Five Favorites for This Friday

I think it's time for another post of things that made me happy over the past week. I know it's getting into an extra busy time of year for a lot of you, so this is your reminder to hold on to the things that make you happy, make you laugh, let you feel like yourself no matter what else is happening.

1. I sent off the Advent calendar to my great-niece and great-nephew, once I found things to stuff into the teeny tiny stockings. It ended up being a combination of "penny" candy from a store here called Five Below, a variety of very tiny ornaments I came across at Target, some of the 50-cent and dollar coins that The Tim's mother had kept, and then for the 24th day, a ten dollar bill for each of them. I know it was safely received, since my niece texted me. She said she is hiding it until they return from their trip home for Thanksgiving, so that even if they "decimate" it, it will happen during December. 😊

2. Weather that is matching the season! It's been cool at last here, feeling legitimately like fall. Yesterday and today have been rainy, which is also fine because a) it's cozy, and b) we really need any rain we can get. 

3. The floors on our first floor. We have random-width pine floors throughout the house, dating from when it was built, which was sometime before 1850. We've had a large rug covering most of the first floor since we moved in, and recently sent that out to be cleaned. In the meantime, The Tim has cleaned and polished the floors all over that level of the house, and it is so pleasing to see them looking so nice. When we bought our house, it was largely because we were completely drawn in by the floors, and they look better than they have for a long time.

4. I have been able to eat and drink whatever I want since my colonoscopy is over! It's not that I am stuffing my face 24/7, but just that it's nice if I decided to have an apple that I can do just that. The prep last week was bad enough, but the day of my procedure, my appointment was for 2 p.m. and I wasn't allowed to even have water after 5 a.m. I would been willing to mow down a group of kindergartners for a glass of water by the time I was leaving!

5. My knitting has pleased me this week. It made me happy to see how thrilled The Tim was with his replacement sock, which really didn't take that long to knit once I actually got it going. 

And do you remember a few weeks back, I showed you the beginning of my first ever two-color yoked sweater?

Well, I've continued working on it, and as of today, I have 15 rounds left on the patterned part before I get to just knit and knit and knit until it's an FO. And though there are parts that are wonky, I'm really pleased with how it looks now:

 

It still takes me a LONG time to get through each round, because even though it's not as slow as when I started, I'm still slow with both colors AND the chart. But as they say, slow and steady wins the race. Well, not that it's a race, but ... you know what I mean!

So what has made you feel good this week? I hope you can come up with at least a few things. 

This weekend I'm hoping to get things more organized - between things being all over the place while The Tim was working on floors, and being in the throes of switching summer clothes for winter clothes, things are distressingly messy in our house at the moment. So I'm hoping to get it all under some kind of better control. We're also going to figure out our Thanksgiving menu, so we can make sure we have the ingredients on hand. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving (as usual), but also as usual, am surprised it's almost here!

Whatever your plans, I hope you have a weekend that agrees with you. Take care and I'll check in again next week.

A Non-Knitting FO (From the Land of the Miserable)

Hello! I am on Day 2 of colonoscopy prep, and have decided that medicine really needs to get on the ball here. After Day 1, I am feeling incredibly awful on approximately 2 hours of sleep with a headache that would stop a buffalo from winging. Surely medical science can find some better method for this. I told The Tim that the military should use colonoscopy prep instead of waterboarding, because frankly right now I'd admit to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby.

I just hope that tomorrow when I go for my 2 p.m. appointment, that they are on schedule. Last time, they were running behind, and I had to sit on a gurney in a hospital gown for 2 1/2 hours waiting. 

OK, enough of my whiny self. Let's move on to something more pleasant, shall we? (And thank you for listening while I complained.)

A few weeks ago, I started working on a kit that I had ordered probably three years ago from Katrinkles. It in included felt shapes and buttons that you put together to create an Advent calendar. 

First, I used embroidery thread to sew on the numbered buttons:

I did them in groupings, so that I'd stay motivated. Then, according to the directions in the kit, you were supposed to use embroidery thread again to sew the stockings together. I decided that I would use red and green yarn instead. 

Once that was finished, I had to figure out a way to hang them on something to make a garland-type thing. Enter this, which I found by mistake looking for the site where we had recently purchased wool dryer balls to forward to a friend. 

I had left long tails after I sewed to get her the stockings, so I tied those tails around the string in between the colored balls, and voila! Advent Calendar FO!

(hanging on a curtain rod to see how it all looked)

The garland had a long string and a few more little wool balls on each end to hang it up. I am really happy with it, and happy that it is not just cute, but that I was able to use some of my stash yarn on the stockings.

So now it's a matter of finding small things that will fit into the stockings. I'm hoping to get that done either this weekend or throughout next week, so I can send it to my great-niece Penn and great-nephew Oden in plenty of time for December 1. I've already decided that for the 8th, 16th, and 24th, I'll put in some money - The Tim suggested that we use some dollar coins that his mother used to save because then it would seem like "treasure." (Since there's also a good chance that kids their ages have never seen dollar coins.)

I don't know what took me so long to actually make this. It seriously took so little time, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Needless to say, you could just make it as a decoration, but I had bought the kit with the intention to make it for Penn and Oden, and wanted to do it before they were too old to really think it's fun.

I checked on the Katrinkles website, and now they sell the buttons you can sew on, and provide a pattern for mini-socks, but no longer have kits like this one. Just so you know - I guess you could still make little felt stockings yourself, though. (No, I wouldn't either it's true.)

So once my life is livable again, I'll be heading to the dollar store or the equivalent for other things to include. I think it will be fun. And I plan to send each of them a book for a Christmas gift, so there will still be something under the tree to open. 

*****

And so stringing those onto the garland kept me occupied and distracted yesterday, which was nice and also fun. After tomorrow, I will be busy getting things ready for The Tim's birthday on this coming Monday. I am keeping that in my brain so that I have happy thoughts today and tomorrow. 

I'm trying it all, because at this point, any distraction is a worthwhile one. 

Now I must go start drinking horrible things, etc. as part of Day 2. Please drink and eat things that are yummy and enjoyable today and tomorrow - enjoy it all! 😊