The day before Thanksgiving

The sun is out but I am dragging! Mixing fibromyalgia with a husband's bypass surgery is not an easy mix. We fibromites have a saying when we feel bad that an 18 wheeler has been running over us. Well this time that darn truck brought his friends!

I have new yarn to get on shelves and more shelves to restock. And today even yarn feels heavy. But it is such nice yarn. I did get all of the regular Rowan on shelves but not the Rowan Classic, Nashua or Jaeger. hopefully, I will get a burst of energy and shelve it all.

I am almost done with the baby's Frog sweater. Then I have a little dress to finish for his older sister. I haven't a great deal more to knit up before Christmas but I do have this wonderful sweater that I started while Bo was in the hospital for myself. It is a Black Purl jacket pattern called Rapture. I am doing it in Malabrigo. What a 'feel good' yarn. I'd like to get that done before the Hoidays.

I have a good stock of shawl pins in for Christmas presents. Also some nice needle bags. Of course a gift certificate is always good. There seems to be a good number of people knitting small items for presents this year. Mittens and hats seem to lead the list. But we do have those nice cat and dog toy kits for the furry set.

We are just about done with Christmas shopping this year. We all put a $20 to $30 limit on adult gifts. And we have stayed pretty much with in that range. And we got things that the people really wanted too. The kids are getting a bit more but not all that much. And we tried to buy local when ever possible. But I do have to admit that I did some on-line shopping. Things that I couldn't find close buy, I did find on line.

I remember one Christmas as a kid when we got a 'family gift' that was a table tennis set. The net attached to our kitchen table and there were 4 paddles and a couple of balls. We played for years with it. The only thing that we had to replace was balls. Someone in the family would dent the balls playing with them in other ways. But back then we only got presents a couple of times a year, Christmas and Birthdays. I really felt sorry for kids who had birthdays in the summer or near the Holidays. But then an old friend, who is gone now, was a priest and raised in Ireland. Being about the same age as me, he grew up during World War II. His birthday was on Christmas and coming from a large family there were lots of brothers and sisters. He told me that he convinced his siblings that his parents loved him best because he got a cake on his birthday and they didn't. Sugar was hard to get during the war and they only had cake once a year. It was a birthday cake but not his. I always gave him a hard time about it but he would just laugh. It would be hard to explain to kids today that it wasn't that long ago that a cake or simple game for a whole family was a big Christmas gift.

I like the idea of making gifts. A few years back when our kids were at the young adult stage we made it a rule for a few years that all gifts had to be made by the giver. Of course it was easy for me to knit something up but the kids had a harder time. Marion, our youngest, was in college at the time and wondering what to do. She makes really good cheese cakes so I suggested that she make a cheese cake for everyone. I think that Artur made bird houses and book shelves for the girls and me and a gun rack for his dad. Elisabet x-stitched something for everyone. My mother knit socks for everyone. I always thought that it was a double gift, one for the giver and one for the receiver. There are so many gifts that I'd like to get that doesn't cost much but some labor.