Tuesday, 20 December 2016

Advent - days 16 - 20

Today has been a good day :)

Yesterday dad came home from the hospital, and he's SO much more comfortable in his own home.  He's doing great!  My sister and I are overjoyed at how well he's doing, how much energy he has, and how much activity he's managing.  Very confident that he'll be fit and well enough to start chemo straight away in January.

With all the to-ing and fro-ing I've not actually had much time to get much knitting done, except for yesterday afternoon, sitting in the day room at the hospital waiting for dads prescription to be ready, because it was the last thing that needed sorting before they would sign his release papers so-to-speak.  Still, I've made a bit of progress on the ballet-wrap cardigan I'm making for my youngest niece.  The back is all finished, and I'm more than half way through the left-front.

I do apologise for the quality of today's photos, against the dark green of my dad's carpet it's difficult to get lighting that works well.

The yarn I'm using for this is Jody Long Cherub DK, in the colourway 11, and the pattern is Ballet-wrap cardigan from Baby & Toddler Knits Made Easy.




I've had a lovely selection of colourways out of my advent calendar over the last few days:




Aaand... I need to give the penguins their own section...


Penguins


So it turns out that I forgot to tell you about a penguin related item from day 13.  Easy to forget among all the stress of that particular day.  If you recall, I spent the day shopping in Newcastle city centre with my sister and Krissy so that we could all distract ourselves from the fact that dad was in surgery.  Well, while we were there, Krissy bought me a present, that she insists is not a Christmas present, it's a thing she's been wanting to buy me for ages, but didn't know for sure if I already owned it.  I'd been wanting to read it for ages, but hadn't seen it in print.  So that worked out nicely.





Kelly came up for the weekend to comfort me, and visit dad, because he's lovely like that.  But he also brought a few Christmas presents up for me from Sheffield so that I would have things to open on Christmas day.  Isn't he sweet?  You will notice that the gifts are appropriately wrapped in penguin wrapping paper, or with penguin tags!





Then yesterday I had to go to the post office to collect a parcel.  I was expecting it to be a quite large parcel, because the only thing that I was expecting was my godson's Christmas present, and I knew roughly what size that would be.  Instead I was handed a small brown paper package about the size of a tennis ball, with my name and address typed, so no clues from handwriting.  Inside there was a gift wrapped in penguiny paper, but no tag, or note, or any other indication of who my mystery gifter might be!  I am very intrigued, and excited to open this present on Christmas day, and see if I can guess from the item who has sent it.





Today the family Christmas cards arrived from Krissy, and tucked inside was this sweet little tree decoration for me, which I love twice as much because in buying it for me, Krissy has also made a donation towards Macmillan Cancer Support.





Finally, today I did almost the last of my Christmas shopping.  I'm still missing a gift for one person, but while I want to show him that I love him, I don't want to just give him useless tat for the sake of giving a present, and I'm struggling to find the right thing.  I've got a few more days...

The problem with being a penguinophile at Christmas, is that there are penguins in their millions in every store.  It's basically impossible to go Christmas shopping without also buying more penguins.  Today I bought 5.  Plus something that looks like a purple spotty penguin-like creature, but may in fact be meant to be a seal.  It's honestly not at all clear.  In my defense,  I was looking for a 2017 diary, so that doesn't actually count as an impulse purchase...





That's all for now my dears :)

No comments:

Post a Comment