Merry Christmas from the sinning Gargoyles!

My husband is very sweet – he bought me my seven sinning gargoyles for Christmas and had them be from the main characters in the books. Merry Christmas!! 🙂

 

Merry Christmas!!

It’s Christmas Eve and the baking is done, the presents are wrapped and most importantly of all the family is safe at home. It has been an amazing year, filled with learning new things and meeting wonderful people; it has been an interesting and incredible adventure. The most wonderful gift was having the hubby return from his year-long deployment in September.

Merry Christmas!!

Other stuff

My poor, poor baby was sick over the weekend – high fever, throwing up, etc – but it only lasted for a day and then she spent a few days recovering. But then on Monday her body responded with the biggest fever blister she has ever had and it just looks so painful. She is no longer able to get sick because her body does not react well to illness. I’ve discussed it with her and she promises to try.

….

My eldest son was playing a game with her and he said, “Do as I say and not as I do.” And she asked what he meant by that and so he tried to explain, beginning with the question, “Well, if you do what I do, what would you do?”

Without batting an eye, she answered, “I’d apologize.”

It’s December and I’m swamped

Surely much of it is self-inflicted but it is December and I do enjoy baking goodies and making gifts; there’s just so many delicious things to cook and each year we add more recipes to our collection. At the same time I am anxious to wrap up Armand’s story but the muses are playing hide and seek – in another dimension, occasionally popping their heads in for a few moments just to tease me.  Anyway, I grew up in Minnesota and that usually meant snow on the ground before Christmas – usually. But now I am in North Carolina and while we have had some chilly weather, we have also enjoyed some very warm, 70 degree weather, which I love even though it makes it slightly more difficult to get into the Christmas spirit. But we have put up the lights and we got our tree and the presents are wrapped and snuggled underneath said tree and the ingredients are out and the gift containers are lined up and the Christmas music is playing….

And Armand is still waiting.

Sock monkey hat results

I wanted to make something special for my nephew for Christmas this year (I love that little guy – we share the same birth date and the same Chinese year, which is rare. And Awesome. We’re both bulls born in the year of the ox; doubly stubborn.) and I came across the sock monkey hat pattern. There were several patterns available but I decided to go with the one here. 

My first attempt, following the directions exactly, though perhaps with the wrong thickness of yarn, resulted in a hat that was just a bit too big – for my little dog. Bumping up my crochet hook to a J and increasing the rounds of white to 10, the next hat was almost the correct size for the toddler but was better fitted to my tweener. So I decreased the rounds of white to 9, used cream instead, and then followed the pattern the rest of the way, more or less, with 9 rows of grays and 14 sc for the ear flap (instead of 11) and three rounds on the ear (instead of two) for a bigger ear. And I am happy with the result – we even found the perfect eyes. Even better: my daughter’s hand was the perfect size for making the pom pom.

Now the tip of my ring finger on my right hand is a little numb – I’ll have to figure out a better way to hold my crochet needle.

And now back to work on Armand. 🙂