Happy New Year to you all!

Or, as they'd say in Germany - ich wuensche Euch einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr! xx

Post-Christmas update

I've been MIA for some time now. It wasn't intentional, but when things get busy, as they often do this time of year, the blog is one of the things that falls off the cliff. There were any number of occasions when I thought 'oh, I need to blog about that', but I just never found the time to upload the photographs, look through them, write a post... I'm sure it was the same for a lot of you too.

We spent Christmas in Germany this year. It was good - seeing family and friends, spending time with the boys, taking walks in the forest, going to the local Christmas market - but it's also oh so very nice to be back. Our return journey was a bit of an adventure because after some quite mild weather the temperature dropped to -10C the day of our departure and it started snowing in the early hours of the morning. I don't think the journey to Rotterdam has ever taken us quite this long, not because we had trouble with our car (we go in a 4-wheel-drive because it isn't the first time we've been caught out by a cold snap) but because everyone else was. This is what the motorway looked like for the majority of our journey:

The boys, of course, were outraged by the whole thing. First there was no snow for DAYS, and then, on the day of our departure, when they can't play in it because they'd get wet and cold, it starts snowing. And not just that - all their hopes of a snowball fight on British shores were dashed when we arrived back home and found that there was not a fleck of snow here! 

We've had some beautiful frosty weather, though, so the day after we got back I grabbed the camera and my knitting and crochet (yes, I've still been working on WIPs!) and went into the back garden to make use of that clear winter light. 

Look at how the natural daylight makes the colours on the mystery blanket pop! I finished all the squares before we left for Germany and then assembled it all while there. I'm still working on the border, but apart from that it's done. I'm so happy with how it's turning out. Here are a few more pictures of it, though not taken outside (the frost everywhere meant that I couldn't spread it out very well...).

It should be big enough to fit a single bed quite comfortably, but I suspect it will probably end up downstairs as a snuggle blanket on the sofa. :)

I've also been working away at the Garter Yoke cardi. I'm finding the sleeve knitting quite dull, so I've been a bit slow with this, but it's made a good travel project so I got a few inches done on the way to Germany and back. I think I have perhaps 5" to go now, so I'll try to prioritise the project so I can start wearing the cardi.

  

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Keep Calm, Craft On
A Year of Projects

Christmas preparations...

I realise that I've been more than a little bit rubbish with keeping y'all updated on my knitting and crochet progress these past couple of weeks, but Christmas-time is busy-time, you know? Will you believe me when I say that I have been crocheting? And knitting? I just haven't had time to take good pictures and prepare a blog post. Every time I think of it, or have some time, it's evening and I so dislike taking photographs of knitting in anything other than daylight... 

Anyway, please believe me when I say that I will do a BIG progress update next week - either Sunday or Wednesday, depending on how I survive this weekend, because I'm hosting a Christmas party for my work colleagues and their families on Saturday and well, it's crept up on me a bit. I spent this morning while boy #3 was at preschool frantically preparing potato salad and pumpkin soup. I even started on a batch of Christmas cookies because hosting a do and not having a single homebaked cookie in the house? That's just lame. ;-)

Anyway, I got the dough prepared, and then, this evening, the three little terrors helped me cut out shapes and we baked a few batches. 

They turned out really well, which was something that wasn't exactly lost on the boys, and they managed to eat dozens of them when I wasn't looking, but I think if I hide most of them away tonight there will still be enough for the do on Saturday.