber/needles, etc. However, if you type it correctly on a blog, you get nasty spam. Therefore, we use pron. Thus endth the lesson.

I also had another first over the past few weeks. My mom, who is not a knitter or any other fibery person (aka a Muggle) went into a yarn shop, all by herself, and bought yarn! And came out with something appropriate to what she wanted! I think I finally convinced her that if you go into a yarn shop and tell them what you (or what you want your daughter) to make, they WILL be helpful and get you what you require. I have been to this shop only once and loved it and I am grateful that they were so nice and accommodating to my mother. If you are ever in Tulsa, OK, please take a stop by Loops on Utica Square.

And last, but not least, a big congratulations to my cousin and his new wife who got married this weekend. I was the "House Party", which meant I got to stand over the picture they were using as a guest book. Folks signed the mat surrounding the picture. Check me out at my post!Yep....my ride was going about 2 hours early, so....I brought a sock. Hey.....I didn't knit during the wedding, I promise! Not during the reception either, cause, well, let's just say knitting under the influence is ill advised, but knitting on a Potmatomus sock while under the influence is just asking for it.

They are currently in Hawaii, lounging by the ocean, drinking umbrella drinks....shopping for yarn for his cousin....

Decisions, decisions......

Alright, so.....(man, I start alot of sentences that way....) so I need help with a decision. I have a good sweaters worth of a nice, dark-ish brown Plymouth Encore Worsted (#1444). My original plan, many moons ago, was to do an adult Tomten for me. I got the Encore 'cause I wanted it to be a general, multi-purpose, hard-wearing cardi of some kind. I have since grown out of doing the Tomten, mainly 'cause doing that much garter stitch would probably kill me.

As any good knitter on Ravelry, I took a run through the ol' queue to see what kind of matching I got. Here's what I came up with:

- Dollar and a Half Cardi (I would symmetrize this, probably with the cable side)
- Cardi for Arwen
- Central Park Hoodie
- Mr. Greenjeans

What is everyone's opinion? I won't tell you my leanings right now, 'cause they are changing, depending on the level of my wine glass.....but I digress..... :-P My hesitation is that I am worried that these have design elements that I am afraid might get lost in how dark the yarn is. But then I look at the $1.50 cardi, and it helps to slightly alleviate that, but still....

I have decided that this is what I am casting on once I get my holiday knitting done. However, this year, none of it is for my Christmas presents. I have a baby blanket (baby due beginning of Dec.), Christmas stocking for future cousin-in-law of my cousin (to be done by mid-Nov. for said cousin's wedding) and 6 HP scarf bookmarks (commissioned by a co-worker).

The stocking is coming along - I am in the home stretch of the intarsia portion, so once that's done I will probably finish it quickly. I haven't touched the blanket in a few weeks, but we will see what happens. I just got asked for the book marks, so they aren't even started yet.

BTW, everyone needs to check out Jen's bag in the IK Winter '07. How freakin' awesome is that?!? Must....have.....it......

Brrr......

There is apparently a saying. Texas has the largest state fair in the US and it's quite a thing if you live the the DFW area. Apparently, once the fair closes, that is the time of year when it gets cold and stays cold. I don't remember about previous years, but let's just say this. The fair closed for the year yesterday, when it was a nice 80 degrees. Today, it was 50 degrees. Of course, all I was thinking was.....

Man, I need to knit a hat.....and maybe some fingerless gloves......

It would be nice if it stayed this way for a while. This summer in Texas has been VERY mild, maybe only a handful of over 100 degree days. That's saying something since I come from West Texas where we have six WEEKS of 100 degrees days.

But I am certainly jealous of some of ya'll who get these pretty color changing trees. We don't really get that....ours is more like the stuff that got burned up over the summer falls off. It's all very brown....

If you need to check out some pretty color changing, I hear Leigh's got some of that.....and some very tangled yarn.....

Random Post

Alright, so here are some of my random thoughts for the past few days:

But first, pardon me while I conduct some personal business:

HALEY!!! I don't have your email anymore. Please email me @ yarnknita@yahoo.com. Plus, your old, psycho, Republican boss is having a book signing at my B&N. Just FYI.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program.

1. When you get large amounts of cash at the bank, don't get $100 bills - get $20s. The bank has them - take them. And, if you are forced to take the $100 bills, PLEASE do not go into a store and buy a $0.25 newspaper with it. It really pisses off the cashier.

2. When you go to check out at a store, please don't be on your cell phone....it's rude.

Can we tell someone had an annoying day at work, which is made even worse by the fact that she had to miss her SnB? Moving on....

3. I got my replacement Sox Sticks....3 of them actually...in the ROSEWOOD, even though I have blondewood. Trust me, I don't care. Anyone have any idea if the rosewood ones are stronger? They sure are prettier......

4. Leigh is a HUGE enabler.....beware......

And here is today's poll. Saturday we are having a "chili cookoff" potluck and this was brought up:

Beans or no beans

I am a firm believer in that beans have NO PLACE in chili.....unless you REALLY need to stretch the chili, but then I think it becomes something else entirely. Of course, I am probably a little wierd (HA.....little....he he he) in that I can not eat chili plain, in a bowl. I have to have it Frito pie-style (chili on top of Frito chips, for you Yankees). I think it is just that is how we always had it growing up and I have never really been able to eat it plain.

Again?

How is it that I post more when I don't have a camera? Yeah, I dunno either.

It's a shame it's not working too because I got my KnitFlix swap package last night. Our knitting group did a secret swap centered around a movie. I had quite a haul from Dawn. I got a Glow-Batt from Merlin the Cat's etsy shop (it freakin' glows in the dark!), a Sock Monkey nightshirt (I have a SERIOUS pj fetish), a lovely hand-beaded orifice hook for my spinning wheel, a set of dangle-free stitch markers, a yummy candy and soda stash, and one of my favorite movies on DVD - Galaxy Quest. Gotta love it. Thank you Dawn!

As an aside, I just wanna put something out there. Okay, I know Oprah is big and all....or at least I thought I did. I never really quite grasped the large expanse of her influence until I started working at B&N. Any book on her show instantly goes on the Best Seller list. Monday she had on Jessica Seinfeld, wife of Jerry Seinfeld, author of the new cookbook Deceptively Delicious. The book went on sale Tuesday. We had 30 copies. We sold out in 3 hours. When I went to work today, B&N in it's entirety was out, as in they are going to have to print more. This is just crazy....not good or bad, just crazy.

So, here is today's question: Hardback or Paperback?

If I have a choice, I like paperback, but I am also not one to wait for certain books. Therefore, my collection of my favorite books are a mixture of both.

Random, I know.

Create-a-meme

I think that I have discovered where memes are invented. They are written by people who are either desperate for blog fodder or who have a non-functioning camera. I therefore bring you the "Either or" Meme.

There are lots of instances where people can be separated into two categories. These are not ment to be exclusive by any means, but are just meant to be a generality. I am not really tagging anyone, but feel free to steal this if you feel the need for blog fodder.

Paper or plastic? Paper

Mac or PC? PC all the way baby

Straight or circular? Circular

Toe-up or Top-down? Top-down

Vogue or Interweave? Interweave

Coke or Pepsi? Coke

Dogs or Cats? Dogs

Pen or Pencil? Pen

Hamburger or Hotdog? Hamburger

Mayo or mustard? Mayo

Shaken or stirred? Stirred

Waffles or pancakes? Pancakes

Bacon or sausage? Sausage

Now, go forth and fodder your own blog!

Picture-less....

Alrighty, so I have been putting off blogging so that I could try to get some pictures, but that entails getting my camera to cooperate. It really needs a new battery and I haven't quite gotten around to looking for one yet. Cameras pretty old, as digital cameras go. Kinda like how people balk when I say my good ol' computer runs on Windows 2000. All I say is that it works about 10,000 times better than my new one that runs on Vista. So, just because I don't have pictures, doesn't mean we can't have some fun still, right??

So I had my first knitting angina the other day. I was knitting on my sock on my lovely new Blondewood Sock Stix.....

Who says we can't have quality pictures!

Yeah, so I know that I am a tight knitter, but still. Luckily, I talked with Lantern Moon and the are lovingly sending me a replacement. Luckily, my sock I am knitting is only on three needles, so there isn't any lull in the knitting.

Last weekend was the DFW Knit out and we all had a blast! Regina and I did a spinning demonstration and had some fun. I won me a lovely bag 'o Plymouth Dreambaby DK which will end up as a few Hats for Alex. The best part....well, one of the best, it was all good.....was that we went out for dinner and drinks and Mi Cocina and the folks next to us were having an interesting "love connection." Regina did a good recap here. Gotta love it.....