Joy to the world, all the boys and girls!

It feels like everything is coming together, now that we're in the thick of the holiday season. For starters, it got crazzzzy cold here over the past few days, so I've been actually wearing hats. Hats, people! But I'm kinda glad that it's cold, because I love getting use out of my knits and this feels like it really belongs:



I am so ridiculously excited to have a Christmas tree, words cannot do my feelings justice. The significant other and I sometimes still feel stuck in college-student mode, and having a real honest-to-goodness tree makes me feel like we're really celebrating the holidays together, instead of just waiting until we go home to our parents' places. We bought some ornaments to get a little variety (it started out with a very large proportion of owls and squirrels), and went to the hardware store to get a little string of battery-powered lights. When we got home, we realized we'd neglected to buy batteries, so the tree is dark for now. I didn't want to buy tinsel or a garland, so I made a long crochet chain out of some red chenille yarn from deep within the stash. That's the only non-gift knitting I've done since Thanksgiving, and although I've since finished two items, I've added a few more small ones to my list as well. It'll be okay, though, as those don't need to be delivered until about a week after the 25th.



In other holiday news, this weekend I managed to spend a few hours in Berkeley at the Verb Workshop's holiday bash and 1-year-brick-and-mortar anniversary event. People were shopping, sitting, talking, knitting, spinning, drinking spiced cider, and eating cupcakes. My kind of day.



They've just opened a new classroom space across the way from their shop, which was filled with some other fantastic bay area fiber vendors. Krista of Pigeonroof Studios had a table full of lovely, saturated colors:



Faerie Mountain Fibers had a huge collection of spinning batts, and even made a few to order!





I could not resist these wooden cross-stitch ornament kits from Girl on the Rocks, so I got one along with an awesome owl-shaped needle gauge and some gift tags.



Along with these goodies, I brought my Snow Chains mittens for Kristine to see in the flesh. I got to see a few of the other entries, which were all pretty amazing. Kristine gave me my prize package for winning the design-your-own mitten category. I confess I've been biting my nails wondering what our prizes would be, but this went beyond my wildest expectations. It starts off with this awesome canvas project bag, printed with peacocks derived from the Verb logo, and inside it had 3 (THREE!) sets of Darn Pretty Needles from DyakCraft (formerly Grafton Fibers) in US sizes 1, 2, and 4, and a bunch of coupons. I used two of them immediately; one for a free skein of Creating sock yarn (in Magic Bean), and one for 20% off anything in the store.



So, I was pretty stunned when I saw all this. But once my brain had time to catch up with me, I knew there was really only one way I was going to use that 20% off coupon. I'll give you all two hints, in picture format:



and in case that was too obscure...



And now, I'm off to enjoy the holidays a bit more and play with my new toy.