Part of the Christmas loot - and an FO!

My least favourite book of 2006 has been The Da Vinci Code, it ranks with The Silmarillion and Ulysses for books I've never managed to finish,this mug is a brilliant choice of gift from one of my best friends, I gather it was a suggestion from his mother, which explains where he gets his sense of humour from!

These were a gift I requested, the DVD's of 3 TV series from the 1990s all about gardening and cooking in the Victorian age and re enacted for television, I'm going to thoroughly enjoy watching these again and I've promised to lend them to my mum as well.

I have always collected friends who have 'quirky' senses of humour, one of my work friends gave me these, chocolate kittens, I don't think Hecate would approve if she understood!

My Mum with her annual haul of yarn for knitting into sweaters and blankets for children in Africa, she has arthritic hands and knits and crochets a lot to keep her fingers working, one of my sisters sent her this which should keep her out of mischief for a while!




My eldest sister has been incredibly generous to me this year, just before Christmas my second hand microwave started sparking intermittently, not a good thing, I'd expected to have to wait until after SkipNorth to replace it, but she (with the help of my brother) arranged for me to get this from her yesterday, not just a microwave but a grill and a convection oven!

The old microwave is waiting for a trip to the tip now and the new microwave has been inspected by the resident nosey parker, the instruction manual has been read once and I've worked out how the microwave bit works. I plan experimenting with the rest of it at the weekend as I'm back to work tomorow. I'm absolutely thrilled with it as I'm sure you can imagine!

A finished object apart from buttons. I took this to my mum's flat where I could pick up approximately 400 stitches around the button bands without feline help, even then my maths was badly wrong at first when I picked up the stitches, I'm amazed it's come out as evenly as it has.

I've been through my button collection and these are the best I've found so far, I'm not particularly happy with any of them so I may go shopping for new ones for it as soon as I can. The yarn has knitted up really nicely and the waistcoat/vest is very warm and comfortable to wear - I'm counting it a success and one of the few major FO's of 2006! The picture with the buttons in is a bit bleached, the otehr picture is a better colour match which is why the butttons I've picked out as a possible match may look a little odd!
It's bee na godo Christmas this year for me, peaceful and content, I had a nice visit with my Mum and have had a quiet day with Hecate today, I won't say I'm looking forward to the return to work tomorrow but I do feel at least partially recharged, no one else from my department will be in in my office tomorrow so I should be able to get lots done (that's the theory anyway) I'll just have to see what the people who worked until Friday afternoon left me!