I have to wrap up the year though, so this post will include the last of the advent updates, my many Christmas penguins, and the final progress report on my 2017 WIP-down.
Advent
18th & 19th:
20th & 21st:
22nd:
23rd:
Christmas Eve:
The teas for each day were the same as those for days 1-12, but the tea calendar was the only one that had a box for Christmas day, and that tea is called Candy Cane. It's a peppermint and green tea with orange, cinnamon, roasted chicory, and vanilla. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
The final candle was a special Christmas Eve fragrance, but if I'm honest, I thought that the tealights produced a stronger scent, and lasted longer! The votive melted into a puddle much faster than expected, so I ended up picking wax dribbles off my dad's footstool!
Here's the full collection of mini balls of yarn from the calendar, minus enough of each ball to make 1 or 2 squares.
Here's the progress on the blanket so far. It's 16 squares wide on the bottom row, with the intention of being 20 squares wide, plus a border of some sort when it's finished.
Christmas Penguins
Technically only one of these is a Christmas penguin, and that's the little lego penguin. He was a gift off my sister and her family. The Top Trumps I bought when in Whitby on Stephen's birthday, and the very round penguin is actually a spearmint flavoured lip balm.
I love our little coffee and a chat meet ups when I'm up north, and although I can't keep having cake every time we do, I'm very much enjoying the Christmas penguin cakes :)
I had my nails done at Spoilt for Choice with the cutest penguins wearing Christmas headgear :)
My first round of Christmas presents :) Crackers to pull over dinner from Liz, a little colony of cheeky chocolate penguins from Kelly, a cute hand-sewn penguin decoration from Sally in America, and a book of logic puzzles from my sister and her family. Of course my present from dad and Stephen was my new phone, that I've been using for a while now.
Christmas evening spent relaxing with fizz, cake that my sister baked, and wind-up racing penguins from inside the crackers.
Second round of presents when I returned to Sheffield included this T-shirt from Kelly, which I love!
I also got this kit to create another member of the colony from Kelly's brother and his family. Not to mention the enormous box of my favourite smellies from Kelly's mum!
The 2017 WIP-down
So according to the first blog post of 2017 I had 18 WIPs. I can only assume that I meant only active WIPs, and didn't include spinning projects, because I happen to know that the real number was much greater than that!
I am pleased to say that despite everything else that has been happening this year, I have managed to complete a total of 8 long-term WIPs, that is projects that were already on the needles before January 1st 2017. Overall I've completed 30 projects this year, not counting spinning projects, or the ill-fated advent calendars. (I've put the surviving advent calendar into hibernation until next year, when hopefully I'll finish the embroidery, and re-make it's mate).
I've cast on enough new projects that I still have 12 active WIPs, but that is a far more manageable number than this time last year!
I'm hoping to have this one finished before New Year too. This is the socks I'm making for Gemma, that I wanted to have done by Christmas day, but clearly that wasn't meant to be this year. I figure she's unlikely to want to wear the boots they're designed to go with until the festive season is over anyway!
Sundry and Miscellaneous
I may not have succeeded in providing my godsons with advent calendars, but at least I managed to make these little pouches to put all the sweeties in that would have been in the pockets of the calendars. Not much, but at least I achieved something this winter!
You may remember that way back in November I mentioned that Bobbins, the knitting and haberdashery shop that I used to visit while in Whitby, has closed down. I did however manage to find myself some souvenir yarn from a little health food shop tucked away in a corner at the bottom of Flowergate. This is that yarn. I've finally taken a photograph! It's by Frangipani, and it's a sportweight Guernsey wool. I think this is destined to become very warm socks at some point.
I think that's all for this year now. I plan on taking a couple of days to try to get rid of this stupid ear infection, finish those socks, and decide what my focus for 2018 should be. Fortunately I'm assured that no permanent damage should be done if I choose to see in the New Year with a few glasses of fizz on top of the antibiotics! Then I'll be looking forward to another year of fun visits with my dad, time with my boys, knitting all the things, and increasing the size of the colony :)
Happy New Year to everyone reading this too!
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