Wow, the past few months have been *very* busy for me.  Not only was there the usual holiday rush, but Portland was hit with Snowmegeddon - twice!  The first hit right before winter break, so the kids were out of school early.  Then after the extra-long break, they only got to back to school for a few days before we got hit again, this time harder than the first!  Our cities aren't used to the levels of snow that we've gotten this winter and the roads weren't taken care of.  Then a few days later we got ice storms that froze the roads into skating rinks for a week.  It effectively shut much of the cities down, including the schools!

We finally are back to normal weather for the first time in over a month, and the kids are finally back in school.  Add in a bad flu, a lice scare, friends moving, and notice of a relative's passing.  Unfortunately, damage has been done and I am battling burn-out. 

The only knitting I've been doing recently is ribbed hats that don't take any concentration at all.  Its about all that I could handle for a while.  I hope that once I'm rested a bit more then I can get back into some juicy projects.  I want to finish designing the alien hats I'd been working on! 

Next time I will show you what I worked on for my kid's Christmas gifts.

Sorry, all.  I didn't forget you.  I just don't have the brain power to form coherent sentences....

All the holiday busyness and lack of sleep has made my head explode.  I'll be back after the holidays and will have LOTS to talk about.   :)   Until then you can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for small daily updates.  (Links are in the column to the right.)

Happy Hanukkah!  Merry Christmas!   Happy holidays!

Think of a Happy Thought, Any Happy Little Thought

Where did the week go?  I've been concentrating hard on my project list that I've barely noticed the individual days go by.  All in all, it has been a pretty good week. :)

Yes, I researched, prayed, cried, and voted.  I have been avoiding the nasty social media war.  

Please, lets not talk about it here.  Happy thoughts only!

Last Saturday I put the finishing touches on the hats my aunt commissioned me to make for Christmas gifts.  I would recommend both these patterns and the yarn I used.  

Trying to Catch My Breath

I'm trying to catch my breath over here for a moment so I can tell you all what I've been up to!  The time crunch last week was so severe that I didn't have time to stop and write my weekly blog, so now I have a lot of catching up to do here.

Thomas' birthday was in September, but as it was such a difficult month I couldn't do his birthday party yet.  Then my husband got a big electronics order from the company he works for; he worked on it evenings and weekends.  So that meant that I couldn't host a party here, so then I started thinking about putting the money up for renting the community room that our apartments has for events. The more I thought of it, the more I liked the idea.

We don't have a tiny apartment, but it isn't huge either so we can only host small parties here.  Having it at the community center would open it up to being able to invite anyone / everyone he wanted.  Since he really wanted to have a table top game (board games, dice games, card games) party, this would be a great time to do the big party thing!

Never a Dull Moment

I recently wrote a detailed account about what was going on with my ferret, Pandora, in another post.  In between all that drama I had other things going on, of course.  Nothing is ever simple around here!  Did I mention that I finally caught my kid's cold over the weekend?  (Frequently going out in the storm washing helping things.)  Blur and Anna both came down with a second cold, too, so we were all miserable.  'Tis the season!  This threw Blur's new schedule all out of whack, and he had been making great progress with his sleep / wake cycle. 

I started knitting a stocking cap for my nephew while I was visiting family in June.  He requested a slouchy black beanie with a symbol from his favorite anime, Fairy Tail, on it.  He has a large head and sock yarn with size 3 needles takes a long time to knit a beanie.  So unfortunately I didn't get it finished while I was there.  I did finish knitting it sometime after I got home, however when I found a model with a similarly sized head I found that the hat fit perfectly... not slouchy.  So I was going to have to frog out the decreases and knit about 3 inches more.  Well I finally got around to doing that last week and finished the hat a second time.

Next came the hard part; duplicate stitching.  I had in my mind that the emblem was going to be fairly