The party’s over, at least until New Year’s and it’s back to reality time. Knitting-wise, blocking is my dreaded reality, but I’ve found a solution. Drop everything and head to your local welding supply to buy 1/16 inch stainless steel welding rods. If you are blocking lace, do it yesterday! What a gift these babies are; inexpensive bits of heaven. Cut your blocking wires into a variety of lengths, weave them in and out along the outside edge of your knitting, put in a few pins and voila – beautiful blocking technique with no annoying pin points. Just make sure they are the "unfluxed" variety or give them a good scrub with SOS pads ahead of time. It’s a little easier, but not necessary, if you file the ends to a sharp point.
The old way vs the new way:
Christmas update: Our low key holiday was a success. Look what we substituted for a tree; these lawn decorations made an acceptable substitute:
Christmas day started with 8:00 a.m. church. It was nothing short of a miracle to get everyone to agree to get up at that hour. Our simplified gift giving worked like a charm: I let the kids know in advance how much I can spend at Christmas, then it’s up to them. They can choose any combination of gifts or cash up to my limit. I liked Bryant’s choice: one gift for himself, no money and a gift for a family in need. We had our traditional duck dinner, cooking two extras for the Boxing Day Danish cold meal.
Boxing Day was a success with 19 for dinner, including Anne, a friend at the start of a similar knee journey to mine. Her son noticed how I was asking my daughter to take on a number of extra tasks since I’m still on crutches. Matt said "You sound just like my mom, who’s been asking me to do everything, only I drew the line at licking her envelopes!" You probably had to be there, but having been tempted to exercise parental license during this time of recovery, it cracked me up. And the winner of this year’s Akvavit induced behaviour award goes to daughter #1’s bf for playing catch the panting dog’s tongue with Gracee.
Hope you had a good one.
Life's a Stitch 
Leave a comment