Belated Christmas Presents and Ringing in the New Year

Hello. Don't mind me. Unless you want to know what I've been up to, of course.

The short version is I've been making things. You know, in between my day job and holiday shenanigans and family dinners. Which means giant Christmas shawl of doom (well, it is in Christmas colors, and even the Sandra Cisneros poem it's based on makes mention of Christmas Eve) is finally up on Ravelry, about a week past my intended deadline. You may find it here. I intended to put up a slightly sentimental slightly bitter Dear Ex letter here to go with it, but you know what? I've been a little bit distracted lately. By goings-on in the "Star Wars" universe, if you must know. I am a geek, and old enough to admit it freely.

So instead I have pictures to pique your curiosity.

Finished shawl, looking like the giant fruitcake blanket it is. Some people write songs or, well, actually do things with their lives. I knit lace. Rather like Mme Defarge. Well, I mean, I also lace perfectly good apple cider caramels with scotch and gift them to people. When you can't find a decent Advent calendar in the States, am I right? If you do want to make your own, the recipe I used is here, and I spiked my half batch with 2 tablespoons of Black Bottle to get the balance just right. But we were talking lace shawls.

This is a close-up of the pine stitch. Admittedly it's the most abstract of the stitches. The stars actually look like stars (or at least I think they look like Union Jacks, which are sort of like stars, right?) and the ladders are ladders and the winding trails wind. But still, you can't have a holiday pattern from a Georgia girl and not have pine in some form or another, so here it is.

And here's the shawl draped over a couch cushion with a book of Sandra Cisneros poems (though not, I will point out, the one containing the poem in question).











Now, ordinarily at this point I would find something snarky to say about relationships and starting fresh or something. But really, for every one salient point I make, Carrie Fisher has probably made about 15, so look her up if you will. Meanwhile I'm going back to drooling over Cassian Andor from "Rogue One." Ironically, in the aftermath of 2016, that in itself seems like an act of defiance.

What do I know? I'm just a knitter!