the best kind!
Scott and I had Thanksgiving with his family on Thursday, at his sister's in Bay Shore, Long Island. It was nice, and I was happy to get to help making dinner. Last Christmas I cooked my first turkey, and it made me aware of how much I love cooking holiday meals. Which is rather remarkable given how reluctant I am to cook the rest of the year. Growing up, we always had Thanksgiving at home (as opposed to travelling to relatives' homes), and I usually helped my mom with dinner. I think cooking holiday meals makes me remember those good times. It's hard getting used to another family's traditions, though. (What do you mean you're not going to mash the potatoes?! How can you have Thanksgiving without mashed potatoes?)
Rented lots of movies this weekend, since most of it was spent on the couch knitting on a deadline. Finally saw "Finding Nemo" (as good as everyone said it was), also saw "View from the Top" (better than I'd expected - not that I was expecting much), and "Love Liza" (depressing, but I adore Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Kathy Bates), and "Whale Rider" (poignant). And just for good measure, I watched "Amelie" for about the twelth time - one of my favorite movies.
All those movies were viewed by the time I went to bed on Saturday. We also played Trivial Pursuit. On Sunday, Scott and I listened to the top 1043 classic rock songs, as voted by listeners of Q104.3, and I recalled yet again how much I enjoy knitting to music, rather than TV/movies. Whenever I do this, I resolve to turn off the TV and listen to music instead, but somehow I'm always sucked in by the television, every single night. Maybe if I had a CD player that held muliple discs...
So on my mystery project for this mystery designer (as I mentioned in my sidebar, I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say about this), I've now done the back, one sleeve, and will have the front done by the time I go to bed tonight. Tomorrow she's picking up what I've done so far to show her editor. I'm kind of nervous about it. I mean, I know I'm an extremely competant knitter, but somehow I still get nervous having my work scrutinized by people who are more experienced than I. And I haven't really worked with chenille before, so I had a lot of difficulty getting gauge. I'm a tight knitter usually, but the swatch I did on size 6 the stitch gauge was too loose, then I went down to a five, then a four, and finally the stitch gauge was right, but the row gauge was way off. In the end, I went back to the six, but slightly changed the way I was working. I'm just worried that the back, which was the first piece I did, might not be as good as the other pieces, since I was still getting used to working with the chenille. But I'm just going to breathe, take a step back, and realize the pieces are just fine, and I'm being too perfectionistic.
Hopefully I'll finish this project in the next couple of days, so that I can get back to my own design. I need to finish that very soon. And I'm more and more worried about finishing gifts in time for the holidays. (And buying the rest of the gifts I'm not making - I don't even know what to get for Scott.) If only I didn't need to work full-time!!
