So many hobbies!

You should be impressed

I did something terrifying tonight, especially at this time of the year.  I.  Went to The Mall.  Generally, I avoid the mall on general principles the rest of the year.  This time, though, I needed something from JCPenney and risked the mall at Christmas.  Fortunately, I didn't need to park in the next county since I went right after work and before the evening's influx of shoppers.  I got what I needed (a mock turtleneck) and was home before the insanity started.

My next project has been chosen.  Another shawl, this one with cables - the Sunset Shawl.  Sadly, I can't wear yellow or gold so I had to come up with another color.  I can't seem to veer too far away from blue so Knitpicks will be sending me some of this:

Swish Worsted in the Marine Heather colorway.  I'm thinking my next one will be knitted using Swish again but either in the Dublin or Peapod colorway.  It's not too far from blue but it'll do for now.  I need to do some stash diving again and see if I can come up with some suitable handspun for another project.

Happy Holidays!

Busy, busy, busy

So busy this weekend!  Saturday morning I saw The Hobbit.  It was wonderful!  I'd been wondering how they were going to fit the whole book into one movie.  I hadn't heard that there were going to be multiple movies.  I was very excited to learn that there will be.  The first one ended long before the end of the book.  Martin Freeman was great as Bilbo.  I think I'm going to have to see it again before it leaves the theater.

The rest of the weekend was taken with baking cookies and pumpkin cranberry bread, dehydrating strawberries for my niece's Christmas present, getting groceries and buying catfood.  My gifts are all wrapped and ready to go under the tree.  I even managed to make shrimp fried rice for lunches this week.  I'm cruising right on schedule.  Next weekend is more baking for Christmas presents and I'll be whipping up a batch of steamed shrimp and veggie dumplings for our traditional Christmas Eve Chinese dinner.  My niece gets into town Friday from Turkey where she's teaching English as a second language.  I'm so proud of her.

How are you doing with your holiday plans?

Holiday plans

Well, the plan for the time between Christmas and New Year's.  Once again, I'll be finishing up as many UFOs as possible.  So far, the list is as follows:

1. The brown and salmon shawl started earlier this year.
2. The kid's quilt that needs to be tied and bound.
3. Finish spinning the batts I made a couple months ago.
4. Ply the aforementioned batts.
5. Finish organizing all my yarn, both commercial and handspun.
6. Finish the Halloween quilt started last year.
7. Hand-sew a hanging sleeve onto the back of the Houses quilt.
   

I'd like to start the new year UFO-free. 

This weekend is my baking and wrapping weekend.  Every year I make the fabulous Pumpkin-Cranberry bread, which can only be made with fresh cranberries.  I'm also making cookies to give to my co-workers.  I need to make the number of cookies made equal the number I need, plus one or two more, so I don't eat too many of them.  I'll be making Trisha Yearwood's White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies.  I'm still trying to decide between making the recipe as is or tweak it to make it a bit healthier.  I have minimal to no skills at tweaking recipes so the jury is still out on that one.  Hmm, I have enough to make two batches so maybe I'll make it the healthier way and see how they turn out.  If they're terrible, I'll make the recipe as written.  While the cookies and fruit bread are baking, I'll drag out a table and watch Christmas movies while wrapping all my gifts.  Seems like a pretty good weekend plan to me.

Two things

Two completely unrelated things. The first, I found out over the weekend that an actor I like, alot, smokes.  Not only was I disappointed, because I was hoping he was smarter than that, but it just didn't make any sense to me.  If you're an actor and your living depends on your voice, your lungs, etc., why risk that by doing something as dumb as smoking.  (Why do it at all?)  If you smoke, fine, as long as you don't do it around me, I don't care what you do.  But when your livelyhood depends on you being healthy, smoking just seems really naive to me.

The second completely unrelated topic is my new toy.  My parents bought me a Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas.  I've only had it for a short time so I'm still figuring it out but I've already downloaded The Lord of the Rings books and a couple of short stories, a couple of apps, a game (Angry Birds!) and a magazine.  I can already see myself downloading a movie or two on it to watch on my way down to Florida in January.  I second guessed myself when I ordered it because I really should have saved that money for more important things like car problems or the potential need for a new something for the house.  It's been a long time since I spent any frivolous money on myself.  Most of my big money outlays are usually a new muffler or tires for the car, paying for dental work, that sort of thing.  I don't really know how to spend money on myself anymore.  If I don't need it and it's expensive, I can't justify buying it.  Which is complete rubbish.  I deserve to have cool, geeky things as much as the next guy.  It's just hard to convince myself of that sometimes.

What frivolous thing are you buying for yourself this holiday?  Whatever it is, you deserve it!

Random Sunday

1. The green scarf will be finished but it'll end up as a gift.  I can't have anything around my neck - it itches too much.
2. I wore the red/orange shawl to my Guild's Christmas party and it was a hit.  Not to mention nice and warm.
3. My new toy this Christmas is a Nexus 7 tablet from Google.  I'm still figuring it out but already I have 4 books, a game (Angry Birds), 2 short stories and several apps downloaded. 
   
4. I may be getting a wireless router so I have WiFi at home.  The tablet uses WiFi to get online and currently I have to be somewhere that has it.
5. The cats have been spending a lot of time sitting under a lamp on the sofa table.  It's nice and warm there.
6. I have foolishly volunteered to make appetisers for Christmas Eve, breakfast Christmas morning and an appetiser for Christmas day.  I'll be busy but I'll be with family so it'll be fun.
7. The pansies in my neighbor's flowerbox are still blooming.  It's a wonderful sight when it's cold and gray outside.
8. It's amazing the amount of crap that ends up under the fridge if you don't clean under there regularly.  I'm happy to say, though, that I have finally gotten rid of the last of the fingerling potatoes that Tyr stole two summers ago.  I think the final count was close to 20 potatoes.
9. I'm in the middle of far too many projects and don't really have the desire to finish most of them.  I think I need to get rid of cable again.  I spend too much time on the couch watching the telly.
10. Yikes!  It's only two weeks until Christmas!  I need to get busy.
    

So here's my dilema

I've been working on this hooded scarf for about a week.  The directions say to knit 50 cables or until the scarf is as long as you want it to be.  I kind of ignored that last part, didn't pay any attention to the length and I'm now at about 48 repeats of the cables and nearly 5 feet of scarf.  This side of the hooded scarf now reaches from my shoulder to the top of my foot.  Just a wee bit long for only half of the scarf length.  My dilema is, do I just keep knitting the scarf as it is, forgetting about the hood part of the pattern, until it's a useful length or do I rip back about a foot or two of knitting and then start the hood?  I'm torn.  Part of me wants to just keep going as it until it's at a length I can use but another part wants to keep working the pattern.  I suspect I'll get more use out of it as just a scarf but I also want to finish the pattern as written. Gah!  Like I said:  a dilema.  Advice please?