Still Life, With Cats

We had our annual cookie exchange and yarn swap last night, and it was a lot of fun. Many, many cookies were consumed (all in the name of taste testing, of course). The yarn swap started off, as it usually does, very politely, with everyone reaching for an unwrapped gift instead of stealing a previously wrapped one, but then the end hit and that’s when the stealing kicked in in earnest, and that is how it usually goes as well. This is one of the things I look forward to each December, and it didn’t disappoint.

Tonight, however, was a bit more low key. I made this Sweet Potato and Lentil Pie for dinner and am happy to declare that I have *finally* found a recipe with lentils where the lentils did not take over everything with their very boring lentilness. Granted, the recipe used up nearly half the pans and pots in the house, but it was definitely worth it.

*****

Today’s amusing thing is the British Medical Journal’s special Christmas edition. Is this an annual thing? If it is an annual thing, how is it that I have never heard of it before? There is an entire collection of articles that amuse me greatly. Examples include:

• Debunking the curse of the rainbow jersey
• Black medicine: an observational study of doctors’ coffee purchasing patterns at work
• Zombie infections: epidemiology, treatment, and prevention
• Certificate in Reverse Psychology probably not worth it
• How to avoid the anger of ghosts

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

The beauty of having a two story house is that when things are a wee bit hectic, one can usually get away with only cleaning the public half. However, since it’s our turn (in my family it rotates locations every year) to host Christmas this year, the usual ‘clean the top floor, ignore the bottom floor’ plan doesn’t work. Also, considering that November = Nanowrimo for both Richard and I, and then December = performances for me, and Holidailies, and we’ve both been super busy at work, and also I have a test knit I’m trying to squeeze into the middle of all of that, and also toss in six hairball horking, shedding cats, the condition of the house (both upstairs and down) has started to reach what might politely be called ‘my god, what *is* that?’.

So tomorrow afternoon, we’ve scheduled the big guns to come in (cleaning service) to try to bring things back to normal, which means the last few days have been spent (in between the usual chores and me dashing off to performances and other social obligations) scurrying around trying to clear off every surface and finally actually put away the piles of ‘I dunno what to do with this so I’ll just leave it here’ things that tend to build up around this time of year, and check for stealth hairballs so no one else has to deal with it, and ugh, I know people are still yammering for stupid hoverboards, but seriously, why hasn’t technology come up with a self-cleaning house yet?

Anyway. Before I get back to gathering up all my random yarn and knitting paraphernalia and stuffing everything into closets, here is today’s bit of fun. Did you know there is a Christmas Carol Hotline, where if you call them, they will sing you any Christmas carol you want? Well neither did I! Possibly I am now trying to come up with the most obscure holiday song to request. Possibly. Hmm.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

There are a lot of random things I could talk about today, but instead I think I’ll just point you to today’s nifty thing. A lot of you are probably already familiar with Humans of New York, but if you’re not, I highly recommend following him on Facebook. He originally started out just taking pictures of people in New York and posting them with little snippets they were willing to share about their life, but in the past year or so he’s traveled around the world, photographing and interviewing people in numerous countries. His current series is based on interviews he did with a number of Syrian refugee families who have just been granted entry into the US.

I read his posts, and also often read the comments, because for the most part, they are surprisingly positive (a rarity on the internet, to be sure), and it reminds me that, despite all the ugliness and racism and hatred being embraced so fervently by some segments of the population in the US, that the vast majority of us are still good and kind and decent people who are trying to find some way to help. And I hope that when those refugees come over, and try to figure out how to settle into their new lives, so far away from the homes that were torn from them, that this is the view of America that they see. Not the ugly, vile hatred and bigotry that is being spewed from the mouths of certain politicians and the sad, bitter people who support them, but the open hearts of people who refuse to let the actions of a small radicalized minority of a persecuted people keep them from helping the larger majority of those who are in desperate need.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Crazy, busy, long day, and more coming. Azzie’s limping and we don’t know why and I have zero time to take him to the vet (thankfully Richard’s schedule is slightly more flexible so he’s going to try to get him in). Home from rehearsal and wired, and still had a bunch of work stuff to do and now it’s nearly midnight (same reason as for the crazy long conference call this weekend), so…here. Pictures from a week or so ago when we put up the tree. Because I know some of you long term readers have come to expect them.

Part 1 – pull tree box from closet. Sometimes it’s heavier than others. Can’t figure out why though.

Part 2 – Open box and remove tree pieces. Sometimes there are extra pieces in the box.

Part 3 – Assemble tree. Sometimes there are obstacles in the way when attempting to do so.

Part 4 – Stand back, and wait a couple seconds. Ah…..there we go.

Part 5 – Decorate tree with whatever happens to be lying about.

Part 6 – Decide tree needs more than one ornament. Add a couple more.

Part 7 – Sit back, relax, enjoy the festive atmosphere now created.

*****

Oh yeah. I’m supposed to be sharing a daily fun thing. Whose stupid idea was that again? Uh…okay, how about this Santa’s Village thing from Google. There. Done.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

Today was originally going to be busy: the usual Farmers Market trip in the morning, followed by catching up on chores and then wiling away the afternoon and evening in a gaming session with friends. The gaming session fell through – this time of year people are getting sick, or overbooked – so then we thought, oh boy, an entirely free weekend day (a rarity for me in December), so we talked about maybe just spending the day doing a bunch of cooking to restock the freezer, and actually dragging the decorations down from the attic to see if we could make the place look a bit more festive.

And then Friday hit, when everything was waylaid due to some urgent work issues, which is why I have spent the bulk of the day camped out on a conference call. Thankfully I could at least be doing it from home, still in comfy sweats and with some knitting in hand when I didn’t need to be actively involved in the discussion, but by the time the thing wrapped up, it was too dark outside to do any exterior decorating, and any desire, or energy, to spend hours in the kitchen had pretty much gone out the window.

So instead we ordered pizza for dinner (and then got to chase down Sherman, who snuck out the door, sigh), and Richard poked at the Holidailies site (new functionality on the My Profile page, for those of you participating, plus a bunch of cleanup to the participants list, and the return of the entry count), and we watched an episode of the very first season of Great British Bake Off (because I may have developed an unhealthy obsession with BBC competition shows lately), and then I decided by golly, I ought to attempt to do something vaguely festive to the house, and as any home canner knows, if you’ve been canning long enough you start to collect an awful lot of jar rings, so I made myself a slightly lopsided wreath.

This is one of those craft projects where I had the idea and then Googled it because it was so obvious I knew someone else had to have already done it, and I read various blog posts and thought, wow, this is so simple even *I* can do it. And all the while I was merrily gluing ribbon to the lids, I kept saying ‘wow, this really is easy’. And that continued until I actually tried to shape the thing at the end.

There is yarn involved. Also cardboard. Also swearing. Clearly we were just destined to have a vaguely egg-shaped wreath. Fine. I don’t care. It’s pretty, and it used up a teeny tiny fraction of the bazillion extra rings that are lurking in boxes in the canning closet. I am not going to bother telling you directions because I am not sure what else you need to know except ‘glue ribbon to lids’ and ‘see if you can keep the cats from stealing the glue sticks’, and ‘tie into a circle and then hope for the best.’

*****

I admit I was awfully tempted to make ‘how to craft a clever wreath out of canning lids’ today’s nifty thing, but I’m not quite that lazy. So instead I shall point you this rather awesome interactive graphic from xkcd.

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.

So part of the fun of being in a musical group is that sometimes the group is asked to perform for other organizations’ events. This month, we’ve got two of those – both of which will be taking place tomorrow.

One of the performances we’ll be doing is indoors, so it’ll be our usual attire. The other, however, starts with us singing for an hour or two outside, which means, considering it’s been rather chilly out lately, that we’ll all be bundled up in heavy jackets and gloves and scarves and hats.

I have a heavy jacket. I have shawls and scarves galore. I also happen to have a pair of fingerless gloves that I made years ago, and which live in my purse for the days when the office temperature is set to icebox. What I did not have, at least prior to today, however, is a hat.

Let’s just say there’s a reason I do not make myself hats. Some people look good in hats. I am not one of them. Not remotely at all. But it’s going to be cold, so vanity has been displaced by practicality. Thus, yesterday I went browsing through Ravelry and found a nice pattern, and then I rummaged through my stash and found a skein of yarn in a nice rich red, and then I whipped up this little number.

As I suspected, I look, with the hat on, a bit like one of the burglars from Home Alone, if one of the burglars happened to have a thing for red and lace. Ah well. At least it’ll be warm.

*****

Today’s fun thing is this Advent Calendar by Compound Interest. If you are not already following them on Facebook, you really should. They post all kinds of interesting information breaking down the chemical components of ordinary things (pro tip, *everything* is made up of chemicals, no matter how ‘natural’ it is, because SCIENCE!).

‘Tis the season for Holidailies.