Afterglow

We had a lovely Christmas. Grown children make such a difference. They brought their girlfriend/boyfriend to our Christmas Eve open house. When friends dropped by, they knew our other friends from many different spheres in our small town. It was very rewarding.
For the first time in a decade we had dinner with my family. It was very festive and our Sticky Toffee Pudding and Elephant Island Framboise were big hits.

My Boxing Day goal is to read a whole book. I didn't get that done, but I read over 200 pages from a larger book, Drood, by Dan Simmons. A few years ago I read the complete works of Dickens except The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This is a fictional biography of Dickens while he wrote it. I also have a book, The D Case in which the famous detectives of fiction try to solve the case. It includes the original and unfinished story. Good reading for a cold winter evening.

D got a chain saw and the hazelnut tree is still shaking in fear.

I have been posting a bit more and getting more comments and I want to thank you all. If your comment has a noreply address, I'll try to catch up with you on your blog.

Scott gave me a link to one of his favourite sites because there was a reference to Firefly and the commenters were so great. They had names like "anonymous coward", "give ben a dollar", and "vicegrip". Crazy computer culture.

I only know what Firefly is because I listen to podcasts and read your blogs. Thanks so much for this rich culture.

Emily spent a day making a birthday banner for my sister. I knew she would do an awesome job. Note the polarbear jammies and new red housecoat: thanks Grandma. She also loved the bunny slippers.

I finally got back to the advent scarf. I'm loving this buffet of patterns. Eventhough I'm only on day 11, I may be able to jump into it now that Christmas knitting is done. I still have a February shawl and I'd like to use the Debbie Bliss alpaca silk aran that I bought at Boutique de Laine for some fingerless mitts like Lettuce Knit Armwarmers.

I threw myself into these slipper socks for my sister's January 3 birthday. I started with the top down flat pattern that was provided, but just ripped it out. Why would you do it that way? Definitely not. I was inspired by Chrisitnes Stay Put Booties and the bunny slippers. I stitched through the 102 holes in the sole and picked up one stitch for each, knit 5 rows in the round and then started working back and forth from the toe until I reached about 15 stitches more than the cuff needed. I faked a gusset. They're a little floppy, but I'm happy with them and not sad that I used the handspun that was meant for me.

Now I can get on with my plans for new years knitting.