Nothing Shall Harsh My Mellow

There is a definite sense that progress is being made.    I am officially on vacation until after New Year's.  Unofficially, I may get a call or two, as work will be very shorthanded next week, but that's do-able.   Everything on the 'must do on pain of revocation of vacation' list got done.  Nothing more- but it'll still be there when I get back.  This despite the assistance I received the one morning I worked at home while waiting for massive traffic jams to vacate my route to work.

First, Biscuit sat on my papers:

Cookie napped in the laptop case.

Then I pulled some papers out from under Biscuit and he tried to bite me.  So I banished him from the work table.   He went and sulked on the footstool.

Pretty soon, though, Cookie got up to go see to some Important Cat Business, and Biscuit promptly stole his napping spot.

Cookie was rather dismayed by this when he returned, and tried to climb in with Biscuit, but it's a one-cat-capacity laptop case.  Biscuit boxed his ears firmly and retained possession.

On other fronts, the Christmas cookies have been baked.  There was also some feline volunteerage during this process but after removing cats from the counter six or seven times, they got the idea that their assistance was not going to be permitted.

The current knitting is all Christmassy, so I shall not post photos, but I can report my strategy (which can be loosely summarized as, "Cast on ALL the things!!!") is bearing fruit.  Or FOs, at least.  Of the 5-6 planned projects:  #1 is blocking, #2 ends are being woven in, #3 is 3/4 done with perhaps 1-2 hours more work left, #4 is on the needles and 20% complete, #5 is not started but also short, and #6 the Stealth project is looking like a miss for Christmas day.   There would maybe be enough time,  except for the need for secrecy.  We'll see.  If it looks like I could finish if I gave up secrecy, it may have to be revealed to the recipient.

I will however show you the promised photos of charity knitting that was donated earlier this month.  There was a colorwork hat:

Mittens, of course:

And the second cabled hearts hat, which still needs to have the pattern written up from my notes and posted.  That's going to be a vacation project:

There's a certain temptation to get all goal-oriented about getting projects done for the holidays, but I think I've successfully stayed low-key on it this year.   I've pretty much given up any parts of the holiday that I don't think are fun.  And for the rest- I'm enjoying making gifts for some of my favorite people in the world.  They'll be done when they're done.  No worries. 

Have a lovely weekend, everyone, and a peaceful and joyous holiday!