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.

I'm feeling melancholy this evening.  No plans for New Year's Eve this year.  I actually spent the day in my jammies watching the snow and working on Christmas gifts.  Yep, I'm still not done.  

2008 was a rough year for us.  I am kind of glad it is over.  There probably was more good than bad, but the bad has been weighing on me and stressing me out.  Hopefully 2009 will be better.  I don't usually make resolutions, so I am going to keep on doing what I am doing and get the rest of this weight off me and keep it off.  I have also started applying for jobs.  There isn't a whole lot out there now but we'll see.

Best wishes to you all for a happy and prosperous New Year.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  Ours was very quiet.  Just me and Patrick this year.  We woke up, opened presents, watched TV, played some Wii, and had ham for dinner.  Saffy enjoyed the wrapping paper enormously.  She even opened all her presents herself.  She got about a gazillion new toys and yet all she wants to play with is the wrapping paper and the tubes from inside the wrapping paper.  

I am STILL working on Christmas gifts.  Four of them have been received so here, finally, is the first round of Christmas gifts!

This pair was for Rita, Patrick's sister.  I used the Jaywalker pattern by Grumperina that I found on Ravelry.  It's a quick and easy pattern and I love how the yarn worked in this pattern!  I knit these in Blue Ridge Yarn Jubilee.

This pair was for Teri, Patrick's brother's wife.  I used the Monkey pattern from Knitty.  These were also knit from Blue Ridge Jubilee.

This pair was for Patrick's brother, John.  I used the pattern, Mr. Pitt's Socks and they were knitted in Noro Kureyon Sock yarn.

Last but not least, the Sudoku afghan for my mother and father-in-law.  I used Vanna's Choice and made up the pattern myself.  I used shades of blues and grays in honor of my father-in-law's Air Force career and a Sudoku puzzle in honor of my mother-in-law's love of puzzles.

As far as I know, all the gifts were loved.  

In other news, I have officially lost 10.8 pounds as of December 24th.  Yay me!

Sorry it's been a while.  I wanted to post last week, but the universe just said no.  Last Thursday, New Hampshire had a huge ice storm and about half of the state was left without power.  Patrick and I stayed in the house over Friday night.  We slept with the dog and two comforters and many blankets.  I was planning on going to Syracuse on Sunday to visit my friend Sara, but ended up leaving a day early as she had power and heat.  Our power was out a total of five days.  I was going to come home yesterday, but there was snow in New York as well as New Hampshire, so I spent an extra day.  It was a really nice visit, except for the cold I brought home with me.  I just got over the last one.

I'll do some more updates when my head is less stuffy!

4 gifts complete!  I didn't finish yesterday as I was hoping, but just this afternoon.  I doubt I will finish two gifts this weekend either, but I will settle for one.  I am done with the majority of the crocheting for one of the gifts and all that is left is a LOT of finishing.  I can't wait until I can share everything I am working on.  I guess that is my Christmas gift to my blog readers.

I am still stuffy and snuffly.  I can't wait for this to be done!  Saffy keep stealing my tissues and then ripping them apart into a million pieces.  She tries to steal them while I am blowing my nose.  

Just thought I would post a quick update.

I purposely skipped posting yesterday after posting 30 days in a row.  It sure felt weird.  But I am back, typing more about nothing!

I am still suffering from this miserable cold.  It has finally reached my head and I am stuffy and snuffly.  I skipped yoga today as I didn't want my head to explode during the inversions.  I did have an appointment with a new dermatologist today.  I have a bump under my left nostril that has been there for around 15 years.  He thinks it might be a basal cell carcinoma and I have a biopsy scheduled for the 22nd.  I'm not too worried.  It's been there a while so if it was going to misbehave I think it might have done so by now.  My dad just got cleared of skin cancer so it's better safe than sorry.  

Saffy and I had obedience today.  She was really wound up.  She started freaking out the minute she saw me getting her bag ready.  When we got to Petsmart, she walked in the door, stood on her hind legs and waved her paws at the ladies at the checkout.  It was very cute.  She did do a good job in class as I got one good "stay" out of her.  She has been driving me and Patrick crazy lately.  She nips at our arms and scratches my head and face.  The instructor told me to put her in time-out every time she is naughty.  I've been putting her on the floor and standing on her leash until she calms down.  It seems to be working, but I will need to keep it up.   I am such a strict mommy.  Patrick is a push-over when it comes to the puppy, but I am with her most of the time so I guess it falls to me to be the disciplinarian.  I keep telling her that she is lucky we love her so much!

I'm about 3/4 of the way done with one of my gifts!  I hope to finish tomorrow and I want to completely finish two more gifts this weekend.  Wish me luck.

So, I figured out why I was so miserable yesterday.  I caught Patrick's cold.  I woke up with a killer sore throat yet still went to yoga.  At the time I was still holding out that I hadn't caught the cold.  Yoga made me realize that I did.  I spent half the class in child's pose and the other half of the class with my legs shaking.  Class was way harder than it should have been.  I was kind of hoping I'd sweat out any germs, but it didn't seem to work that way.  I'm supposed to go back on Wednesday, so we'll see how I feel.  Patrick had a head cold so I don't expect yoga to be as beneficial when you can't breathe.  

I spent the afternoon on the couch with Saffy and some tea.  I am almost halfway done with another Christmas gift so I am at:

3 complete

4 in process

2 not yet started

I'm getting there!

Today is my baby sister, Drea's birthday.  Happy 26th Birthday Sissy!  I sent her money for knitting lessons.  I tried teaching her this summer and we were working on the knit stitch, but with all the wedding work we didn't have much time to do any more than that.  Hopefully, another convert to the dark side.  Ha ha ha!

Ugh.  It's snowing.  It's times like these that I wish I still lived in Seattle.  Seattle rarely gets snow and rarely gets colder than the mid-30s.  If you want the snow and cold, drive to the mountains.  We used to go skiing all the time.  In New Hampshire, I haven't been skiing once since we moved here.  I don't think my ski gear even fits me right now.  I remember our first winter in NH, Cocoa and Petie (our original Chihuahuas) had never seen snow before.  They did NOT like it one little bit.  We had to dig spots on the grass for them to go potty.  Luckily, they were paper trained so they could go inside if need-be.

Officially, today is the end of NaBloPoMo for November, but I pledged to post one extra day since I started a day late.  I can't believe I was able to do it!  I've really enjoyed meeting so many awesome bloggers through Ravelry and I love to read what everyone is up to.  It's almost like having pen pals.  Blogging is like making the world your pen pal.  Wouldn't it be crazy if my actual pen pal from growing up is reading this?  I doubt it.  I lost track of her a long time ago. . . 

I don't know what it is, but I have been feeling down today.  I think I'm stressed about the upcoming holidays.  I have so much work to do and not a lot of time to do it in.  Back to knitting.

I am halfway done with another gift.  Not much else is going on around here.  Patrick isn't feeling well, so we are just hanging out relaxing.  I hope he gets better soon and I hope I don't get it.  

I'm not very inspired to write right now and I don't have much to say.  Sorry.

Here are the pictures I promised!  First, we have the delicious Thanksgiving feast Patrick and I shared.  Everything was so good.  Isn't the canned cranberry sauce wicked classy?

Next up, we have the awesome Weight Watchers pumpkin pie.  It was very tasty.  

Saffy loves cardboard tubes.  We totally don't need to buy her toys.  We just give her toilet paper rolls.  Yesterday was a very special day and Saffy got the tube out of some cling wrap.  It's extra thick and chewable. 

Last but not least, Saffy was exhausted after her crazy tube chewing and doing tricks for turkey.  Puppy hangovers are so cute!

I got tagged by Tangletale for a meme the other day and I wasn't even paying attention!  I'll even post a real entry later today once I download the pics I took from our Thanksgiving holiday.  Here it is for funsies.

The Rules:
1) Link to your tagger and list all these rules in your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3) Tag 7 people at the end of your post by including links to their blogs
4) Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog

1. I was born almost 9 months to the day after my mother's 18th birthday.
2. I love candy corn and conversation hearts.  
3. I like it when my husband sticks his nose in my eye.
4. I don't like mayo or mustard and would rather eat my sandwiches plain.
5. I don't like crafts that you have to clean up immediately after doing.  Like painting, polymer clay, anything messy like that.  Mostly because I don't like cleaning up after myself.
6. I want a French Bulldog that I will name "Fromage."
7. If someone else is driving, I will almost always fall asleep in the car.
   

I'm tagging: Nicole, Andrea, Lauria, Jennifer, Holly, Laux, and Michelle.  Have fun.

Happy Thanksgiving!  This was the sight that greeted us in our front yard two days before Thanksgiving four years ago.  That was the first time I ever saw wild turkeys and at first I had no idea what they were.  They looked like some sort of prehistoric creature.  Now they are a common feature around here.  Last November I opened the door to let Jesus out and didn't realize until it was too late that there was a group of nine turkeys in our yard standing next to our stone wall.  Jesus got out on the stoop, stopped and stared.  Without warning, he took off at top speed after the turkeys.  The all spotted him and took turns jumping the wall into the woods.  Unfortunately for the turkeys, Jesus was able to chase the turkey in the back of the group away from the rest and it was on.  The turkey turned and ran the opposite direction, her claws clicking away on the pavement.  She was flapping her wings and actually got off the ground a little in her retreat.  She eventually made it to the woods behind our house and Jesus gave up his pursuit.  Patrick and I watched this whole event unfold in hysterics.  We had no clue what Jesus thought he would do if he caught that turkey.  A four-pound Chihuahua doesn't have much of a chance versus a four foot tall wild turkey.  I only wish I had a video of the chase.  

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  I always get up in the morning and watch the Macy's Parade on TV followed by the National Dog Show.  Usually, Patrick and I spend the day alone.  Neither of us have any family nearby and all of our friends do, so they usually have plans that don't include us.  When we were in the army we used to have single soldiers from our units over for dinner.  In Seattle, we had a lot of friends like us who had family elsewhere so we would always come together at the holidays and we became each other's family.  In Wisconsin, all the family comes together and then the day after Thanksgiving, my mom, my sister and my grandma all go to Appleton for shopping and then to Green Bay to spend the night at the casino.  

Whatever your plans, I wish you a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving!

I baked my pie this afternoon.  It smells so delicious.  I can't wait until tomorrow to try it.  I have a ton of phyllo dough left so I am going to have to look for some more recipes to use the dough.  

I went to yoga this morning.  It was great.  I really have missed it and I am glad I am back at it.  I have been going Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  I definitely can feel myself getting stronger.  I love how yoga ideals can be applied to your entire life.  Today the instructor was talking about finding joy even in a struggle.  I think that is something I am going to try to do.  Maybe it will help me learn to be less scared in my life.

Five more days of posting until I have completed my entire month of posts!  Yay for me.  

Thanks, Lauria!  You solved our no-heat-in-hubby's-car problem.  I suggested that my husband check the anti-freeze in his car and it was almost empty.  He filled it back up and, BOOM, heat!  You saved us like $80 which is what it would have cost if we got it looked at by a professional.  

I'm not as inspired to tell stories as I was last night.  Today was very boring.  I went to knitting in the morning, came home, ate lunch, took a nap and did some more knitting.  

My sister-in-law emailed me this morning to let me know she's been following my weight-loss adventures on this blog and started to document her own.  Her blog is Working Class Mother and I recommend you check it out.  Andrea is a great writer and an awesome person.  Probably the best thing to happen to my brother besides his three kids.  You go, girl!

Back in 1996 I was lucky enough to have one of those "what would you do if. . ." experiences everyone asks themselves about.  You know, the kind that you really can't say unless you've experienced it.  I was backpacking in Europe for two and a half weeks during my Easter break.  I had spent about four days by myself in Paris and Nice and was set to meet my friend Jenny in front of a youth hostel in Rome.  We were supposed to meet around 4pm.  There I was, standing on the street with all my bags, just waiting.  I had been in Rome all day and hadn't been able to find an ATM or anywhere to exchange the Francs I had left from France.  I was tired and hungry and Jenny was running almost an hour late.  Standing there, I finally dropped my bags and left them sitting next to my feet.  A minute later, a guy came up to me and started speaking to me in Italian.  I had no idea what he was saying and was just trying to get rid of him when suddenly he just up and left.  I saw him walk to the end of the block and turn the corner.  That's when I looked down and saw that one of my bags was gone.  The bag that was taken was the one with my passport, train tickets, plane tickets, money, and camera.  At that point, instinct totally kicked in and I was running at top speed after the guy who had spoken to me.  Around the corner, I spotted the guy and his accomplice and started screaming at the top of my lungs.  At that point, the guy with my bag dropped it and took off running.  I picked up my bag and started bawling.  I headed back to the street I was supposed to be waiting on and Jenny eventually arrived with her own story to tell.  Her flight had been delayed at Heathrow due to the royal family landing.  I guess they ground all the planes when that happens.  The one thing I learned from the whole experience is that I won't hesitate to act in that type of situation.  It makes me feel safer and more confident.  

I've been watching Band of Brothers with Patrick and wondering how I would act or react in war.  I had all the training and know what I would need to do, but it seems to me that it's one of those situations where you can't know until you are in the thick of it.