Christmas is nearly over

Okay, so in my immediate family, the past few years we've done our main Christmas stuff during Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, for a couple of reasons, mainly that one of my siblings can spend Christmas with the in-laws. So today I don't know what I will be doing, if I will be doing anything at all. The guys are going to spend much of the day playing video games, and when they take a break to eat lunch I am invited over, and if they decide to watch one of the DVDs someone got for Christmas I'm invited over for that too. Other than that I will probably be here cleaning or maybe knitting. And I might go see Grandma, but one never knows if that will involve spending about five minutes actually talking to Grandma, or several hours spent with other relatives who came to talk to Grandma. Either way is okay with me, I just don't know which to plan for.

So, normally, this would be the end of it, except for the after Christmas clearance sales. Well, this year I will attempt to cut down on the clearance sale shopping, with a few exceptions, like if I see any solar powered lights I will get those. I'm thinking that I would like to have several of those, but I'm only planning to buy the one on Sunday, and there probably won't be much left after that. Solar lights would solve my problem of not having an outdoor electrical socket for Christmas decorating, and I also think that the white lights would look good somewhere year round. The office might not agree, so I'm not going to spend that much, and I'm not going to put up anything til sometime next year.

Solar lights are a bit expensive. New and in season cost $20 for a string of 50 lights, so they'll be $10 when I go and look for them Sunday morning, and I probably won't find any left when I go looking for them again at the 75% off sale later.

Ideally, you would have all different colors of solar lights up all year, maybe orange or purple for Halloween, red or green for Christmas, and white for all year long, and then you just cover up the solar panels for the lights you don't want after the holiday has past. But I don't doubt that the office would have a fit over that idea.

Well, a friend of mine got me a purple knitting loom for Christmas, and it is supposed to be the ideal size for knitting adult hats. And it just looked like they were the same as the old yellow looms, just a different color and in a new package for marketing purposes. And I didn't want to tell my friend that I already had two yellow looms somewhere, and that I didn't really think that they were the ideal size for making hats and that I rarely used them at all. But, it's always good to have spare looms, so I just said thank you and something about it being like the ones I made scarves with only bigger, and didn't mention that I already had two yellow looms. But as it turns out, after I got it home and compared it to the yellow loom it is just a bit smaller but has 48 pegs, which is several more than the yellow loom. So maybe it is the ideal size for making adult hats.

Which is not the same as saying the hats are very attractive. Making a baby hat with the red loom works fine, though I'm thinking that they quickly out-grow the hats. This year I also made a child's hat with the green loom, and that also turned out okay. But the loom hats are finished putting a strand of yarn through all the top loops, taking the yarn off of the pegs, and pulling the strand of yarn tight until all of the top loops come together. It doesn't look the least bit round, but on the smaller hats it doesn't look that bad. On an adult hat made with 48 pegs, this makes the top look a bit lumpy, and when it's on a person's head the head looks a bit odd, sort of square.

This is one of those times that I think it would be helpful to know how to crochet or hand knit with regular knitting needles (or maybe in this case circular knitting needles). Maybe someday I will learn how to do that and knit the hat part way on the loom and then finish it the top some other way. But for now the loom by itself will have to do, and I made hats for the baby and Buddy and Buddy's dad.

I didn't think that Buddy would like his hat, and that we would have a hard time getting him to put it on just so that I could see if it fit him. We put on the baby's hat first. Well, Buddy loves the baby, but he's supposed to be getting all the stuff and all the attention, so whenever something is going on with the baby, he tends to interrupt and say that he wants something. So, while mom is putting the hat on the baby, Buddy wants the hat. So when he finds out that he also has a hat, he puts it on. And he keeps it on most of the night. Buddy's dad wanted a picture taken with the three of them in their hats, and then the other two hats came off immediately after the picture. Buddy wore his nearly til bedtime.

I have a sock-loom. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but when I was out shopping Sunday I found a sock-loom I had seen online for $30, and it was $25 in the store. And I'm thinking that I'm going to come back some other day when I have a 40% off or even 50% off coupon and buy the thing. Except that they only had the one, and I'd never seen one in the store before, and they were having an additional 25% off sale, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. I haven't used it yet, and I doubt that I'll be making just tons of socks, but it is something that I have wanted for a while and now I have one.

Well, I still have a few people to exchange gifts with on New Years Eve. One gift is already done (and has been done since last year), I'll have to think of something for K, and I still might make that scarf for the pilot.

But other than that, Christmas is nearly over.

And I still didn't put up a tree.