Merry Christmas!

We are on stop #2 of our whirlwind tour of the families. We had a wild family gathering at my parents' house yesterday. My sister and her husband and 3 children, my brother and his wife and 2 children, my husband and I and our 2 children, my parents and my aunt (mom's sister). Gift exchange was rather wild -- like a swarm of locusts. Dad came through a few times with a trash bag so we wouldn't be buried under the wrapping paper flying everywhere.

We left this morning and are now at my mother-in-law's house. It's a bit quieter here -- my children are the only ones here right now. Their cousins are at their mother's house until later, or tomorrow. Their father, my husband's brother, is here. He keeps things hopping.

It has been snowing here for awhile, and the temp is down to 17 F. White Christmas! (And the movie "White Christmas" is showing on AMC right now.)

I made a pair of socks for my 9-year old niece. But I started a little late. Finished sock #1 on Tuesday, but it looked fat, and the toe was too pointy. Soldiered on and started sock #2 Tuesday evening, finishing after dinner Wednesday, before dessert and the above-mentioned wild gift exchange. But I had decided to make some changes so sock #2 wouldn't look as fat as sock #1. I had done an eye-of-partridge heel flap, and since it draws up more than the slip-stitch heel, I did more rows to make the flap the right length. The problem is that the gusset is then that many stitches wider (5 on each side, in my case), making the sock circumference that much bigger. I corrected this on sock #2 by doing the same number of rows I would have done with a regular heel stitch, so I had the right number of gusset stitches, and a much better looking sock. But it didn't match the first sock, so I had to rip out the first sock, back to the heel flap. By some miracle, I did get the sock finished by just after 11 pm last night and was able to leave it there for my niece to pick up (my brother's family lives near my parents). The one sock that was finished in time did seem to fit perfectly, however, which is an enormous relief. I made the sock based on the specifications in The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns for an 8-year-old child to Women's Small (that's one size) instead of my usual (getting foot measurements and knitting to those) and it worked!