HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Gott Nytt År!

Bonne année

Gutes Neues Jahr

May you all be healthy and happy in 2004

Worked like crazy on the ribby pullover yesterday. Probably overdid it as my left arm is hurting today. I desperately want to finish this for a couple of reasons.
#1 I am fed up with knitting all this rib. It really does a number on my wrists for some reason.
#2 I am in design mode. Want to design a dog sweater. No idea what is making me want to do this, but I will see if I can. It might take a week..it might take a few months. It might be knitted or I might crochet for the first time in over a year. Lots of "mights".

Christmas was really tiring. I am not used to cooking 3 full meals a day. The in-laws expect cooked breakfast, lunch and supper. I seemed to do nothing else. Ron bought me a dishwasher for Xmas but the cabinet we are putting it in still hasn't arrived from Ikea. It was shipped on Dec 6th so I am getting worried. The dishwasher would have certainly saved me even more time in the kitchen.

We bought Jesse a little keyboard for Christmas. He loves it. That boy is so musical. Grandpa played the accordion and Jesse was bashing away on the keyboard. It was too cute!

Season's Greetings to you all!

Wishing everybody a safe holiday.

Got up this morning and decided I needed a change. Pulled may hair around and thought, "CUT IT!".
Now I am not one that likes going to the hairdressers. I have had long or longish hair nearly all my life and I "taught" boyfriends and husbands (yes there have been more than one) to trim it. So I asked DH if he thought he could cut it how I wanted. He agreed to give it a go. Well I have to say that he did great. So I went from long hair halfway down my back, to hair neatly cut above my shoulders. It hangs really well. I love it and people keep commenting on how nice it looks. Amazing!

Ribby Pullover is now all on one big circular. I just managed to slip all the stitches onto one needle before Jesse woke from his nap. When he has gone to bed for the night, I will get back to it. I found this much ribbing to be really hard on my wrists for some reason. Maybe the yarn was a tad stiff so that wouldn't have helped.

Everybody ready for Christmas? Me neither. Feels like I am going down with a cold too. I had a bad cold last Xmas. Jesse had one the year before.

Gosh was it THAT long since I entered something in the blog. Oops.

We put the tree up on Sunday. Jesse was napping. Got the camcorder and digital camera ready for when he woke. He walked into the living room and literally jumped with glee. He skipped around, he sang. He was so cute that I couldn't hold back the tears....and that was the end of the photographs. All night he just sat next to the tree. Wanted mommy to sit there all night too :-) Christmas has a new meaning now that Jesse is old enough to get involved.

On the knitting front - nearly at the end of the 2nd sleeve of the ribby pullover. Then I have to attach sleeves to body and knit the yoke.
Once I have finished this, I plan on making some felted slippers (Fiber Trends patterns) and a bag. Not sure which bag pattern to use yet. I don't want anything big and bulky. Just need something to hold my wallet and credit cards.

Inlaws are coming for Christmas. Been reading Terri's KnitBlog and now am living in fear of the mother-in-law.

Hubby flew north to Inuvik this morning. Must be dark nearly all day up there. And colder than here...and we are hovering around -25c. BRRR
He is gone all week. I can tell that Jesse has worked out that Daddy has gone away as he is acting up already. "I will survive" - not that I have much choice, of course.

Managed to knit a few rows on my Ribby Pullover. Haven't knitted for days as my right wrist was really hurting. Too much time on the computer last week. Worked on my website a lot. It didn't help with the Google thing but at least I felt like I was doing something.

Want to thank Brooks for letting me sell her lovely Zipple Hat pattern. It is awesome. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. (Support Brooks and help solve her bandwidth problem).

Just wanted to thank so many of your for your wonderful emails and messages. Most businesses are still are affected by the Google search engine problem. No idea if it will ever go back to how it was. Most of us are trying to find other ways to get our businesses noticed. Sadly we don't all have the huge advertising dollars of the big companies. Thankfully I had built up quite a customer base so I am not totally down and out. Will work hard in other directions now.

Things got put into perspective this week. My Dad's wife emailed me to say Dad had fallen out of bed and fractured his hip. He is 74. Not a good age to do something like that. He had to have a plate inserted and can't walk well at all. I feel out of touch as I am in Canada and Dad is in England. It took 8 days for anybody to tell me. My sister didn't even bother emailing me!!!!!!!

Then I read a friend's blog and cried over her brother's cancer worries. Things like this are awful. You can't help. You don't even know if you are saying the right words. You can't hug the friend as they live on the other side of Canada.

So while my business problems are a worry, they are not anything like my Dad's problems or the problems of my friend's brother. I have my health. I have my son.