quiet in the studio, laughter in the house.....

As I said yesterday, my sister and family were down to visit us yesterday.



What with work schedules, surgery (my brother in law's), nasty weather, etc., etc., we had not yet exchanged CHRISTMAS!!

Needless to say, it was long overdue.

Here are the wrist warmers my sis made for me....lovely hand knit, warm to wear and warm to look at! No more sore wrists from the cold, and NO, its not too late in the season for me to need them! (see my post from the Ides of March to understand the fits and starts of spring at 6000 feet)



and there are these little goodies.....a full set of knitting needles/cables/ends, etc, in there own case.

These are the other end of the scale from the ones that DH got for me at Christmas, so now I'm really ready to have half a dozen knitting projects in the works, even if 2 of them need the same needles.

I'm so sold on circular needles that I'm thinking of getting rid of all of my old straight ones (except the double points and the ones my grandfather hand made me when I was a kid).




And there is this great book!

As I may have mentioned, knitting has changed and evolved a lot in the 30 some years I was busy in corporate America and not paying attention! They write patterns in a language I don't understand!

This book explains (and shows with PICTURES!!) what all those new strange abreviations mean....oh joy!



And then there was the software. Wonderful stuff! This little program will let me draw up my beading patterns and then help me calculate how many tubes of each color of bead I need. It will also let me create a usable pattern, which may be extremely helpful in the developement of the idea for the beading book.

Under the catagory of "just in time" this will be an unbelievably wonderful tool to help in the designing of the Archangel Icon that I have been doing the research and planning of.

I'm also thinking it may be useful for designing quilts....mosaic quilts....picture quilts pieced with straight lines.....mmmmmmmmmmm!

We had a great time visiting too.....we made a big batch of red clam chowder, a salad and some great artisan bread.....topped off with a freshly made lemon cake (which we ate half of!)

It was a lot of fun.

So today, its back to work.....we need to do some work in the yard (oh joy, I get to pick up after the dog) as we have ordered some little trees for the back terrace and they are on the way, and the sewing machine beckons with some bears waiting to be stitched.....

hi ho, hi ho, its off to work I go!