The week before Thanksgiving, Mom, Dad and I spent our free time frantically cleaning to get ready for our holiday guests. In addition, Mom made as much food ahead of time as it was humanly possible. Because one of my cousins is staying in my room, that meant it desperately needed to be cleaned. I have to confess that the last time it was clean was when I got back from England in August. I've just been throwing stuff in there then shutting the door really quickly. Well, last week I finally cleaned. Went through tons of junk mail, folded the clean laundry again and put it away, dusted, vacuumed, stacked the yarn and roving in the corner, hid all of the WIP bags (my ravelry page lies, I have so many more WIPs than I thought) so it wouldn't scare people, moved my desk around, put in the bed for my cousin and then contemplated cleaning off the aforementioned desk. As I was cleaning, I found a birthday present for a friend. Her birthday was in July. Hmmmmm.
So I packed that gift up, some things I had gotten for her in England, and her Christmas gift. While I was at it, I packed up Christmas gifts for another friend. Then yesterday Dad was running to the post office to mail another package so I gave mine to him. Ha! The day after Thanksgiving and I already have 2 presents sent out. I feel so smug that someone should really slap me.
Anyway, back to Thanksgiving. My aunt, uncle and two cousins (along with their dog) came to Ohio for the holiday. It's been tons of fun having everyone here. We've been playing board games and Wii games every night. Dad really got into the Cow Racing game. I took my cousins out to the barn yesterday and we rode the horses. Care was on Bo, Drew on Java, and I rode Capone. Java really looks thrilled when he is getting ridden. Callie hung out at the barn and waited patiently for everyone to get back.
We had a really good Thanksgiving dinner. We ate at 6 pm because another relative and her husband couldn't make it before 5. It was a very full house with all of the family and friends! Mom and Aunt Judy really pulled out all of the stops with the food production. Tons of Red Hot Apples, mashed potatoes, stuffing, etc. etc. I think we have more desserts than people. Soooooo many wonderful pies. I bought 2 (pumpkin and sweet potato) pies from a friend's husband. The sweet potato is absolutely wonderful.
In knitting news (non-Christmas presents), I started a Forest Canopy Shawl out of acrylic yarn that I found while cleaning my room. Seriously, I have no idea where this yarn came from. It just appeared in the one stash basket. There were 2 1/2 balls of it so I had enough for a very good sized shawl. Also in the clean-up, I found another Forest Canopy Shawl (that is what inspired the making of the second) made from acrylic which was the first shawl and first lace project that I had made. This shawl was a practice shawl so I could get used to the pattern and making lace before I made the pattern out of mohair. I just never blocked the acrylic shawl because there was a mistake in it and because, later when I knew something about lace, I really didn't like the finished project. As we all know, acrylic doesn't block well. So I did a bad thing and took both of these Forest Canopies out to the ironing board. Then I ironed the suckers and killed the acrylic so it would stay open. I actually managed to make the mistake mostly disappear in the blocking. That shawl might become a Christmas present if I start running out of time.
How does it sneak up every year?
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