I want to wish everyone celebrating a Merry Christmas. My plans for this holiday aren’t quite going as I’d hoped. I’m really wishing to wake up tomorrow morning and open presents under a pretty Christmas tree, but we had to take down the ornaments and haul our tree out to the trash bin today after discovering the ants that we had been battling for control over the house this past month (and thought we’d won) had moved from our bathroom and office to our Christmas tree. They made themselves right at home in our tree stand (plenty of drinking water there you see). I think the ants may have won. We’ve tried everything. We don’t leave a speck of food out (strangely they haven’t touched our kitchen), we’ve tried Terro traps and vacuuming them up and squashing them and finally a ‘non poison’ spray. Nothing deters these guys! I can handle a few ants here and there, but they seem to really want to build a nest in here. It’s bizarre.

So tomorrow we’ll have a Christmas with no tree. I know, not the end of the world by any means, but I really liked our tree! I’m glad I snapped some pictures a fews days back so I have something to show you.

Anyways, a few thousand ants can’t ruin my Christmas! I still get to spend it with Joe and the presents! I still get the presents! Hah!

Merry Christmas!

It has been almost one year since I unwrapped my Gocco machine for Christmas and last night was my first time putting it to use. I’d constantly think of possible designs to print, but nothing ever seemed good enough and really, I never had a good enough reason to use it. Not until now.

Joe has completed his Masters project on cryptographic hash functions and we are due for a graduation party on the 21st of this month. Usually we wouldn’t bother with invitations, most of our get-togethers are just close friends and relatives. We just call them up and say ‘hey, come over! we have food!’ and that usually does the trick. Now though, a bit classier type of people (by classier I mean, Joe knows them on a professional basis only.) will be on the invite list, so we needed something more official.

I began my search for invitations on Etsy and found some cool silkscreened IBM punch cards. They weren’t really meant to be invitations, but I showed Joe and he suggested we just make our own. I thought ‘ooh! a chance to use my Gocco!’. So 15 minutes later, we had ordered a stack of old IBM punch cards from eBay. Last night Joe finally made me pull out the Gocco and get to work, but I had no idea what I was doing. The Gocco instruction manual wasn’t the greatest help. Thanks to Joe for figuring absolutely everything out, we managed to come up with some pretty cool invitations.

We used a pretty tree design from the classic computer science manual- Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming and an old school typewriter font for the design. We only had three colors to choose from for the Gocco machine, so we stuck with black, which ended up being fine. I like it’s simplicity.

The party is drawing nearer and I’m hoping to get the living room painted, tree up and decorated (along with the rest of the house) before then. On top of that, my grandmother calls today telling me the family is driving up to visit this weekend. Not that I’m not psyched about that, but there goes some precious painting time! Maybe I can enlist my family to be my paint crew?

Halloween is already here and I’ve not prepared at all. I still have no candy to pass out, not even a carved pumpkin in sight! What’s new?

Oh yes, did I tell you that I am back from Montreal? No, I didn’t? Well, I am.

Well, did I tell you about the most wonderful fado concert that I attended and sat third row center? Nuh uh, you say?

Or that I’m so very very close to completing that hooded baby blanket? No?! I’m really behind.

I’m sorry. I really did have two whole posts written out and lost them both. Really, I swear. No, really!

Joe has been away this week in Anaheim for a work conference and I have the whole house to myself! You better believe the wild parties I’ve been throwin’. Well, there will be cookie baking with Erin tomorrow and the passing out of candy…oh and old scary movie watching! That counts as a wild party right? Oh yeah, get the word out: “Taryn will be passing out full size candy bars tomorrow night”. Last year we got a grand total of two trick-or-treaters, so this year we are trying to bribe more ghoulies into coming to say hello. Parents will hate us, I’m sure, but anything to win the kid’s hearts and minds right?

I’ll be back with more on Montreal and the fado concert soon…I think.

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So glad fall has come, and especially happy that the cool breezy weeks are still peppered with days in the low 80’s. I wish we always had a nice mix of light rain, cool breezes and warm sun. I know this lovely weather won’t last long, so quickly do the best seasons leave us!

I’ve been assigned my garden plot last week and spent a perfect day breaking up the compacted clay and refreshing the soil with horse manure. I haven’t had a chance to plant anything yet. It’s getting so late so I need to do that this weekend, luckily the weather is going to be perfect for that.

Mostly though I’ve been knitting away. The blanket is still not complete. I’m at the half way mark. I’m definitely not progressing as quickly as I was hoping. A whole blanket of seed stitch gets ridiculously boring, so I decided to start a couple of quicker projects to work on when I need a break from the blanket. I’ve almost got my first Saartje’s Booty complete! I just need to knit the button straps and seam them up. I’ve hit a speed bump though and have a problem with casting on for the straps. I just can’t figure it out and apparently I’m not the only one with this problem, but the explanations in the help forums aren’t helping me! I hate being so close to complete and not being able to finish!

I’ve also been thinking up quick knitted christmas gifts to start now…a silk lace scarf, a pair of fetching wrist warmers, a scarflette are all possibilities. Can’t wait. I just love sitting with a warm blanket, a warm drink and something to knit.

In other news, Joe and I are going on vacation AGAIN! I know, that’s a lot of plane rides for us this year! This time I’m taking Joe to Montreal for his birthday (this month). Anybody have any suggestions for good food, things to see and do, that would be great. Just drop me an email or comment here. I’m assuming a hockey game is in order (Joe’s favorite hockey team during his youth was Montreal) and of course the botanical gardens, but what else? We are just staying for the weekend.

Oh yeah, to the local knitters:
I heard about a free alpaca farm tour on Sunday. I’ll probably be going so if anyone wants to come along, drop me a line.

Hopefully I’ll post soon with a completed pair of baby booties and a baby blanket! Have a good day all!

We had our mock Christmas (or Festivus) tonight (or yesterday night since it is actually past midnight). We had a yummy moist turkey with cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, praline sweet potatoes, and pie. It took a while and the kitchen looked like a bomb went off, but we made it through (with Erin doing most of the work, what a pal!). I even managed to clog our garbage disposal with cranberries (I know to avoid stuff like peelings and egg shells, but cranberries?? Who knew?), luckily Joe, the manly man he is, unclogged it.

We ate and immediately needed a nap, but we managed to open our gifts (I got the coolest gifts from Erin, just check out my flickr page) and watch Elf, but Erin and Justin couldn’t make it until pie time so we saved them the pumpkin pie and my cranberry and raspberry pie for tomorrow. Hopefully we will get to go see the Christmas lights tomorrow night as well. Erin and I even bought our own thermos mugs to bring along hot chocolate on our walk.

All this writing about dinner is making me hungry again…I think it’s time to raid the fridge. That is the best thing about big holiday dinners…leftovers!