Happy Holidays

Merry Christmas Everyone!

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I like bags, but paper is cheaper.

2. Real tree tificial? We used to always get a real tree, but went fake this year, since, no joke, every year, the tree would fall over. or ar I could not handle anymore broken ornaments and ripped up palms from the nasty needles!

3. When do you put up the tree? A couple of weeks before Christmas

4. When do you take the tree down? Right after Christmas

5. Do you like eggnog? yum

6. Favorite gift received as a child? A book, "Are you there God, it's me Margaret". I read it in like 3 hours on Christmas day.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? No, but I want one.

8. Hardest person to buy for? My husband.

9. Easiest person to buy for? My little girls.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Don't remember specifics, but my mother-in-law is queen of the regifters and I'm sure it came from her.

11. Mail or email Christmas cards? I'm totally guilty of not sending Christmas cards!

12 . Favorite Christmas movie? A Christmas Story.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Like two weeks before

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Green bean casserole. LOVE it.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? I like clear, and since I bought the fake tree this year, I bought one with clear lights. My husband likes colored lights, big fat colored bulbs and tinsel.

17. Favorite Christmas song? I love them all. The Little Drummer Boy always makes me cry.

18. Travel for Christmas or stay home? We travel, but not far, and we are always home on Christmas morning.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, but do you recall, the most famous reindeer of all? Rudolph!

20. Angel on the treetop or star? My sister's angel. She passed away about six years ago. We used to have a star, but now the angel is always there.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning!

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? Lines at the stores, but then again, this year, everyone has been nice and friendly so it wasn't so bad.

23. What I love most about Christmas? Being with my whole family.

24. What's your favorite Christmas Memory? My husband cutting down our first Christmas tree from the lot next door to the 7-11 where he worked in East Lansing, with a kitchen knife!

25. Believe or Not? I believe. In my house, if you say you don't believe, you get no presents!

No, I'm not done - so there!

The beginnings of the argyle scarf, as photographed by my 9 year old. There is much more now, and the other side is cuter. I thought I told her to photograph both sides, but on my camera, there are 3 pictures of this side of the scarf and about 20 pictures of her hamming it up for the camera. Oh, and no pictures of the monkeys, which I swear I told her to take too!

I heart this scarf. Love it. I love the colors, especially the black background side, I love the way it feels all smooshy because of the double knitting. I love the pattern, but I wish I could memorize it instead of having to look at the pattern all the time. I think it will turn out really cool.

I have hardly any Christmas shopping done. I keep trying to do it and getting vetoed by the DH. He is a Christmas procrastinator. Seriously, it is the only time of the year the man procrastinates and it drives me crazy! I want to be done! I hate when people tell me they are all done with their shopping, they just have to wrap a few presents! We are so the people who are fighting on Christmas Eve about who is going to stay up and wrap the gifts because we are both exhausted. I really hate when someone asks me if I am done. It's so embarrassing to say, "uh, I've just barely started". Oh well.

More pictures tomorrow or whenever I get back here! Happy Holidays!

yarnaholic

The meez thing

Yoo hoo? Anyone out there? Why is my meez girly all cut off on one side? How do I fix her? Can I make her smaller? Help!

As soon as I find my camera I will post pictures of my finished monkeys (cute, if I do say so myself), my newly started socks from Favorite Sock (can't remember the pattern name) out of the Dream in Color Smooshy yarn and the really cute argyle scarf from Son of a Stitch n' Bitch.

I am only knitting stuff for me for Christmas this year! I usually knit stuff for my 21 year old niece but her facial expression on Christmas day is less than the pure unadulterated joy that I would like to see, so I'm going commercial this year with her. No one else is interested in knit stuff. I even made my mom a pair of fetchings last year and I don't think she cared. I've never seen her wear them. I, on the other hand, wear my hand knit socks all the time. And my daughters and I share all of the scarves I've knitted and not given away, so. . .

Off to find the (misplaced-by-one-of-my-children-of-whom-none-will-take-responsibility) camera. Wish me luck!

This is my pretty new "Lipstick Lava" Dream in Color Smooshy sock yarn. I promised myself I wouldn't start using it until I've at least finished my monkey socks. One is finished, the other one I've started and had to rip back three times this weekend! I must have bad sock mojo, so I've put it aside until next week. I've been working on my here and there cables scarf.

I ran into a problem with that though, because I checked Scarf Style out from the library and memorized the pattern. But that was like over a month ago. I picked the scarf up to knit on it today and just stared at it. And stared. Then tried to count stitches. But couldn't. Then stared some more. I could not remember where to cable! But I just guessed and I think I guessed right, because it really looks the same to me as the rest of the scarf. I hope so.

My husband's job in Alpena really looks like a go. He's sure he wants it career wise, he's just not sure about moving our family. I'm ready to go, my daughters are ready to go and my son seems to be getting used to the idea. There are just so many details to be worked out. That's intimidating. Well, I'm going to embrace avoidance for now and go knit my scarf, until 8:00 of course because it IS Amazing Race night!

Pigs and Knitting - Passions

You know the little hat I started knitting I think it was on Tuesday? Well here it is. On Thursday. (modeled by one of my pigs . . . more on that to follow). I knit this thing like a fiend. Knitting round and round and round in front of the tv while watching House one nights and America's Next Top Model the next. (I think I mentioned my little addiction to reality TV in my blog description) This was perfect tv knitting. The snowflakes took a little more thought, so I didn't watch tv while I did those. I love this hat. It only took one skein of yarn and I bought two, so I am going to make some little booties to go with!

My pigs? Well, I have sort of a collection of pig lawn ornaments. It started about six years ago. In the small city in which we live, my husband was a baseball coach. If you are thinking about coaching? Think hard. It's a noble thing, but you better have some pretty thick skin, because you are NOT going to make every parent happy. Anyway. The pigs. Yeah.

Someone who didn't like the way my husband was doing things sent us an anonymous letter through the mail complaining about his coaching methods. (My husband was and is an awesome coach by the way, he just can't coach our kids -- I think the problem is he's too hard on them).

As an aside the anonymous coward decided to add that they thought I should clean the house more because we lived like pigs. Here let me see if I can recall the exact words "Tracy, clean your house you live like pigs!" Oh yes, and if you are astute you will notice that this anonymous creep must be someone who has been in MY HOUSE! I have never been more hurt by something in my life. I still don't know who did it. I wonder everytime I look at certain people in this community.

My friends stood by me and we turned it into a little joke, which I then took to an extreme by buying every pig lawn ornament (for the lawn so whatever moron wrote the letter could see) I could find. I have the green pig above, who had a twin who suffered an unfortunate mishap with my sons football game. I have a ceramic beige flying pig. I have a country girl pig holding a tulip on a stake, a cute little round pink pig on a stake and my personal favorite and the first pig (or pigs) to join the collection, a mama pig with three babies stacked one on top of the other on top of her. Like me, and my three babies. Living in our little pig house, which might be a little messy but which allows me lots of time to spend with said pigs, oh and a little time to knit too.

update

Hubby told me to plunge the toilet a gazillion times and then go check the basement again . . . . it was like MAGIC! The water is all gone! It's still damp, and he says we probably need to get snaked, but at least I know the house won't be completely underwater by the time he gets home! Yeah!!!!!

OMG!!!!!!

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! My husband is gone for two days and I've destroyed the basement. Well, not me so much as whatever is stuck in the freakin' drain and making sewage come up into the basement from the drain under the dryer! And not just sewage, water, and a lot of it, along with the sewage!!!!!! I am so one of those people that got married right out of college and has not a clue how to take care of this problem herself.

I noticed it a couple of days ago, while doing laundry. The floor was just damp. I mentioned it to my husband over the phone who said no biggie, just don't do anymore laundry and he would fix it when he got home. Well, I didn't do anymore laundry. I didn't even go into the basement - until today. Now there are about two inches of water and gack all up under the dryer!!!!!! My house smells like mildew when you walk in. Thank GOD my husband will be back tonight, but I still feel bad that he has to walk into this ISSUE, because I fear that that is what it will turn into, an ISSUE (and all in caps like that too!)

I plan to ignore the basement for the rest of the evening. But it keeps popping into my head and I want to cry! Maybe I need to knit. Yeah, that's it. The knitting will magically make all that . . . . .stuff - in the basement disappear!

Unintended Stash Enhancement

I went to the LYS today to make this hat











but with these colors. My LYS didn't have
Lamb's Pride Bulky in black so instead of just
going on home and finishing my WIP (a really pretty bluish Monkey sock that I can't figure out how to upload in the correct position in this post so you will have to trust me that it's cute)














I bought some Noro to make this, and have already cast on and finished the little ear flaps! Cuteness! Who needs socks? Well, me, but I have some so I don't need the monkeys right away and this new baby is supposed to arrive in December, just in time for an Arctic Snowflake ear flap hat!





Oh . . . and I couldn't resist the gorgeous red Dream in Color Smooshy sock yarn (that was in a completely different section of the yarn store, but once I'm in I feel obligated as a good yarn store customer to peruse the whole store) I'll post pictures when I'm in more of a teckie sort of mood, right now I want to go knit my hat!

Socks and Computers

I've been learning new things. Not knitting things, computer things. My friend Kristen taught me how to upload pictures onto the blog! Let's see if I can do it . . . .


Yea! But I can't figure out how to get this writing below the picture. Oh well I guess I have more questions for Kristen :)

Anyway these are my new pretty green cable socks. This is the first time I tried cables with socks. I like how they look. (Ignore my gross kitchen floor.)

I've got to take more pictures because I've started both a pair of monkey socks and gentleman's fancy socks. (Kristin taught me that link thing too except I don't know the whole specific link to the monkeys but you can search for them once you are on knitty.)

Oh and I got my knitpicks
catalog today. I think I might have to order one of the sock yarn combos on the back page. I've gotta check out the website and see if they are on there too.

Hello

I'm Tracy and I'm a yarnaholic. It's been about five years of knitting and good wooly yarn addiction. Before that, I crocheted, and was addicted to (gasp!) acrylic yarn, and that little addiction went back to the college years it's been awhile.

I am also shamelessly addicted to reading peoples blogs. LOVE them. My friend whom I work with has a blog and I started by reading hers. Then she told me about this little blog by someone called the Yarn Harlot. One look and I was hooked. I've been reading the blogs for about a year now.

About three or four months ago, my friend gave me one of the coveted invitations to Ravelry, and I began putting up photos with a vengeance. I love seeing my stuff on the website, and I love meeting knitters in the virtual world. Ever since I've toyed with the idea of my own blog, so as I sat here, waiting for my sweet potato pies to finish on Thanksgiving, I took the dive off the deep end and here I am.

I'm so excited!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!