Absolutely nothing to do with yarn. Or Thursday.

Completely unrelated to yarn (um, unless that's what's in the box), I managed to finish most of my wrapping/mailing this week. (Please note that the foregoing is a "positive reinforcement statement" that is not currently true, but is hoped to be true in the near future. Visualizing the thing you want and repeating that it has happened is supposed to help.)


Note my lovely Twilight/New Moon-themed wrapping colors. (Finding black and white holiday paper that's not Super Artsy isn't easy. Blood red ribbons and bows, though, abound.)

Scarf Frenzy!

I did get some knitting done. I made a pretty red scarf for OFA, and it knitted up quickly... and then I re-read the instructions. "No Super-Bulky, please." DRAT.


But it knitted up really fast, so I kept going...

And now I have Christmas gifts for the two ladies in my carpool (the red and the green) and my friend at work who crochets (the yellow). I'm making one for myself, of course, in green... and orange!

A Lovely Finish (finally!)

If you're a cousin of mine, don't give my in-laws the link to this, I want it to be a surprise. (It's unliklely my in-laws would read this page before Christmas... I think. I hope.) Anyway, finished a MAJOR big project. This is Lavender & Lace's "Angel of Hope". My father in law showed me the pattern a few years (like three?) ago, and said that he just liked the picture, he wasn't planning on stitching it or anything. I might have mentioned that I was familiar with the pattern, and went home and started it immediately at full size. I didn't like the way it was going, so in 2006, while recovering from surgery, I started again, but smaller. It's supposed to be stitched 2 over 2 on 32ct linen (or over 1 on 16ct). This is 2 over 1 on 32ct linen (2 because it's all half-cross stitches, and two strands gave the right amount of coverage). So, instead of being a wall-eating 16 x 24 when framed, this photo is only slightly smaller than actual size (I guess that depends on the size of your monitor, too - mine's 17" diagonal).


I'm really impressed with the way it came out, and while I won't have it framed for Christmas, I'll be rolling it up carefully to give to my in-laws, with frame to follow roughly mid-February. Yay!

Kitcheny Goodness!

This isn't even slightly about yarn, but I'm not gonna apologize for that, I'm too excited. You know there was a bit of kitchen trauma last week. But it's over, and I can now present you with the pretties! (Yes, I should've done this earlier, but I'd been gone from the office for two weeks, and there was a bit to catch up on.)

First, the refrigerator. This (which leaked a bit, which caused an ongoing mold battle between me and the alleged "seal" of the freezer)


...was replaced by THIS lovely creature:




The old dishwasher was almost 40 years old. Absolutely the state of the art, top of the line in 1973! It leaked (that's what the little catch-tray on the floor is for), and didn't actually clean so well; we used it as a sterilizer, mostly. (It also tended to get a wee bit hotter than it was supposed to; it really was sterilizing things in boiling-hot steam.)


I've been wanting something that would actually wash the dishes without any help from me for quite some time, so the Noisy Monster that Tried to Eat the Kitchen was replaced with stainless steel, inside and out. Which, I should add, both cleans dishes by itself, and does not leak!




Since our microwave is also stainless steel, we sprung for a new kitchen clock, too:


(Yes, that's police tape that says "DANGER MEN COOKING". When we moved in, my mother insisted that I put a border up in the kitchen. So I did. She's been trying to get me to take it down ever since.)

With all this shiny new stuff, I actually cooked yesterday. It went well; everything worked, everything cleaned up delightfully easily, and no one got sick from it!


Yaaaay, the new appliances work!!

Still in appliance mode.

New refrigerator - lovely. Very shiny.
New dishwasher - someone f'ed up at the installers, so they aren't delivering today. Bloody good thing I've got an extra day, or Someone Would Be Unhappy that wasn't me. Also, they should be really glad it was my husband on the phone, not me. I'm sleep depped from getting everything ready for the install, and cranky as heck. I should get a call tomorrow with my delivery window by 8am. If I don't, I WILL be the one calling, and I'll be more sleep deprived and crankier.
Means I can't put the house back the way it should be yet.
And I refuse to get food/start cooking until I haz dishwashr.
Eventually, photos. Really.