Christmas celebrations in our household usually have at least two separate celebrations…one with family (this year, we had two with family) and one with Charles.

So Far/So Good

We spent some time with my sister and her family up in Massachusetts and it was joyous and fun with fantastic food.  My mom has a place by my sister now, so we got to see her as well.

Then we travelled across the State to see Thaddeus’ sister and family.  It was joyous and fun with fantastic food as well.

My sister-in-law found this little gem for me and it really tickled me.

Kaffe Fasste Collective Hand Creams is available on Amazon for the low-low price of $125!

To be fair, it looks like that version on Amazon has a cardboard sleeve printed with Kaffe’s fabric design and mine just might be missing that.  But I thought this was a great find!

We celebrate second-Christmas on New Year’s Eve with our friend Charles.  It starts with nibbles and beverage and presents at his place and then moves to a local restaurant for a festive holiday dinner.

It’s always wonderful extending our Christmas holiday for a week and enjoying it that much more.

Current Knitting

Making fast and furious progress on the Briyoke sweater.

A few things about this design and the yarn:

• Two-color brioche in-the-round is addictive and very easy once the rhythm is established
• Increases are simple and easy, but difficult to document in a pattern, so they seem a lot more complex than they are
• I would highly recommend choosing colors for this project in person. The main yarn color I chose (Malice) is very different than it appears on the web site…here’s what it looks like on the web site:

Here’s what my yarn looks like:

My Malice is mostly midnight blue/black with swaths of reds and blues, which is more contrasty with the background color (Swamp) than I had hoped.  There are many warning about differences in dye lots, batches, etc. on the web site.  And don’t get me wrong, I’m liking how my sweater is knitting up, but this is one time where I wish I had heeded the warnings and decided to see the yarn in person before buying it..