Happy Gluttony!

It's Thanksgiving, time to spend giving thanks for all we have left after our 401K's have taken a beating this year.

For me, that's about $1.95.

But seriously, I love Thanksgiving. It's probably the most stress-free holiday our family knows. The meal is always good, the family is fairly well-behaved, the football is good to watch. All in all, a very warm fuzzy day.

OK, maybe that's the tryptophan talking. Or the anticipation of Black Friday. Whatever.

I have shifted operations around here into Christmas gift mode. One is done.

This is the We Call Them Pirates hat from Ravelry. I used elann.com's Highland Sport wool, which knitted up nicely with the exception of the black coming off in my hands. It blocked amazingly well. My nephew, the skull and crossbones fan, should love this.

Here's the rest of the Christmas knitting:

I'm waiting on a skein of wool from Beaverslide Dry Goods, which is in route. It works so well in those dang Happy Badger gloves that my niece always wants. Apparently, the ones I made her last year were stolen from her locker, which she was too embarrassed to tell me. Maybe I'll knit GPS into this year's pair.

There is progress on the Fiesta Vest:

Yep. It's very exciting. Sorta like watching paint dry.

I'm still in the throes of bead mania as well. Here's my first foray into herringbone stitch:

There was supposed to be more beading done to fill up the holes in the work, but it just made things too busy. I like the clean line of this one. I'm guessing I'll be making another one eventually--it's really a cool stitch, and it sews up fast.

These were done while watching My Fair Lady last night:

I have four Christmas concerts coming up for my community band, and I needed something festive to wear. I don't own any Christmas sweaters, so it's all about the accessories. I have some clear crystals around--maybe some snowflakes are in order.

I would like to make a public service announcement about beading, though. It's addictive. Really addictive. Like "does Ikea make cabinets for all these freakin' beads?" addictive.

Grady wants his coffee table back.

There are positives here in Cleveland

After the debacle of the Browns game on Thursday, I was pretty miffed. My man, Brady Quinn, did everything he could to win that game, but the lack of defense at the end AGAIN snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

It sucked.

So, I have decided to assess what is good around here nowadays.

1. LeBron is still here.
2. Obama won, and Ohio, for once, voted with their common sense.
3. Gas is down to $1.81.
4. It isn't snowing. Yet.
5. I still have yarn. Lots and lots of yarn.

Regarding #5, I have managed to turn several skeins of stash into this:

I finished it up and blocked it last night, and thanks to a tremendous lack of humidity in my house, it was dry this morning. The buttons went on, and it looks fabulous. Perfect for the upcoming holiday season and for winter as a whole. It was a nice result given how things are going with the Fiesta Vest.

I was plowing along on the size 2's, but it just kept looking too big. After careful measuring, it wound up being about 10 inches too wide.

Apparently not.

I am such a dolt sometimes. It is truly mindboggling.

I do have another beading project underway as well. It's called "Do the Twist." Not a hard pattern to do, but it looks really fancy.

The only issue I have with the pattern is that it doesn't specify how many beads you'll need. It basically says, "buy a lot." Never a good thing to say to me when my credit card has a zero balance. Turns out I'll probably have far more than I'll need for all but one of the bead types.

If I keep this up, everyone's getting jewelry for Christmas.

Oh, and just an update on the Green Bear bracelet. My sister-in-law wore it to the kids' high school's soccer tournament games, and the team won the State Championship!

Don't get too excited. I wore my Browns bracelet on Thursday, and the result wasn't quite as good.

The hours are counting down

In a mere 24 hours or so, we'll be officially done with this presidential campaign. I'm guessing there are a lot of you out there that are as tired of the "I'm so-and-so, and I approved this message" garbage, too, but I'm still pumped that I'll be participating in the process tomorrow. I love Election Day! I'm prepared to have my mp3 player and a sock in tow to pass the time whilst waiting in line. I'm on vacation, so I have all the time in the world to wait. Hopefully, it won't take that long--I need to mow the lawn.

I have finished all of the component parts of the pink fluffy cardigan--just need to finish it up. In the meantime, however, the next project is on the needles.

This represents the first stripe in the Fiesta Vest. I love this pattern, but I think the size 2's are going to be the death of my hands. I'm keeping the Aleve in sight.

Excuses? Nah. Just lazy.

It was pointed out to me at guild the other night that I hadn't blogged in a while. A long while. Like almost a month.

Well, I'm back.

Not that there is much going on. Work is work. The kids are full of contagion, and it's flu shot season, so things are pretty busy there. I am, however, now on an 8-day vacation, where I have planned nothing but fun, fun, fun!! In no specific order, I will:

1. Get my teeth cleaned.
2. Get my fibroid ultrasounded. Internally. Yeah, baby.
3. Visit the gynecologist.
4. Get a mammogram, or as I like to call it, my action for the year.
5. Vote.
6. Visit my brother and the gang in Toledo to celebrate his birthday.

Yep. Fun and frolic. At least the road trip will be entertaining. And cheap--gas is now down to $1.97 around here!

I have managed to do a few things around here that are a bit more interesting. I harvested my tomatillo crop a few weeks ago:

It wound up making 11 pints of yummy salsa verde. I'll be consuming it all winter. Next year, I think I'm going to plant a few more tomatillo plants; for what it's worth, my back yard must be the second coming of Guadalajara.

I did make a few more pieces of jewelry while watching football games this month. The latest will be for my sister-in-law. First, some background: she runs the spirit shop for the kids' high school and peddles a lot of Fighting Green Bear sportswear. So, to match the attire...

It's done in a tubular peyote stitch, for those beadheads out there. I made one for me in orange and brown. Gee, I wonder why?

Oh, yeah. PUT BRADY QUINN IN!!

I feel better now.

As for the knitting, the Japanese Vest is essentially done:

I think I'm going to add a couple of closures--it just doesn't want to stay put across the boobage. I also need to reblock the shoulders. There's an elf quality to them that doesn't quite work with the far east motif. Another vest will be made in the not-so-distant future:

This will wind up being Lucy Neatby's Fiesta Vest. I took a class from her this past week and got pretty damn inspired to work with variegated yarn. For 6 hours, she showed us all sorts of tips, tricks, and techniques to make variegated yarn work on a project. Here's my lovely little swatch:

The stitch pattern at the top is what really got me stoked. It will wind up being trim on a simple grey Paton's wool pullover. Lucy assured me that the small skein of Manos that I have will take care of the trim. We'll see about that. I may be ripping a square out of Afghanistash if things don't quite work out.

On the needles right now is a cardigan. I'm in sleeve purgatory right now, but here's a look at the front:

This is the same pattern I used a year ago for the ArtFibers cardigan. Very simple, but with fancy yarn, very classy. This yarn is some stuff I got on sale from Ram Wools a year or so ago. It's a wool/angora blend with a little gold sparkle in it. Should be lovely for the holidays and beyond. I just hope the bunny part doesn't make me sneeze. I've been on so much Claritin for my mold allergy this month that I can't tell if the yarn will be a problem or not. Stay tuned.

As a continuing contribution to my guild's Toyalong (which seems to be only joined by me), I whipped up another little felted creature. At first, it seemed as a muppet in need of rhinoplasty:

After felting, however, we have this guy:

I used KnitPicks wool for the body, which didn't felt as thick as I would have liked. My recommendation is to stick with Cascade 220, which is what the pattern suggested (we had no petal pink in town, though, so I thought I'd give KnitPicks a try).

He's still awfully cute. Drunk-looking, but cute.