The Christmas gifts have been received!  They are also all loved.  Time for the show and tell.  

The first is the afghan I made for my parents. I used the same Sudoku idea I did for the afghan I made for my in-laws. In this case I only used two colors and chose one number on the puzzle to randomly disperse the accent color. They really liked it and said it matches the living room wonderfully.



For my brother, I made Mr. Pitt's Socks out of Lion Brand Sock-Ease.



I also made Mr. Pitt's Socks for my brother-in-law, Paul. I made these out of Misti Alpaca Handpainted Sock yarn.



Also out of Misti Alpaca are my sister's socks. I used Cookie A's Hedera pattern from Knitty.com.



Last but not least are the socks I made for my sister-in-law, Andrea. For these I adapted a stitch pattern from volume one of the Vogue Stitchionary. It's the closest I've come to designing my own pattern. I made these out of Conjoined Creations Flat Feet.



I'm almost done with my first Mingus sock.  It looks awesome!  I will want invisible shoes to wear with them.

The gifts are finished and in the mail!  I am so happy.  Hopefully they will be received tomorrow and I'll be able to post them here soon!  Christmas is over!

I have started my Eastscarf and I really love working with the Malabrigo.  I needed to get new needles for the scarf and as a special treat for myself, I got Lantern Moon Ebony circs.  I must admit that they aren't quite as nice as my Pony Rosewood circs, but they run a close second.  I am about 55 rows into the scarf, but for some reason, I decided that I needed to also be working on socks as well, so I cast on Mingus.  I am using Noro Kureyon Sock yarn.  These will also be for me.  

Yesterday was weigh-in day and I am down another 2.2 lbs!  I am only 1.6 lbs. away from my first goal of 20 lbs. which is 10% of my starting weight.  My jeans are starting to get baggy and I am fitting back into some of my old clothes.

In Saffy news, she got a bath today.  I have to keep treats next to the sink while I am bathing her to keep her from jumping out.  After her bath, she went seriously nuts.  I think she thought she could outrun her wet fur.  I was wearing a cardigan and she kept jumping into the front of it and out the bottom.  She is now beautifully fluffy and smells wonderful.  One of the women in my knitting group has a dog that's a little bit bigger than Saffy.  She knit him a sweater which turned out to be too small so she gave it to me.  Here's a closing shot of Saffy in her new sweater:

I'm down another .8 lbs this week.  I honestly believe the slowdown in weight loss is that I haven't been eating enough food.  I went back to yoga this week and probably should have begun to eat my activity points on top of my daily points.  Metabolism and they way the human body works can be so counter-intuitive sometimes.  I guess I need to work on eating more healthy, higher point value snacks.  

I finished another gift, so now I only have the one remaining.  I am about half finished.  The end is in sight, as is the Malabrigo!

I finished a gift last night!  All I have to do is weave a couple of ends in.  I have half of one gift and a quarter of another left.  I hope to have everything out by the beginning of next week.  That means that Christmas will be finally over!  My next project will be for myself.  I bought two skeins of Malabrigo in burgandy and am planning to make Norah Gaughan's Eastscarf.  I am a total sucker for Norah Gaughan's patterns.  

Back in October I knitted two 8-inch squares for the "Friends of Fake News" group on Ravelry.  Painty, one of the moderators, put together this amazing flag afghan for Stephen Colbert.  It was sent out last week and was received at the show on Friday.  We're hoping that our gift gets some airtime so I've been watching "The Colbert Report" with my fingers crossed every night.  Here is Painty's blog entry with a photo of the completed afghan.  Unfortunately, it is so big she wasn't able to take a full picture of it, but I believe she said it ended up being queen-sized.  Luckily, both of my squares are visible in the picture.  Both are white.  One is the second square in the white stripe next to the blue field, and the other is directly below it in the next white stripe down.  So, watch "The Report" and keep your fingers crossed for us!

We had eight inches of snow on Sunday and our plow guy never came, so on top of the tons of yoga I have been doing, I have added snow shoveling to my workout regime.  The city plows dump all the snow in our yard because we are at the end of a dead-end street.  This morning I had to shovel a huge snowbank to free our mailbox.  I'm just glad that I have a truck with four wheel drive so I can get up out of our driveway.  Hopefully we won't get too much more snow before the snow we already have melts.  Too bad it's going to be super duper cold the next couple of days.  Stay warm!

I had my first weigh-in of the new year today.  I am down 4.6 lbs for a total of 15.4!  I am very happy.  I am beginning to see the changes and I am starting to fit back into some clothes that I've outgrown.  So far I've lost 25% of my goal.  Yay!

About a week and a half ago, I applied for a job with a broadcasting corporation in Bedford, NH.  Today I got a call about the job and had a five minute phone interview.  Of course, I totally think I bombed, but I can never be objective about these things.  I always assume the worst.  The position is for an executive assistant/marketing assistant with a background in finance.  Basically, the job description fits my work history to a tee and I think I would be a great fit.  We'll see what happens.

Tomorrow it is back to yoga after many many weeks away.  It is going to be painful, but I will power through it.  

As for the Christmas gifts, I am still slowly trucking along.  I hope to finish at least one of the gifts this weekend and maybe two if I am lucky.  Hopefully I can send them out next week sometime along with my niece's and nephew's birthday presents.

Ugh.  I am still trying to finish Christmas gifts.  I have three left.  I am done with half of one, a third of another and two-thirds of the last one.  I feel like I am never going to finish these gifts.  

Patrick went back to Bangor last night.  He had been home about three weeks so it is very empty around here.  I miss him.  

Saffy has been a bit nutty today.  I was working on my laptop and she decided she wanted my attention so she jumped onto the keyboard while I was on my "bookmarks" page.  She landed right on the delete key and ended up deleting all my bookmarks.  As soon as it happened I tried to remember everything and re-enter them all, but I barely got half.  Oh well.

I've been spending way too much time on Facebook lately.  It's so addicting.  I particularly love the chat feature and have reconnected with a ton of people from my past chatting about stupid stuff.

I'm heading back to yoga this week.  Hopefully I will be able to get off my butt and do something about my life.  I'm still looking for a job and still working on my weight.  I have a lot to do.