New Year's Resolutions? Nah, I'll pass, thanks.

We've survived through the holiday season, although we're still dealing withone someone in the house being sick at all times. This has been passing around since Thanksgiving, when Hubby and I caught the sickness from my mother's fiance. Fortunately, we've missed the stomach flu variation, but being sick through my mother's wedding (and trying to do the flowers and some decs for it as well while being the Matron of honor) was really no treat, and the night we arrived in Portland (with 1 day before the wedding), Hubby was congested and feverish again. A few days after arriving at home, MIL is also now sick. Whee! Although we finally convinced the furnce people to come out and fix a squished duct underneath the house, so she is now getting heat in her bedroom and bathroom. Progress made on fixing the previous people's stupid mistakes...

But the wedding was beautiful and meaningful to the people who mattered most -- my mother and her new husband. After 26 years of being a single mother to an only daughter, she has now become mother to several more daughters, a son, and some grandchildren who are old enough to be supplying great-grandchildren at any moment! Not sure that part sunk in, but she was willing to joke about having grandchildren now, not just grandhorses and grandcats.

We also, of course, forgot the camera, so am waiting anxiously for pics from other family members. Will post those once they start arriving.

My New Year's Resolution was going to be to make it through a large amount of the stash. However, something better came along. Near the end of the year, smeone approached me while I was demoing at Ben Franklin and offered the possibility of creating models for a variety of things, including hairpin lace and punchneedle items! Needless to say, much excitement ensued, and I doubt my ear-to-ear grin vanished for the rest of the day.

We haven't actualy managed to get together to discuss a lot of details, but my first project is to provide a couple of felted purses. Guess what? I've been reading all about it, but have no meaningful amount of feltable yarn in the stash to provide anything more than small pouches and clutches!

On the bright side, other needed items include crocheted lace (large amount of crochet thread in the stash) and punchneedle designs (good amount of appropriate linen scraps from past costumes in the stash). Woohoo!

Not sure I can really talk about who these models are for, but once my contact comes back from TNNA, we'll talk about more of those details.

In other news, I've finished a very cute pair of cabled socks based on a Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern from Ravelry, but they're somewhere near the bottom of the laundry bin, so will post pics later. Hmm, I owe you lots of photos now...

Happy crafting in the New Year!

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!