… and I’m still at work. Ah well. Such is life.

Let’s get the unhappy stuff out of the way. I found out this morning that my dear friend and future bridesmaid Jill’s grandmother passed away last night after a short illness. Please keep Jill and her family in your thoughts if you would. It’s such a difficult time of year to loose someone you love. I am heartbroken for my dear friend and sad that I can’t be there to hug her in person.

In happier news I managed to finish the socks for my Future Mother-in-law in time to mail them off to Maine.

FMIL Socks

Pattern: Diagonal Lace Socks by Wendy D. Johnson from “Socks from the Toe Up”
Yarn: J.Knits Superwash me sock in Connecticut (oh the irony!)
Needles: US 1
Knit: 12.8-12.16.09
Mods: Several! I didn’t have an exact foot measurement so I purled the purl stitches in the pattern on the knit rows to give it more of a “ribbed” effect in case they were too big. I also took out two stitches so that I knit the top of the foot on 33 sts and the bottom on 31. I did a heel flap instead of doing the pattern as written since that’s my standard and I needed to knit these quickly.

As with all Wendy patterns, this was a great pattern to knit. I’m glad I finally got to knit something from her book! The yarn makes a lovely fabric but was splity enough that I don’t think I’d buy another skein. I prefer a much more solid twist.

The holiday knitting officially ended this week. I’ll finally be able to show you a few more of the things I knit next week. I’ve been missing my wheels and hope to get back to them in the near future. Right now, I’m enjoying knitting *without* a deadline. I started the Red Rings Pullover after Thanksgiving and here’s where I’m at now.

Of course I keep thinking “wouldn’t it be nice to have another finished sweater before the end of the year?!”. Yes. I haz the crazy.

Now I’m sure you are dying to know that our tree decorating efforts were successful.

HWJF did the hardest part of getting the thing in the stand and vertical all by himself. I got this picture in an e-mail while at work with the subject “Thanks for the cat grass Mom!!’

Knock on wood, she’s been pretty good with it so far.

We decorated it together which was a little weird in one respect since all the decorations were mine, but kind of fun too because I got to tell HWJF all the stories behind them. And I managed to only cry twice. Here are a couple of quick pics I took of some of my favorites.

There are several with musical themes as you might expect.

And of course there must be a bassoon!

I’m pretty sure my Mom made this one. The center is styrofoam and the decorations are placed with straight pins.

My mother’s mother started a tradition of buying me a new ornament every year when I was a kid. My mom has kept it up since she died in 1990. I have a *lot* of ornaments. This one I always find particularly sweet.

And we must have the bubble lights!

And with that my friends I will wish you all a very happy holiday season. Enjoy your celebrations in whatever form they take, hold your loved one’s close, remember those that have left us with happiness to honor their time in our lives and look forward to the new happiness and new challenges the future will hold.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 at 2:16 pm and is filed under FMIL Socks, Finished Objects 2009, Life in NJ, Red Rings Pullover. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.