Kiss My Knits!

Development: Christmas socks live most of their life as yarn. When ready to mature, they leap onto the needles. The needles knit the fibers together, producing the adult sock. The size of the sock is determined by environmental factors, such as the quantity of the yarn and size and patience of the child receiving the socks.

Adult Life: The newly matured sock quickly adapts to its new home on the foot, often spending 5 days out of the week there. It must occasionally return to the water to clean itself. If it does not, its lifespan is greatly shortened. The sock has a symbiotic relationship with its host, providing it with warmth and Christmas cheer, while the host provides shape and (usually) basic care.

Returning to Yarn: The Christmas sock will generally live through the holiday season, approximately 30 days. The sock develops bare patches as the season wears on. Its host may provide basic health care in the form of darning, but eventually nature must take its course. The sock will unravel and return to the yarn from whence it came.

Reproduction: The cycle continues the following year, when the host begs for a new pair of socks.

Source: The National Christmas Sock Advisory Council.

D’oh!

This is what happens when you wear the socks every single day and night. I get them off of her every couple of days for washing, but they weren’t meant to stand up to this kind of wear. I darned each heel this morning, but this will pose a new challenge – I’m out of red yarn!

Guess I’ll just have to dye some more. Yay!

ETA: Now there are holes in the toes, too. It looks like these socks are just out of warranty, so now they can fall apart. Em still wants to keep them on.

The slippers were well-received.

Also under the tree yesterday:

Left: Inara’s Shuttle Ornament

Right: Knitter’s Rubber Stamp

As predicted, today all is well. Em spent most of yesterday playing with her toys, especially her “upside down doll” which is a traditional topsy turvy doll from my dad. This is something she’s been interested in for a while. It’s got Red Riding Hood on one side and when you flip her upside down, on the bottom side of the skirt where you’d expect to see her legs is Grandma. On the reverse side of Grandma is the wolf. Great fun. Emily, who loves outrageous things, tells us that Little Black Riding Hood was taking her basket of bananas through the ocean to Aunt Mary’s house when she met a horse. This cracks her up every time. It sounds a lot like Gianni Rodari so I might have to try to find some of his stuff. Once again, my egghead years working at the library in high school pay off.

Today is a little more low key. She’s spent a lot of time playing a wii game she got, My Sims Kingdom. It’s fun, but she needs a little help manipulating the remote and finding things sometimes. I’ve cut her off for now. We’ll pick back up again in a few hours briefly, but she can’t spend all day playing video games. I’ll thank you all not to tell her what a “pot calling the kettle black” statement that is coming from me. I haven’t had time to spend hours and hours playing games in quite some time, but back in the day… woof. It was something.

Yesterday’s mammoth load of ravioli generated a mammoth load of dishes, so I’m going to tackle another sink, hopefully before my husband gets home. He did most of the cooking, it seems only fair for me to do most of the cleaning.

The traditional Christmas ravioli. My husband makes the pasta dough, ricotta cheese, and sauce from scratch. This year the tomatoes were from our garden, and we had a side of spicy sausage from an Italian butcher about 20 miles up the road.

In theory we all help assemble it, but really it’s mainly my husband who is the maestro here. It’s so good. So good.

Christmas went well. Em got overtired just before bedtime and started quietly crying because “I haven’t done karaoke all year.” Really it was because she had been up since 6am, going full tilt. I should have put her to bed early.

Even with the rough finish, she still said, “I think this was my favorite Christmas ever.” Mission accomplished.

And so, exhausted, I’m also off to bed. I hope your Christmas was merry and bright.

Both camera and truffles are awesome.

I used to love photography, back when it was film and darkroom and this is really giving me hope that I can get back into it again without a lot of space for chemicals and other setup.

And did I mention the truffles are awesome?

I’m like a kid on Christmas! Oh, wait… I am a kid on Christmas!

Unnecessary sock picture! Unnecessary cat picture!

WOOOO!!!

Em spreads some Christmas cheer, 2007. Her voice has deepened this year. I think she’s going to be an alto.

All the best to you and yours.

God bless us, every one!

Em is chock full of Christmas spirit. She’s got her day planned out. A bath at 4 so that her hair will be dry by bedtime, then bedtime at 6. I’ve talked her back to 7 because I don’t want her to lie awake in her bed for hours on end. Tomorrow, she wants me to ring a special Christmas bell to wake her if I wake up before she does. I’d say the chances of me getting up before Christmas’s Biggest Fan are pretty slim, but I’ll see what I can do.

We used to have a Christmas bell that belonged to my grandmother, who collected bells. Em knocked it off a table this year. She was heartbroken, crying quietly to herself. I myself was very sad because it was a bell that had belonged to my grandmother, but of course you can’t get mad at a child for something like that. It was clear that she genuinely felt awful. I still have a few other bells that my grandmother had, and they’re metal. Big brass bells, that’s what I got from my grandmother! Oh, come on, she had a good sense of humor.

However, we still needed a replacement bell if we were going to ring something on Christmas morning. I had to visit five different places before I found a Christmas bell that wasn’t a jingle bell. Do NOT go out to a specialty Christmas store in December. Just don’t. It’s a madhouse.

I finally got a bisque bell at Michael’s and picked up some paint in Christmas colors. I hoped that making it extra Christmasy ourselves would ease the pain a bit. And it did. Em did a wonderful job. When I think about all the occupational therapy she’s had, and how amazingly far she’s come, I’m filled with motherly pride.

Em loves the new bell. Christmas is back on track. All is right with the world.

Em: “Do you know why Santa doesn’t come until Christmas Eve?”
Me: “No, why?”
Em: “Because sometimes Santa doesn’t wrap presents, and if he came before Christmas Eve, everybody would know what they had before Christmas.”

I have it on good authority that a certain little girl is going to get exactly what she asked for from Santa this year. She’s certainly been good.

FO: Holly Jolly legwarmers.
Needles: Size 3 for ribbing, size 4 for body.
Pattern: Cast on 30. Do some ribbing then some stockinette then some ribbing. Cast off.

Notes: This is another pair of legwarmers for supersweet ‘s little girl. They arrived yesterday, just in the nick of time. I kept out one bit of green from the skein in case I had to patch my daughter’s heels, but aside from that, this used up all the rest of my Holly Jolly yarn. These are a little bit shorter than I’d like, but they really used ALL the yarn, so I can live with it.

I hope and her family and all of you and all of your families have very happy holidays. This won’t be my last post before Christmas, but it’s always a good time to wish you wonderful people well.