December

One last post for 2014!

It's been a busy two weeks. Been using my time off from work to declutter, clean, organize, sort, pack up or throw away basically half the decorations and other items in the house. (I even cleaned through my birthday on the 21st! RAWRRR!) Many many boxes have been filled for good will and countless trash bags and other items have made their way off to the trash heap. Hasn't been much fun, to be honest, because it's been SO MUCH work (almost like moving) but it was very needed. I've felt for a long while that I have entirely too much 'stuff'. You go through a grieving of sorts as you bin it but then a few days later you realize you don't notice it's gone at all. And if that sounds drastic - it is............but it's also not. I still have PLENTY of stuff left! :)

(Psst. There is stuff to be given away at the end of this.)

 

It's too bad I live in too rural an area for a yard sale because I could have a FABULOUS one in the spring with the stuff currently living in boxes downstairs. Ah well. If that's the price I have to 'pay' for living on an off-the-beaten path itty-bitty slip of  a street that's hard to find even when you are looking for it, so be it. It's also quite nice when you can go hours and hours without even seeing a neighbor's car drive by. :)

So. Didn't get much knitting done for Christmas or anything else for that matter with all that going on. 

A pair of socks from November were finished and I washed/blocked the wad of blanket squares that I had finished in the last few months. (Counted this morning and I now have 82 squares completed. I think at least another 48 will be needed to make a good sized blanket. 48. *sigh*)

A new hat for Christmas.......well.......it's in progress. The lobsters are growing a little each day.

The tree finally made it up - on Christmas Eve. Better late than never, eh? 

Very nice to have it up after taking last year 'off' because KITTENS.

Said cats were nice enough to *cough* get us a present this year. (Which I generously paid for. And shopped for.)

Huh. Cheeky little buggers!

After that massive decluttering/cleaning I wasn't much in the mood for all the decorations to be put out so I kept it to the basics: stockings, various holiday candle holders, lighted pine garland on the staircase, etc. 

And I changed up my little 'stitchy' basket with a winter theme that should last until spring. :)

I thinned out my cross stitch patterns as well and have a big stack of them to give away if someone wishes to pay for the shipping on them. There is a bit of everything in there from Bent Creek, Lizze Kate, The Drawn Thread, Cricket Collection, etc. 

 There are also a bunch of Shepherd Bush patterns *without* the kit materials they originally came with. 

I've gone through each one very careful to make sure they are in order and no pages are missing, etc. It would probably be like $10.50 for a priority mailer in the US, international....I'm not sure. I would need your address to figure it but I do enough 2-3 ounce overseas packages to know it would probably be upwards of $20-25. 

You must take the whole thing though. I'd rather stab myself in the eye than have to piecemeal it, sorry! Leave a comment if you want them, if more than one person does I'll just randomly pick a name after a week or so.

Ok, I think that's it for 2014! Have a happy new year everyone! 

Bit somber here, I'm afraid, as my husband's uncle just passed this week. He had been battling cancer for a number of years and it had recently traveled to his brain. It seemed like he would have more time but he started to slip away on Christmas day. I feel so bad for his cousins who have now lost both their parents and all their remaining grandparents within the last four years. Starting the new year with a funeral means you've already gotten the worst part of 2015 out of the way, right? :(

Apologies for being a bit behind on emails and the like.

A close family member passed away last week, after a long (7 years) battle with ovarian cancer, and her services were this weekend/Monday. Everything was just beautiful and I'm sure she would have approved. It was humbling to see how many people turned out for her (well over a hundred) but that's the kind of person she was. Everyone who met her loved her - myself included. She was 57 - the same age as my father when he died. Too young. Too too young. :( 

Anyhoo, I got a little behind on emails and stuff but I'm trying to catch up today with it all.

"Retail therapy" is always good when feeling sad, I've found, so I treated myself to a pair of fabulous (to me) shoes to wear but then only got to wear them Sunday. (I work from home so 99% of my clothing budget goes towards buying schlumpy type clothing. Spending money on something nice is a very rare treat.) I assumed (rightfully so) that trekking about the cemetery in these would not be advisable so I switched to a pair of sensible Docs for yesterday. OH SO GLAD I DID. The church parking lot was a sheet of ICE. I certainly would have fallen and made a wreck of things there. (I've broken my right foot/ankle THREE times so to say I'm klutz is a serious understatement.) And the cemetery...........wow. I got the sense they plowed it about 20 minutes before we showed up. Did I mention we got two feet of snow last week? Yeah. The trek to the grave (and it was a loooong trek because there were about 40 cars to fit in there) was quite the, ummmm, adventure. My fabulous shoes surely would have shot me face first into a snow ditch, on top of some other poor soul's grave. As it was, it was 15 degrees out so there was plenty to be mindful of (like not freezing to death) without worrying about breaking another limb and making a scene. Now the challenge is, I guess, to find somewhere else to wear these so I don't feel like I wasted $50 on them. I might have to class up my trips to the supermarket or something. lol

Afterward the funeral was a big buffet-style family dinner at this wonderful restaurant (River Falls). I'd never even heard of it before but they were so accommodating and the food was fabulous so I'd love to go back under better circumstances. (Every last detail of everything, by the way, was planned by Carol before she passed. She left strict instructions, even down to what we would be served, as to what she wanted. Ha! I love that.) The room fit 70 people and we BARELY crammed in there, having to add chairs to the end of tables, etc. so I'm sure there was more than that there. It was just crazy loud and messy and I'm sure Carol would have loved it. :)

I stole off towards the end when everyone was gearing up to leave to get some air (it really was LOUD in there) and sneak off to poke around a yarn shop (Yarnia) that was just a short walk away. (The restaurant and yarn shop were in side-by-side old brick factory buildings that have been converted into shops, etc.) What are the chances of that? I leave no yarn stone unturned, no matter the circumstances. *ahem* (I am weak in the face of Retail Therapy okay?? I admit it.) The owner was delightful and we had a great conversation on what he was working on that day, my spiral scarf that I was wearing, etc. He didn't have a whole lot in the way of what I would call 'premium' type yarns that I like, like Dream in Color, etc. but I managed to ferret out a couple (new to me) sock yarns for a good price.


Do I need anymore yarn? HELL TO THE NO. I'm chalking these skeins up as doing a good thing by supporting a local business. *cough*

And yes, 90% of this post is filled with mindless fluff because I don't find that I have anything expansive or spiritual to say yet about losing another wonderful family member this year, at a relatively young age, and to a dreadful, horrible disease. It sucks and it makes me angry. No, not angry. Rage. I have a certain amount of rage over it, mixed in with the sadness and right underneath the surface, threatening to spill over, so I'm not going to go there. 0_o