What a Life!

I love the holiday season. So many bloggers have been doing wonderful series on Advent and such, but due to an unfortunate turn of events this fall, I was kind of late getting into the holiday season. It is my favorite time of year, though, and I’ve decided to celebrate it by doing a series on my blog over the twelve days of Christmas talking about my favorite ways of celebrating the season.

I love Christmas Eve. You’re still feeling the joy of anticipation, and at the same time, you’re close enough that you can start celebrating. Our tree is up, packages are stacked underneath. I have Christmas music playing on the radio. I’m finishing up last minute gifts. And I’ve started making food for our Christmas celebration. Horn rolls. Pumpkin pie. Cinnamon rolls. Maybe even some cookies, if I have time.

This evening, we will go to church. Then we will come home and eat chili – our favorite Firehouse Chili (from here). Steve has requested cinnamon rolls. Chili and cinnamon rolls seem to be a tradition in this part of the country. To me, the two do not go together at all, but Steve claims they served the two together at his school cafeteria and I’ve seen them advertise such dinners for fundraisers and such, so it’s not just some odd convention his mother came up with. When he was a kid, they always had chili and cinnamon rolls on Christmas Eve. In the past, I have made chili Christmas Eve and then baked and served cinnamon rolls Christmas morning (assembled the day before), but this year, Steve specifically requested cinnamon rolls with the chili. Since his brother, Schon, is coming over this evening and spending Christmas with us, it makes even more sense to continue their tradition. So that is what we are doing.

When I was a kid, we opened gifts on Christmas Eve. My sister and I were always so anxious we could hardly stand it, and Mom and Dad were glad to not have to worry about getting up early the next morning. We are German, and I hear the Germans traditionally open Christmas presents on Christmas Eve, so the tradition may have gone beyond my parents wanting to get some sleep.

I don’t remember eating any specific food. I do remember that whatever we had was good and it was winter food, something we didn’t get much of in Florida because it was hot all year. That meant soup or something. And the food always had to be something that could be cleaned up easily so we could go open gifts.

Before we opened our gifts, we made sure the house was clean (so we could enjoy Christmas Day too) and then we all changed into nice clothes so we would look nice in the pictures. Then we dove in. Such fun! It was always kind of a let down to see emptiness underneath the tree again. We cleaned up all the boxes and used wrapping paper so that we could wake up to a fresh house the next morning. Then we went to sleep with dreams of enjoying our gifts the next day.

I would love to continue the tradition of opening gifts the night before, but this year, we will open most of our gifts on Christmas Day. By the time we go to church tonight and eat supper, it will be bedtime for the boys. There is no sense in keeping them up late just to open gifts. I will let Ben open one gift tonight – I made him and his Daddy matching flannel pants to wear to bed at night. Then, if there are any gifts open or surprises revealed before we are dressed and looking presentable tomorrow morning, our pictures can catch Ben and his Daddy wearing their new flannel pants. [I’ve actually heard of moms giving their kids new Christmas jammies and letting them “open” them on Christmas Eve – probably for a similar purpose.]

Tonight after the boys are in bed, I will put any last minute gifts under the tree. Then we are going to set up – and play with – the Thomas the Train basic track set my parents got the boys for Christmas. Ben just has a couple engines right now. One of the gifts he’ll be getting from his Uncle Schon is some more cars to make a train. We’ll be playing with all of them. Incidentally, Ben got a Thomas the Train book from the library the other day and has been asking where his engines are. We’ve just kind of put him off rather than helping him find them in hopes that it will be even more of a fun surprise.

When we open the gifts from my family, we’ll have the web-cam on so they can be in on the excitement. My sister and her husband are in Florida with my parents for the holidays. We’ll still get to see them on Christmas Day even though they are miles away. I am looking forward to that.

I must confess, I am more excited about some of the surprises I have under the tree than I am about opening my own gifts. But enough about that. All shall be revealed tomorrow. Right now I have some dough that needs to be shaped into rolls.

It’s serious now. Christmas is only a few days away. Here is what I have left to do:

• Make menu for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; buy groceries.
• Make flannel pants for Steve and Ben (they are cut out – I just need to sew them)
• Make Baby Bobbi Bear for Joey (get needles first)
• Put up Christmas tree
• Wrap gifts (so I can have my closet back)
• Make food for Christmas – the ahead-of-time stuff like rolls, pie, mashed potatoes… On Christmas Eve, we will have our traditional chili; Steve has requested cinnamon rolls with the chili (a weird Midwestern tradition I can’t seem to wrap my mind around – the two just don’t seem to go together) and he wants the cinnamon rolls with the sticky stuff on top, not the icing. Okay.
• Clean the house.
• Make sure we have clean clothes to wear Christmas Day, including nice clothes for taking pictures when opening gifts.

Things I would like to do before Christmas:

• Take pictures with my new lens so I can get a better feel for it.
• Knit a sweater for Ben. Okay, I know, this one is really out there. But I have the yarn and the needles – maybe I’ll cast-on on Christmas Day and this will be my relaxing project for the Day.
• I have not made any Christmas goodies. Make that, the few I’ve made were long ago eaten. I need to make the Caramel Popcorn Auntie Ann used to make (I have all the ingredients) as well as Peanut Blossoms. The other ingredients I have are non-specific so those goodies can wait until next year, maybe.
• I still have some work-related stuff to do, but I think it may wait until after Christmas. At least some of it.

I think what I really need to do is shut up and get busy. Onward!

Today I got our Christmas package from my sister. She had told me that my gift was wrapped but none of the rest of the gifts were. [Hey, that’s something like I would do!] Sure enough, mine was wrapped. It was exactly the right size and weight to be either the 35/2 camera lens I wanted so badly or some candle I would hate just because it wasn’t my lens.

Oddly enough, my sister called soon after I opened the package. She asked me if I found my gift, and laughed when I told her the two possibilities. She told me to go ahead and open it, and I was more than happy to oblige.

Ah! My family loves me! It is the lens I so badly wanted – from my sister and her husband as well as my parents. Of course, they are the ones who most enjoy my pictures, so it only made sense. Oh, I am so very happy!

Just to let you know exactly how wonderful this lens is, here are two pictures. They were both taken from the doorway of our kitchen. The first is the 50/1.8 lens, the second, the 35/2 lens.

Canon 50/1.8

Canon 35/2

Need I say more?

Ben’s latest intellectual acquisition is that he, Daddy and Joey are boys and Mommy is a girl. Apparently, this is such an exciting revelation to him that he finds it necessarily to repeat this information aloud many times every day. Including when we’re out shopping. Standing in line at a store. With a whole bunch of other customers.

Anyway, Steve asked him the other evening, How do you know that we are boys and Mommy is a girl?

Ben’s answer: You just know.

And really, I think that’s enough sex education for a four-year-old.

Steve also recently asked Ben who Santa Claus is. [While we haven’t made a big deal about Santa, we haven’t tried to shelter him from the whole Santa-thing either.]

Ben: He wears a red hat with white on it.

Steve: Does he do anything?

Ben: He says, Ho! Ho! Ho!

Steve: Does he do anything else?

Ben: No.

Ben knows.

I’m knitting a Baby Bobbi Bear for Joey for Christmas. I cast on this morning [I decided it was about time, you know] and after two or three rows using the Magic Loop [yes, technical knitting term], I realized that (a) for the first time ever, when knitting in the round, I had managed to twist the stitches when I joined [Ugh!] and (b) I really, really prefer knitting with dpns, thank you very much.

Small problem, however. I do not own a pair of size US 9 dpns. Which leads to the title of this post…I could go to my local yarn store (LYS) and buy some. Yeah, I could.

Except that I really don’t want to.

You see, there are local yarn stores and online stores, and in the knitting world, even though most of the online stores are just other people’s local yarn stores, there’s this thing about supporting your local yarn store. [Same deal in the photography world, I hear, and I’m sure in other worlds as well.]

While I have bought lots of yarn online – mostly because my LYS did not carry it (either not at all or not in the color or quantity that I wanted) or because I could get it for a better price – I have not bought needles online. My LYS has the sizes I need (generally) and there aren’t really any good deals online that I’ve found are worth paying shipping and waiting for them to arrive. And quite honestly, if my LYS has something I want at a similar price, I wait until I can visit my LYS rather than ordering it online. You know, the support your LYS thing.

There is one LYS in Lincoln and two in Omaha. I love one of the stores in Omaha, the other two annoy me. One of them has their yarn arranged in color order rather than by brand/line so if you want to knit a sweater in Mission Falls 1824 wool, you have to hunt all over the store to see what colors are available in order to decide which one you want. Does. not. work. for. me.

The other store had an elderly owner that seemed to drive everyone else (at least in my knitting guild) crazy, but she didn’t bother me so much. Granted, her style of doing business was a bit archaic. She never had enough yarn in any color to knit an entire sweater – basically, it was a multi-color sweater or you had to stick with scarves and hats. Then she’d grumble if you used a credit card. [Yes, I’m a merchant too. I know that customers using credit cards costs you money. I also know that people spend more if they can use their credit card. So you decide – do you want a $20 cash purchase or a $100 credit purchase less a 4% fee? Think it over.]

Now there is a new owner who previously owned a LYS somewhere else. While she has improved the inventory and continues to add new lines, I must say, I do not enjoy visiting her shop. She doesn’t know who I am (the previous owner and her employees did), and she doesn’t seem to want to get to know me either. I really don’t care if she remembers my name – even the employees that know me always have to ask my last name when they go to ring up my order. I just wish she would get to know and remember my level of experience.

She’s very helpful. I’ll mention what problem I came to her store to solve. She’ll give me a bunch of solutions, which is good. Except the way in which she does it. She says things as though they are news to me. They are not news to me. I am not a new knitter who doesn’t know a dpn from a circular needle, thank you very much.

When I go to my LYS – any LYS – I do two things. First I browse just to see what they have so I can take note in case they carry something I may want in the future or in case something might catch my eye that might spark a future design. Then I look for what I came to get. If I want The Opinionated Knitter by Elizabeth Zimmerman, Knitting Around may be a nice book, but it is not The Opinionated Knitter. If I had endless funds to support my knitting habit, I might buy Knitting Around and happily knit something from there. But I don’t, so I don’t.

All of those things, I could forgive. But last weekend when I was in that store, I wanted a book that she didn’t have. It was on backorder. Somehow I mentioned that it was also on backorder in a couple of the stores where I had looked online. And I got the little lecture about how you should support your LYS and not buy online because people buying online instead of their LYS makes it hard for the LYS’s to survive. [Double Ugh!]

This is all I have to say:

• I would not be a knitter if it was not for the internet. I would sew just like my mother and her mother because that would be all I would know.
• Knitting is hugely popular today – way more so than even 5 years ago – because people can go online, see what other people are doing, and discover a new hobby, just as I did.
• Knitting being far more popular now than it was a few years ago means more business for all the yarn stores, including my LYSs.
• While I may not be one of her top ten customers, if it was not for the internet, I would not buy any yarn…or needles…or books…from her at all. Nor would any of my friends who I’ve helped teach how to knit and referred to her store.
• So yes, I shop online, and no, I have absolutely not guilt about it nor do I have any qualms about admitting that I do it.
• And really, shopping from an online store is just buying from someone else’s LYS. Not every LYS is going to carry every yarn every knitter wants. The online world makes it even more possible for LYSs to specialize in certain yarns rather than trying to carry a little of everything. A yarn store in Huntsville, AL may not be able to thrive just selling sock yarn locally, but if they sell online too and carry most (if not all) of colors in certain lines of sock yarn, they can do very well. Just saying is all.

So this thing with yarn store owners getting their feathers ruffled when someone mentions an online store…I’ll just say, they need to get over it. And next time, I’m going to say so, too.

I think my desire to knit with dpns rather than the Magic Loop may override my disdain for my LYS at the moment. I certainly don’t want to drive to Omaha just for needles, though I may end up doing that. This LYS doesn’t always have the best selection of dpns in the larger size range, which is what I need, and I know one of the stores in Omaha stocks exactly what I want.

We shall see.

I need to get working on this little bear soon or I’m not going to get it done. Whether I like my LYS or not.

Just saying is all…

Click on the picture above and it will take you to Flickr where the monthly pages are. And yes, Flickr has it’s own idea as to what order the months of the year come in. In other words, don’t blame me for their being out of order. Not that it matters anyway – they each stand alone.

That is all for now. Today has left me quite ragged. So here’s a toast to a calendar finished and a better tomorrow!