I like Christmas, at least the original spirit behind the holiday. I hate the shopping expectations, the social get togethers and often the weather. Snow is lovely if you are staying home. Usually Hubby and I are driving to spend the holiday with my mother. I actually enjoy parties but why do they all have to fall into the same month? December is normally an extremely busy time for all sorts of reasons.
More than 20 years ago I decided that I could reduce my stress levels during the Christmas season by not decorating my house. Not only did it reduce my workload before the holiday, it also reduced it after. I did not have to pack up the decorations and put them away. I also have less clutter in my basement as I do not have to store the stuff for the rest of the year.
Then I stopped baking. In the last few years I have also stopped most of my gift giving. I still make friends and family knitted items, but now I give it away throughout the year. Rather a more random distribution.
So I am having trouble with the concept of "Christmas at the Fair". What do I make? Do I just enter the fair theme category? Maybe I should embrace the whole concept and knit as many Christmas items as I can for as many categories as I can? I have asked several friends. The knitting friends could not understand how I could possibly knit Christmas related items relentlessly for the next year. Why would you want to knit a kitchy Christmas sweater they asked. Then I asked a non-knitting friend who happens to believe that Christmas is the best time of the year. She practically squealed with delight at the theme. When I said I did not have a lot of red yarn in my stash, she suggested I expand my ideas to include a "Winter Wonderland" theme. I could use white, blue and silver instead and still accomplish a Christmas concept goal. She is a person who claims to not be creative but her ideas came out in a rush and in surprisingly creative ways. I could dress up a Barbie doll as an Elf on the Shelf. I could knit an advent calendar and a Christmas tree complete with decorations!
I told her that if I proceeded with this crazy idea I was going to need her enthusiasm to keep going. While I say I have not yet decided on pursuing this course of action, I stopped by Mary Maxim in London and purchased Christmas Knits Book 2 and I really really want to knit this and this.
In the meantime I just keep knitting socks.
These are my basic toe up sock recipe. The yarn is from the now defunct British Yarn organization. I purchased this skein of Bluefaced Leicester at the 2009 Sock Summit. For some reason I thought the basic colour was a pale brown and the skein was stored with my note to make it into basic men's socks. The dominant colour is more or less purple. (I don't know what I was thinking when I made that note). I made them in my size as no man I make socks for would wear this colourway.
I am currently working on a pair of men's socks for a long time friend of mine with MS. He says he likes bright colours and has wide feet. I may have gone overboard on the wideness of these socks. Again this is my basic toe up sock recipe from my favourite go to sock yarn, Paton's Kroy.
These socks are perfect hockey knitting. Good thing as the season has started and Hubby and I have already attended 2 regular season games. The first was the home opener. We thought we were in an alternate universe. The referee for the game is usually a biased ref and appears to look for any reason to give the '73's a penalty. Instead he was a pretty fair ref for a change. Too bad the other team forgot this was a hockey game and not a fight. The 'Threes pulled off a win of 5-2.
Friday night we drove to Dresden for next game. It was the weirdest game I have ever seen. The (different one from the game before) Ref appeared to be trying to help the home team and it was like every time a '73 player touched a King, the '73er ended up in the penalty box. While this was my overall impression, I do realize some of the penalties were deserved. However, there should also have been many more penalties for the the home team. The reffing was only one strange aspect of the the game. By the third '73's short-handed goal I turned to the fans sitting just behind me and suggested the home team ask the ref to stop penalizing our team! They were not gaining anything from the power plays.
Only two goals for the visitors and one goal for the home team was earned at full strength. Even though the visitors played a good portion of the game short-handed (and at times with only 3 players) the home team only managed one goal in the power plays and that was in the last minute of the third and final period.
I even got to see what I call a goofy goal. If the goalie had only stayed down there would have been no score. He had the puck between his legs but did not realize it. He popped up exposing the puck and the King player pushed the puck across the goal line between the goalie's legs.
The '73's won the game 6-2. There was a total of 4 short-handed goals with three of them scored by the same player. As I said, a strange game.
I have written here before about our dog Reba. Reba is very sick and we don't know why. We have spent the summer trying to cope with one new symptom after another. When we think we have cleared a hurdle and she is getting better another one pops up. Now her feet are inflamed and her nose and lips have crusted over. We headed to London this week to consult with a specialist and had biopsies taken from various parts of her. We have to keep a cone on her to prevent her from licking and chewing her feet.
I figure a softer cone is more comfortable for her as she wears it to sleep and eat in. However this blue one does not wash well. I spent yesterday at the sewing machine and came up with this.
Isn't she adorable?
I am heading to the basement as soon as I sign off here to see what scraps I have to make another one now that I have the pattern worked out.
I will be heading to another hockey game tonight. It feels strange to be watching hockey during an unusual heat wave this late in September. We actually have a heat warning! I just don't know what to wear. Although the number of people wearing shorts and flip flops at the arena is just too weird to contemplate further.
