Anyone have a spare nose?

Well, the Thanksgiving-and-meet-the-fiance weekend went quite well. It was obvious before, but now it's pretty certain (as much as you can ever be) that Mom and Bruce will do very well together and continue to make each other very happy. YAY!

The downside is that a cold bug decided to ride along. Whether Bruce brought it with him, or if Hubby brought it from work, or I brought it from demoing at Ben Franklin, it doesn't really matter. Bruce was sick by Thursday evening, Allan was sick by Saturday evening, and I followed shortly after on Sunday.

The worst thing is is the William Shatner sneezes: Must. Sneeze. Now. Look into. The light. Don't. Move. It's com-- And then nothing but sinuses and eyes filling. All that energy put into a triviality. Well, maybe to be fair, we should call them Captain Kirk sneezes.

So here I sit, reading through my blog list, attempting to get enough energy for the day. Although, I do have to say that Yarn Harlot's toilet seat adventure (yeah, you kinda have to read it) definitely strikes home. We don't have the freaky European fixtures, just ultra-cheaply made, non-standard manufactured house fixtures. We're still not sure if it was the previous owners who did things this badly, or if it was already made that way. We've already had it proven on multiple occasions that the owners weren't terribly bright. But how smart is it to personally finance a house to someone without doing some kind of credit check?

At any rate, here I sit with Zoe curled up on my lap...


Although, now that I've taken the photo, she has gone, shocked that I would take a photo of her with bed-body (sort of like bed-head, but cats tend to get the full-body effect), returned to squawk for attention, and left again in search of a warm spot that doesn't take humiliating photos of her.

In the meantime, I have to decide whether to cancel my beadpoint class tonight -- yeah, another one with no sign-ups, despite the heavy interest during demos -- and perhaps when to go in to demo and gather people for the next Beadpoint and Crochet 101 classes.

On the bright side, I've finished the drop-stitch knit skirt and returned to a very old UFO, a creme-colored afghan with a two-tone green Celtic knot border, all done with tiny granny squares. I'm trying to assemble the granny squares as I go, mainly so that Hubby doesn't have to listen to me complain while trying to assemble the whole thing at once. Here's some the progress so far, to make up for not posting a picture of the skirt...

Later today, I might write up and post the pattern for the little knit Christmas bells, 'cause they're just so darn cute!

Progress

Congratulations! You made it through Monday. Not long until Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving will be very strange for hubby and I this year. My mother is getting married in January after being on her own for 25+ years. She's had a few dates here and there, but they were all jerks... until Bruce.

This is the cutest story: apparently my mom had a crush on him while they went to the same high school in West Linn, OR. After graduation, they each went their separate ways, married someone else, had chidren, etc. Neither mariage worked out, after differing amounts of time, and they met up at a reunion a few years ago. This past spring, Bruce started calling, coming to visit from his home in Oregon to my mom's in Yakima. And now, as of January 5, mom is marrying her high school sweetheart. Isn't that the best thing ever?

Here's where it applies to the knitting and the crocheting and the crafting stuff. My mom bought herself a red wedding dress. Yup. Not that I have a problem with that -- she's done the white dress thing already -- but it's customary for the maid/matron of honor (me, in this case) to wear the contrasting color that the bride has chosen, right? How does the matron of honor wear white without looking like the bride? Do you see the conundrum here?

So my wedding clothing will all be handmade. It will consist of a flowing ivory chemise/blouse (similar to one from the Pyramid Collection, except that it will actually fit someone who has arm muscles), a hairpin lace shawl, and a drop-stitch skirt (which looks a lot like hairpin lace).

The red shawl here is the one I've made for the wedding. I don't dare show the full thing in case anyone who doesn't need to know finds out about this blog. The light blue hairpin lace is a practice wrap I made after first getting the lace tool. What fun!

I'll get the skirt done shortly, but that picture may wait until the wedding anyway.

In other news, I'll have a couple more beadpoit patterns available soon. These will first be available for classes at Ben Franklin Crafts next month.

The large-scale chainmail jewelry kits are also available on my web site at http://www.horse-round.com/shop/maille.html. These kits have been a lot of fun to put together!
And now the best news of my year: the Tunisian Crochet Basketweave Sweater is finally available!
It's available from my web site (http://www.horse-round.com/shop/crochet_basketkim.html), but it will soon be available from Lulu.com as well: http://stores.lulu.com/horsenround. It's grinding away on creating the printable file as I write this. I'm beginning to think that going back and embedding my fonts might have been faster than uploading the original file after all.

At any rate, that's all the news for now. My hands are freezing, which would explain why there may be so many typos. The other reason is that there is a large orange cat parading back and forth across the desk and screaming at me when I try to warm my hands under her stomach. Of all the rude things!

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good meal!