Christmas is a Comin'

and the goose is getting fat.  Please put a penny in the old man's hat.

I've picked Girl Far From Home up and brought her home.  Other Child is done with school for the year.  We are ready to get ready for Christmas.  We haven't got a tree up yet because last weekend was nuts.  I had hoped to get a tree Thursday afternoon, but it didn't work out that way so I guess we'll get one tomorrow and dress it up this weekend.

I made this cute little ornament for it while I was in Virginia.  It's motif number 4 from the DMC Festive Tatting book but mine does not match the pattern.  If I'd done it right, it should have had 11 of the inner rings but, as you can see, the extras would not have fit.  I'm not quite sure what I did wrong, but I really like it.  It's made in Lizbeth 116 size 20 Christmas Delight.

I also bought Yarnplayer/Marilee Rockley's  Layered Christmas Tree pattern.  I really like the pattern and it's not difficult but I somehow managed to mess it up because I have seven rings on the right size and only six on the left side.  (I'm very good at that - it's no reflection on the designer.)  I'm going to make another one tonight - and if it turns out better than this one, I will probably do another with beads.  Marilee said that in size 20 thread, they'd be about the right size for earings and they are - this is Lizbeth 152 Christmas Green mix in size 20 and the tree is a little over an inch tall.

 And this is why I haven't posted in a while.  I was rushing to get this Christmas Stocking made.  It didn't take long to knit.  It didn't even take long to add the embellishments.  The problem was that I don't like doing intarsia so I decided to knit parts of it stranded.  I discovered that where I was using white as the background, the stranding showed through.  That meant that I was going to have to use duplicate stitch for the name and the wreath and I hate duplicate stitch.  I also hate sewing so the embellishments were daunting.

Once I actually got started, I finished the entire thing in about two days - including reknitting the name portion 3 times in desperate attempts to avoid duplicate stitch.  The knitting itself only took about a day to do and then the embellishing and finishing took another day.  If I hadn't procrastinated for so long, I could have knit 3 or 4 of these in the time I had.

This is the reproduction next to the original.  I hope the lady who commissioned it likes it.  I didn't get to deliver it myself because I had to drive to Virginia, so I didn't see her reaction.  It's not identical but I thought it looked fairly good anyway.

Girl and I passed this swimming pool on the road twice - I've never seen a travel sized swimming pool before!