The Best Thing About This Project

I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday--the longer, the better--from the great boarding school where we are forever working at our arithemetical slates, to take, and gave a rest.
-Charles Dickens.

Best Thing About This Project:

My mom loves her sweater, and even professed to be "surprised" about the buttons. Strange since she had picked them out from a line-up . . . Seriously, it was great. She loved it. I loved it. All sorts of good Christmas cheer. But do excuse my sickly pallor. All I wanted for Christmas was to get my voice back, but it didn't happen.

I did get a fabulous gift from my brother (whom I gave a boring, masculine hat which I made pre-blog- I'll try to get a picture later): Handknit Holidays by Melanie Falick. This is the former editor of Interweave Knits and the woman who brought us Knitting in America and Weekend Knitting, among other things. She is a phenomenal editor. Her patterns are nice, but it is her ability to create a real collection that hangs together as more than the sum of its parts. The projects span a wide range of intensities, abilities, and genres, the photography is superb, and the whole book is just completely inspiring, aside from the fact that I want to make almost all of it. Apparently, I'm not the only one. There's a whole knitalong. Now that I'm fully in the Christmas spirit, maybe I'll make some Christmas ornaments.

Christmas in my family is not a day; it's a week-long affair with no fewer than 6 mandatory appearances. People in from out-of-town, that sort of thing. Sometimes it gets a little long, but this year I'm enjoying it, especially since I'm unlikely to be able to get leave next year as an intern in San Diego. What I'm really enjoying as well, is that the last two Christmas gifts aren't due until Friday and Saturday, respectively. Details to follow.