New Beginnings

Sorry for the long absence, again!  Seems like I keep getting bogged down with the Real Life Stuff that doesn't belong on my blog and therefore doesn't encourage me to visit here and catch up.

Not that there is much knitting that I can catch you up on, but there was a little.

But, let's start closer to where we left off!

The First Brother loved his red Tardis Socks.  You can't really tell from the picture, but that boy has really grown this year and it felt like the foot would never end!  He is quite a bit taller than me now, not that I am very tall, but he is only 13 and growing like it is going out of style.  Since September we have had to go buy him new slacks several times to keep up with the drafts around his ankles.

The Other Brother, of course, had to have something similar but in green.  He was going to make me socks this Christmas but never got past the ribbing at the top.  Maybe next year!

 Of course TDQ got her "They make my eyes bleed" socks, and a pair of mittens.  The mittens are from The Yarn Harlot and you can get your own copy of the pattern here.  I went down two needle sizes for the cuffs and added some stripes just above the thumb gussets because I was running out of the dark purple yarn.

 Of course I couldn't leave The Monster Man out, so he got a pair of socks too, not an exact match on the  heels and toes, but close enough considering he will be wearing them with shoes!  I was having a dickens of a time matching the start with the second ball of Patons Yarn and have to have frogged the second sock ten or twelve times before I realized that that second ball was wound in the opposite direction with the lighter grey falling before the blue instead of after it!  One quick game of chase the ball of yarn around the room while winding with a ball winder and I fixed that though.

Finally, and I am very sorry for the lousy picture, I could have sworn I took more than this, we have a hat for the other Monster Man in my life......  at work we do Secret Santa and I drew the name of someone, who I think I have spent more time with than my kids in the last six or seven years. We had worked together with another employer when I first moved to Ohio, split up to go our separate ways and then got back together in the little bank in the middle of "the 'hood" that we call our mission.  The easy way out would have been to buy him as fancy a pen as you can get with $10, which was our limit for gifts this year.  Instead I made him a driving cap.  Based on this pattern  and out of yarn from my stash.  Click the pattern link to get to see the cables across the top, if I ever have my camera with me at work I will get a better picture, but in the meantime just imagine it in a blue cashmere blend.

My knitting friends made sure that my Christmas was a Merry one.  Next time I post I will show you some of what they sent, the chocolates however are long gone!  Even my ex-MIL has figured out that I like natural fibers and sent yarn with natural fibers in it.  I have been playing with that, trying to come up with something to send her back.  My promise to non-knitters has always been, you give me yarn, I give you a finished object!

So what else has happened since last we sat together? Real Life Stuff.

We made it through the end of the Mayan Calendar with no casulties.

We survived the day after Christmas,  White Christmas, and the extra snow that we got for the weekend and New Years.




We survived limiting  ourselves to six Christmas Trees this year.  You can almost see two here....

(The one directly in front of the camera is being decorated by birds hanging from the ceiling. I only had to shorten their hangers twice while they were up when TFB kept hitting his head on them!)

We survived weeks where I was never home in the evening with all three of my kids, just running around town with them one at a time, or at board meetings or work meetings.  We survived sudden, terribly sad news, we survived shopping and concerts, out of town visitors, we survived one child saying "I thought there would be more" at the end of Christmas Day, but everyone ended the year agreeing, there was really nothing that we wanted or needed that we didn't have.

Which just goes to show, sometimes feeling like you are just surviving really means you are thriving.  And that, my friends, is a pretty decent way to welcome the New Year!

Happy New Year!  May 2013 bring you health, happiness and a place where you can thrive.

~M