Checking In
Hi guys. I know some of you worry when you don’t hear from me in a while so I thought I would pop on and check in.
Christmas Prep
Of course, the big thing in my life is the Christmas crafting. I keep making progress, checking people off as I finish their gifts. It feels great to see the number of finished projects grow. But at the same, we had recent additions to our list so the number of gifts that have to be made has also grown.
Additions to the Christmas Crafting List
We got a new roommate, which brings us to three roommates that live with us. The latest, Bill, has a home and a family in NM but is here working as a contract engineer for a local company. He isn’t sure how long he will be here or if he will be able to go home for Christmas. Now I have problem with leaving people out. And the thought of a guy, already bummed because he isn’t home with his family on Christmas, not having a gift when every single other member of the household has something for them under my tree was too much. So he got added to the list. I don’t know him very well but it doesn’t tale too much to throw together a basic hat. I figured, it is something to open and coming from NM, maybe he wouldn’t have a hat for the NY winter weather.
Then I had a sort of “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie” realization regarding my cousins. With the exception of my cousin, Nikki, who has been my best friend since I was 11 months old, I don’t tend to exchange with my cousins. I have a bunch of them and after a while the cost and effort of gifts adds up and I have to draw the line someplace. But then I realized something. Because I exchange with my aunts and my nieces and Nikki, this Christmas I would going over to my Aunt Deb’s house with presents for every member of her family, except my cousin, Jessica (Nikki’s sister). This seemed mean. It’s intentionally mean. It just happens that she is the only one in that family that is not in one of the categories of people that I tend to exchange with… (best friends, aunts, or kids) But again, it seemed like I was singling someone out and so I added her to the list. But now, that means that I was exchanging with that entire family and leaving out my Leeman cousins. If I added Jessie to the list, then John, Christa and her new hubby, Chris, Joseph and his gf, Samantha, would be the ONLY members of the family left out. And again I hate to leave people out so I wanted to add them to the list (which brings my total number of presents to 44)
But this was getting a bit ridiculous. I can’t afford the time or money to make individual, personalized gifts for everyone I am related to. So I came up with an idea. From now on, I will pick out a Christmas ornament to make each year and all of the cousins will get one. Because ornaments are small, they won’t take that much in time or materials and I don’t need to come up with personalized ideas for each member of the family but I will still have a little something for everyone and no one will get left out. This year, I am planning on learning how to make crocheted snowflakes (which I wanted for my tree anyway) so I will just make a couple of extra ones to give to the cousins. Easy Peasy! (I found the cutest little ice skating ornament for next year, that uses a paperclip to make the blade of the skate! Too cute!!)
Next Year
Yes. I admit it. I just said, “Next year” My infamous Christmas Crafting Spreadsheet has sprouted a tab for 2011. I haven’t started any work on next year’s gifts (My aunt made me promise that I wouldn’t make gifts for 2011 until at least 2011). But as I make decisions between two or more options of what to make or give someone or as I discover things that I would give someone if I didn’t already have a gift for them, I wanted to have a record of the ideas that I didn’t go with so I won’t have forgotten them by next year. It’s not as obsessive as it sounds but I have been getting some grief from people about it… incidentally these are people who haven’t even started Christmas shopping for this year and I am going to enjoy watching them try and find parking at the mall in December while I stay home and relax.
Overall Status
This brings my status to: 21 Gifts Done / 3 Gifts In Progress / 9 Crafting Gifts To Be Done / 11 Store Bought Gifts to Purchase (which is Rob's problem. I knit, he shops.)
And the extra good news is that everyone that I have left on my “Crafted gifts to be made list” doesn’t NEED to be crafted. I have options if I run out of time, decide that a project isn’t working out all that well, or just decide that I want to be done with the Christmas crafting now. There is no way that I am going to be freaking out or stressing out in mid-late December. This is a very, very good thing.
Finished Projects
I was able to finish a couple more gifts recently and I just got around to taking photos of them today.
This is my roommate, Bill’s hat
This is a hat I threw together for Rob’s cousin, James. (Next year, he and his wife will be included in the “cousins get a Christmas tree ornament” category but I made this before I thought of that.) It kind of reminds me of a Chocolate Mocha cake what with the stripes and the colors so that is what I call it in my head.
And this is my dad’s fish hat.
He completely fell in love with my roommate, Dan’s fish hat and we came to an agreement that from now on, I will make him a silly hat for Christmas every year. I had a couple of options of what to make him (and boy, I stressed out as I went back and forth between them) but I finally decided to go with the fish. I wanted very different colors from Dan’s hat so each fish had their own personality. Dan’s hat was bright and vibrantly colored (Caribbean blue, lime green, bright yellow, etc) so I went with more “manly man” colors (denim blue, oatmeal, dark green, brown) for my dad. The colors started to remind me of something out of a Hemingway book, which reminded of The Old Man and the Sea. So I ended up nicknaming the fish, Santiago, after the fisherman in that story. Too bad I later found out that my dad doesn’t like Hemingway. Oh well, he doesn’t need to know the name or the story behind it.
In Progress Projects
Right now, I have a couple of different projects in the process of being made. I am finishing up a hat for Rachel (who is married to Rob’s cousin, James).
After I finish that, I am making the Halloween costumes for my nieces Emma and Ellie. Four year old, Emma is going to be a Jack O Lantern. I am making her a Pumpkin hat and then we will get her an orange shirt that we can decorate with the jack o lantern face. 1 ½ year old, Ellie will be an acorn. We are planning on dressing her in browns and then I am making her an acorn hat and getting her a little squirrel to carry around. If we can pull it off, I am planning on getting their mom some fake autumn leaves to wear as a crown so she can be the tree that Ellie fell from.
And once those are done (hats are quick, especially little kid hats) I will begin work on a tea cosy that I plan on giving my Aunt Kathy for Christmas. It’s an aran pattern (lots of cables and bobbles) but it looks very traditional and kinda cool).
I am lucky to have this much to work on this week. Money has been more than tight this pay period (more on that later) and if it weren’t for the fact that my LYS needed someone to work this weekend, I don’t think I would have been able to get all this. It is sad that my entire salary for 4 hours of work translated to 5 balls of yarn but at least it kept me from sitting on the sidewalk with a sign that said “Out of Work - Brother can you spare a skein?”
Non-Knitting / Non - Crafting Stuff
We decided not to go to the MD Renn Faire this year, which sucks because it is my favorite place in the world but we just didn’t have the money and our car’s breaks really needed to be replaced before we could make any long trips. We really should be doing the struts too but we are trying to work on those logistics. Between the car repair and getting my new glasses, this is going to be a tight week and the Renn Faire just wouldn’t have worked for it. Maybe next year.
The only thing that is keeping me from getting bummed out about it is the fact that we will be hitting the King Richard’s faire in MA when we go up to see Nikki and Katrina for Kat’s birthday.
My sister, Lynne, is visiting. I got to see her for breakfast today and hopefully I will get to spend some time with her before she goes back up to school.
Rob got word of his new work schedule. Starting January 2nd, he will go from working 1:30 to 10:00 pm, Sunday - Thursday to working 7:00 am - 3:30 pm with Sundays and Thursdays off. This should work out much better for us. At least we can stop being nocturnal and eat dinner at a sane hour. It will also allow us to have some social life and maybe if I sign up for evening classes, I can go to school even if we don’t get my car back on the road again before the start of the semester.
So that's about it for me. I hope everyone else is doing well. TTYS.
Christmas Prep
Of course, the big thing in my life is the Christmas crafting. I keep making progress, checking people off as I finish their gifts. It feels great to see the number of finished projects grow. But at the same, we had recent additions to our list so the number of gifts that have to be made has also grown.
Additions to the Christmas Crafting List
We got a new roommate, which brings us to three roommates that live with us. The latest, Bill, has a home and a family in NM but is here working as a contract engineer for a local company. He isn’t sure how long he will be here or if he will be able to go home for Christmas. Now I have problem with leaving people out. And the thought of a guy, already bummed because he isn’t home with his family on Christmas, not having a gift when every single other member of the household has something for them under my tree was too much. So he got added to the list. I don’t know him very well but it doesn’t tale too much to throw together a basic hat. I figured, it is something to open and coming from NM, maybe he wouldn’t have a hat for the NY winter weather.
Then I had a sort of “If You Give A Mouse a Cookie” realization regarding my cousins. With the exception of my cousin, Nikki, who has been my best friend since I was 11 months old, I don’t tend to exchange with my cousins. I have a bunch of them and after a while the cost and effort of gifts adds up and I have to draw the line someplace. But then I realized something. Because I exchange with my aunts and my nieces and Nikki, this Christmas I would going over to my Aunt Deb’s house with presents for every member of her family, except my cousin, Jessica (Nikki’s sister). This seemed mean. It’s intentionally mean. It just happens that she is the only one in that family that is not in one of the categories of people that I tend to exchange with… (best friends, aunts, or kids) But again, it seemed like I was singling someone out and so I added her to the list. But now, that means that I was exchanging with that entire family and leaving out my Leeman cousins. If I added Jessie to the list, then John, Christa and her new hubby, Chris, Joseph and his gf, Samantha, would be the ONLY members of the family left out. And again I hate to leave people out so I wanted to add them to the list (which brings my total number of presents to 44)
But this was getting a bit ridiculous. I can’t afford the time or money to make individual, personalized gifts for everyone I am related to. So I came up with an idea. From now on, I will pick out a Christmas ornament to make each year and all of the cousins will get one. Because ornaments are small, they won’t take that much in time or materials and I don’t need to come up with personalized ideas for each member of the family but I will still have a little something for everyone and no one will get left out. This year, I am planning on learning how to make crocheted snowflakes (which I wanted for my tree anyway) so I will just make a couple of extra ones to give to the cousins. Easy Peasy! (I found the cutest little ice skating ornament for next year, that uses a paperclip to make the blade of the skate! Too cute!!)
Next Year
Yes. I admit it. I just said, “Next year” My infamous Christmas Crafting Spreadsheet has sprouted a tab for 2011. I haven’t started any work on next year’s gifts (My aunt made me promise that I wouldn’t make gifts for 2011 until at least 2011). But as I make decisions between two or more options of what to make or give someone or as I discover things that I would give someone if I didn’t already have a gift for them, I wanted to have a record of the ideas that I didn’t go with so I won’t have forgotten them by next year. It’s not as obsessive as it sounds but I have been getting some grief from people about it… incidentally these are people who haven’t even started Christmas shopping for this year and I am going to enjoy watching them try and find parking at the mall in December while I stay home and relax.
Overall Status
This brings my status to: 21 Gifts Done / 3 Gifts In Progress / 9 Crafting Gifts To Be Done / 11 Store Bought Gifts to Purchase (which is Rob's problem. I knit, he shops.)
And the extra good news is that everyone that I have left on my “Crafted gifts to be made list” doesn’t NEED to be crafted. I have options if I run out of time, decide that a project isn’t working out all that well, or just decide that I want to be done with the Christmas crafting now. There is no way that I am going to be freaking out or stressing out in mid-late December. This is a very, very good thing.
Finished Projects
I was able to finish a couple more gifts recently and I just got around to taking photos of them today.
This is my roommate, Bill’s hat
This is a hat I threw together for Rob’s cousin, James. (Next year, he and his wife will be included in the “cousins get a Christmas tree ornament” category but I made this before I thought of that.) It kind of reminds me of a Chocolate Mocha cake what with the stripes and the colors so that is what I call it in my head.
And this is my dad’s fish hat.
He completely fell in love with my roommate, Dan’s fish hat and we came to an agreement that from now on, I will make him a silly hat for Christmas every year. I had a couple of options of what to make him (and boy, I stressed out as I went back and forth between them) but I finally decided to go with the fish. I wanted very different colors from Dan’s hat so each fish had their own personality. Dan’s hat was bright and vibrantly colored (Caribbean blue, lime green, bright yellow, etc) so I went with more “manly man” colors (denim blue, oatmeal, dark green, brown) for my dad. The colors started to remind me of something out of a Hemingway book, which reminded of The Old Man and the Sea. So I ended up nicknaming the fish, Santiago, after the fisherman in that story. Too bad I later found out that my dad doesn’t like Hemingway. Oh well, he doesn’t need to know the name or the story behind it.
In Progress Projects
Right now, I have a couple of different projects in the process of being made. I am finishing up a hat for Rachel (who is married to Rob’s cousin, James).
After I finish that, I am making the Halloween costumes for my nieces Emma and Ellie. Four year old, Emma is going to be a Jack O Lantern. I am making her a Pumpkin hat and then we will get her an orange shirt that we can decorate with the jack o lantern face. 1 ½ year old, Ellie will be an acorn. We are planning on dressing her in browns and then I am making her an acorn hat and getting her a little squirrel to carry around. If we can pull it off, I am planning on getting their mom some fake autumn leaves to wear as a crown so she can be the tree that Ellie fell from.
And once those are done (hats are quick, especially little kid hats) I will begin work on a tea cosy that I plan on giving my Aunt Kathy for Christmas. It’s an aran pattern (lots of cables and bobbles) but it looks very traditional and kinda cool).
I am lucky to have this much to work on this week. Money has been more than tight this pay period (more on that later) and if it weren’t for the fact that my LYS needed someone to work this weekend, I don’t think I would have been able to get all this. It is sad that my entire salary for 4 hours of work translated to 5 balls of yarn but at least it kept me from sitting on the sidewalk with a sign that said “Out of Work - Brother can you spare a skein?”
Non-Knitting / Non - Crafting Stuff
We decided not to go to the MD Renn Faire this year, which sucks because it is my favorite place in the world but we just didn’t have the money and our car’s breaks really needed to be replaced before we could make any long trips. We really should be doing the struts too but we are trying to work on those logistics. Between the car repair and getting my new glasses, this is going to be a tight week and the Renn Faire just wouldn’t have worked for it. Maybe next year.
The only thing that is keeping me from getting bummed out about it is the fact that we will be hitting the King Richard’s faire in MA when we go up to see Nikki and Katrina for Kat’s birthday.
My sister, Lynne, is visiting. I got to see her for breakfast today and hopefully I will get to spend some time with her before she goes back up to school.
Rob got word of his new work schedule. Starting January 2nd, he will go from working 1:30 to 10:00 pm, Sunday - Thursday to working 7:00 am - 3:30 pm with Sundays and Thursdays off. This should work out much better for us. At least we can stop being nocturnal and eat dinner at a sane hour. It will also allow us to have some social life and maybe if I sign up for evening classes, I can go to school even if we don’t get my car back on the road again before the start of the semester.
So that's about it for me. I hope everyone else is doing well. TTYS.