It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

I saw this last night when I was driving home. I'm sure it actually says "Peace on Earth," but it sure looks like it says "Peace on Farth." I was wondering where or what Farth might be.

Anyway...

Christmas is officially two weeks away. The Christmas knitting is progressing. I got the yarn for the rest of my projects in the mail on Tuesday and immediately cast on for the hats for my nieces. I finished the knitting for them in two days per hat. They're going to be felted, but that hasn't happened quite yet. I'll be doing that in the next couple days. For now, here are a couple pictures in their unfelted glory. I've included a normal hat that I made for Michael for scale comparison.



The pink one is for Allyson and the blue one is for Lauren.

After these I have two pairs of socks to churn out. I hope I can manage a pair per week. We'll see how it goes. One pair might end up being finished on Christmas Day. I also still need to wrap the presents that are finished. The socks for my parents and my mother-in-law are done. My father-in-law's socks are on the needles. At least, the first one is. I need to go get a good book to read while I knit. His socks and my brother's socks are both going to be plain stockinette (based on the assumption that men don't really want fancy looking socks), so they're not particularly exciting for me to knit. Reading while knitting makes the knitting go faster. My sister-in-law's socks are pretty much done. I still need to close up the toe and weave in the ends of the second sock, but that won't take long once I get to it. Speaking of that, I still need to weave in the ends of Allyson's hat as well. You'll get to see official photos of all these things in just over two weeks. Even though pretty much everyone knows what they're getting, they don't know what they look like, and aren't allowed to see them before Christmas.

A few days ago my friend Juanita invited me over to her house to decorate gingerbread houses. She'd gotten a couple of kits and hadn't gotten into them yet. When I told her I'd never decorated a gingerbread house before, she decided that I needed to be initiated. Here are the results of my first attempt:





Here is Juanita decorating hers:


And here is her masterpiece:


I have to admit that Juanita's skills are far superior to mine in regards to gingerbread house decoration. But, for my first attempt, I think it looks cute. I also managed to burst the frosting bag that I used for piping on the frosting. It was fun, and we decided to bake and decorate a cake for our next adventure in pastry decorating. I'm not sure when that will happen, but be sure I'll take and post pictures when it does. (Given my unfortunate lack of prowess with the piping bag, it might be an interesting looking cake.)

Our Christmas decorations are up. All we lack are some presents under the tree. Soon enough, that will be taken care of as well.