When my blog posts have been few and far between (as they
have been this autumn) it seems silly to start out by stating it, but also sort
of awkward to just jump in as if I have been posting more regularly.  So, how about…

Hello! So good to be back with you again!

We have been saturated with Family for the past month!  Wonderfully so, of course – with Owen’s First
Birthday (and his epic Vintage Circus themed party complete with live
entertainment by Seattle Raw’s Top Performing Artist of the Year, our own
Geoff!), Sarah and her family coming for 2 weeks over Thanksgiving, our entire
(almost) family gathering at the Oregon Coast for an extended Thanksgiving
weekend, back again just in time for Geoff’s girlfriend Cait’s first visit to
our home…

In the midst of returning from the beach, Sarah and her
family traveling back to North Carolina, and Cait arriving from New York, I got
fired up to decorate for Christmas.  Even
with Thanksgiving so early (and a generous chunk of November waiting for us at
home), I really could not play Christmas music and organize Christmas events
with pumpkins, turkeys, and artificial crows staring at me in the living
room. 

So, down they came and out came the bins and boxes – and for
two days it looked like Christmas had thrown up all over the house!  When the decorating was only about half done
– about the time I was dragging from room to room with reindeer, santas, bells,
and random nutcrackers moaning and muttering how it would all come together
once we got out the tinsel (i.e. I was moaning and muttering, not the random
nutcrackers!) – Cait breathlessly said it was magical and that we should charge
admission (bless her heart! even if, perhaps, she was breathless from holding
back laughter…).  And now it is done and
looking quite lovely and festive.  And I
– looking less lovely and festive, I fear – am ready to collapse in a chair and
knit for the next 3 weeks!

Which would be a good idea – since I have a number of
Christmas projects going, as well as The Unfinished Christmas Gift From 2 Years
Ago Which Shall Not Be Named (tho if you guessed it was Sonja’s & Jordan’s
alpaca blanket I would have to concede that you are right).  Of course, it is pretty difficult for me to
blog about gifts when the recipients might be reading the blog – Sarah said
that I should tell them not to read the blog this month, but when I suggested
it to the Family I was told that I would have probably been alright if I had
not mentioned it, but now…no way!

Sooo, I can just throw out some random observations and
experiences without getting too specific. 

Like how I realized I should probably stop carrying the
projects-in-process around in a see-through bag!  Altho the possibility of any of them poking
around in my knitting bag is about as low as their reading my blog – unless
provoked! 

Or how I realized that I was inadvertently knitting
something in the school colors of one of our state universities when I started
attracting Cougar fans while knitting in public.

Or how I devised a deceptively simple project with such a
fiendish combination of dark yarn and imperceptible pattern that even Sarah
(who is helping me out with the Christmas knitting) howled in despair! 

And, hey, it is only December 1^st!  Actually, I am feeling quite on top of things
at the moment.  Every project chugging
along reasonably (even the fiendish one). 
And even tho we concocted an extensive sewing project to round out our
gift-giving.  The inspiration came just
before Sarah headed back to North Carolina,
so we had a last-minute dash to JoAnn Fabrics to get patterns and 23 different
fabrics…!  She has taken about half of
the work back with her – I guess we can race, right?  See who has the most done by the time she and
her family return on Dec. 15^th for Christmas.

Okay, that gets us all firmly back on track, into December
and ready to roll!  Er, I mean knit! And,
um, sew.  A lot.  Ho Ho Ho!