This past Sunday was the big Christmas party/knitter’s gift exchange at Jacquie’s house, and boy, it did NOT disappoint.  The gift exhange was done “bad santa” style, where everyone draws a number and picks gifts from under the tree….OR steals a gift from someone who had gone before them.  This always starts out tame and polite, with everyone picking unwrapped gifts…but soon turned nasty as some of the gifts turned out to be too good to pass up.  A gift could only be stolen 3 times before it was considered “safe,” so there was much hand-wringing and tears.  Poor Knit Goth got her gifts stolen AT LEAST 6 times, if not more.

One of the highest prizes of the evening was a skein of wollmeise, which is like SOCK KNITTERS PLATINUM in the knitting world.  I wouldn’t know, since I’ve never knit with it, and I am FAR above such petty drama as who is lucky enough to get the wollmeise - it’s occasionally updated stock site is quickly stripped bear by it’s rabid fans, who then jump on ravlery to either gloat or bitch about their successes and losses.  After two steals it ended up in Jane’s lap, but was eventually stolen by the blogless Melissa which was TOTALLY NOT FAIR AT ALL I WAS GOING TO STEAL IT FROM JANE OMG I WANTED THAT YARN SO BAD MELLISA YOU’D BETTER SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN, WOMAN!

ahem

Like I said, I’m totally above such petty things.  So instead, I stole a gift from Steve, which just happened to be the third steal for this particular gift, so my prize was SAFE, and I got to bask in the glow of it’s loveliness.

A skein of STR in “Gingerbread Dude” colorway, a handknit scarf, and a knit pouch

This gift was brought by Jane, and I couldn’t be happier with it - the scarf perfectly matches my new coat, which is grey wool.  And the sock yarn goes nicely with some recently purchased yarn:

STR in “Gingerbread Dudette”

His and her socks!  Yay!

Because I was totally NOT dwelling on, and chewing on my own liver over the lost wollmeise, I decided to take advantage over a very generous one day sale at Knitch on sock yarn, and pick up this:

Numma numma’s The Usual, in “Chinese Takeout”

This picture doesn’t even do it justice.  It is VIBRANT oranges and just glorious.  Why does this soothe my wollmeise-deprived soul?  Because clever Allen, who produces Numma Numma yarns out of her very own basement, was able to get the SAME YARN BASE as is used in wollmeise yarns.  And since it’s not being shipped from Germany, it’s MUCH more affordable.  ESPECIALLY if you get it 20% off like I did 

Pics from the party:

What else has been going on…well, the gift I commissioned for my mother is done!  Made by the talented Brett, who’s also making another one for ME.  I picked the fabric because it was soft and pretty on the outside, but fun in the inside - my mom works at a library, so I liked the typeface all over the fabric.

The bag is SUPER sturdy and well made.  I love it!  Can’t wait for mine to be done!

Help ESC make her christmas card!

I want to do another picture card for christmas this year, but I have to do it NOW so I can get them made (thank you, Wolfe Camera!) and get them out by Friday or Saturday.  HELP ME PICK AN ADORABLE PICTURE!

It was tough to get Sadie and the tree in the shot together, since the tree is up on a trunk this year (only spot for it), so either the doggy stocking got clipped or most of the tree did.  I plan on doing some GIMPy “enhancing” to make the pic suitably magical.  I was also thinking about adding a little “loldog” caption.  Not sure what, though.  So what do you think?  1, 2, or 3?  and what might a good caption be?