It is almost Christmas

When you are in retail, you had better get your Holiday presents bought and decorating done before Dec 1. After that your time isn't your own until after Jan 1. You are too busy helping other people get their shopping done to take care of your own needs.

So I am knitting like crazy to finish projects for my family. I am sewing on the last sleeve of the frog sweater. As soon as it is done, I will post a picture. When Kathryn picked out the frog suit for her new brother, she and her mom picked out a dress for her. I tore it all out the other night because I discovered that my gauge had changed as I was knitting and it would have come out too small when done. I can't imagine what stress came up that caused that! It is another pattern from Milissa but from her Toddler's book. I am knitting it in Lavold's Cotton Patine. I am not a big fan of cotton knitting and am never happy with how my stitches look. This is going to be a cute little dress. It has a big butterfly on the top front. I am just never really happy with cotton.

I have a couple of quick projects for the Grand-daughters to do too. The two youngest are in the Princess stage and I want to knit and felt a small bag for each of them to carry their jewels in. Of course they will be in pink.

Annika is 10 now and at that between stage. You know the one, between dolls and lipstick!. Boys never seem to have that problem. They start in the car stage and end in the car stage. Chris Longpre' of KnitingAtKNoon has a cute pattern called Salsa that I want to do for Annika. It is a little jacket with ruffles around the edges. I would like to do it in a soft mohair type yarn. Not a lot of fuzz but a bit of a nap. I need to do it soon as the sizes end with a 10. It is cropped so I can get away with it being a bit short.

Chris has a number of great kid's patterns that I want to try. Adriane is knitting Chris' Jersey Shore sweater in Cestari for a shop model now. That pattern is available in sizes from baby through adult and is just a great comfy sweater for all.

We got our hat forms in. I ordered them at market. They are plastic mesh and you freeform knit and crochet to go over them. They are the same idea as the Freeform Purse that I did for the art exhibit a few years ago. I can hardly wait to get started on mine. I want to work with wide ribbons as well as other yarns and make a real Ascot style hat. But the yorkie girls are telling me that I promised them new sweaters and I need new socks so my hat will have to wait.

There is a mohair shrug that I want to do as a shop model too. The bane of owning a shop is that the models come first and your own knitting later. Of course you CAN knit the models for family members but that usually doesn't work. They want to actually wear the items not just see them displayed in the shop!

I am getting more sleep now and the pain level has dropped some and my energy has improved but I still have tons to get caught up on. But there is our Annual Open House coming up Dec 9th & 10th. I can hardly believe that this is our 8th year to be open and to have the Open House. One year a young Annika was our Lucia. This year we will have to be satisfied with a Yorkie Lucia!