Yule New Year Review

So we are at the cusp of a new year and a new decade. My challenge for the next year creatively is to knit 10 shawls in 12 months, yes I mean lace shawls. I have avoided lace for years so I am making an effort to overcome my holy terror by facing it. I would like to shout to the world I made 2009's challenge of 52 things in 52 weeks. I am sort of wondering have I bitten off more than I can chew but I am going to give it a good crack.

Other wise we as a family are focusing on making small steps to lesson our impact on the world and this includes planing for a handmade Xmas and birthday celebrations and presents. The technogeeks are starting to have concerns over their ability to achieve this goal but I am hoping the kids will develop a better appreciation of the meaning of the various celebrations.

Knit Camp UK is on the week before Ravelry Weekend 2010 in August and Hubby darling has organised our summer break so I can go. So now I have to workout from the latest schedule of classes which classes I am going to sign up to. I think it is his excuse to vege for a week in a quiet location and have a reason why he wont be running around doing activities. He is not that keen on busy holidays where we drag him round sight seeing.

So have a good 12 months all the best for the New Year may it be happy and healthy for all.

Merry Christmas and Seasons Greetings

After knitting like the clappers I managed to finish all the pieces for the darling son's hoodie just in time to wrap it up and placed under the tree. It has to be seamed yet but I did it but never ever ever again will I attempt to knit under so much time pressure.

So it is time to go and do the cooking and all that. I hope all is well and Santa had been good to you.

Santa aka hubby in this household used the various links I provided in my electronic Christmas list and has provided me with a lovely Nameste bag.

Ry's xmas pressie from me to her was the green February Lady Sweater. Rh's pressie was the pieces of his Xmas request. I added the photo when it is seamed a couple of days later

I have cast on a pair of New Years Eve socks for Rh since he picked the yarn.

Did I speak too soon?

This week I managed to finish a number of projects and after the realization that I was not prepared or organized enough for Christmas thought Ok you have done enough.

The Christmas knitting list appeared to be finished, so cool bananas, I went ahead and tweeted that I had finished my Xmas knitting. I should of known that I was tempting fate.

Friday night I came home from work to find out that the Boys of our household had opened the latest copy of Yarn Forward as it was a special for men. They each blamed the other and then promptly turned around to place a request for a specific item each.  Screws like the brown eyes of the dog who will do it on the command for his boyo were turned on and applied.  The boyo, Rh, then turned the screws that little bit further with the impossible request of “I would really really like this for Christmas please.”

I knew I was tempting fate. So now I have the great unachievable demand, which of course I am going to attempt to do.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Do we all have sad masochistic tendencies, where we like to inflict pain on ourselves and those around us when we attempt knitting deadlines that are completely unrealistic.

So with the said pattern from a brand new magazine I attempt to find the yarn to start on this request. OMG it is a discontinued yarn and it is the latest magazine come on guys give me a break. I have two weeks to go. 13 days to go I find a replacement wool which I can:potentially have delivered before Xmas and pay for without losing an arm and a leg.

Now I have to get a colour choice out of the planned recipient. I go through the story of I'm sorry but I can not do it just like the picture cause the yarn is no longer made but I can do it out of this yarn while presenting Rh the colour chart. Mum it is too early in the morning WTF this is the child who has from birth been the earliest riser in this household. Is this the child who used to scream to get out of his cot at 5:30 am in the morning or WHAT???? Breakfast comes and goes - Rh is tinkering on a computer and still I cannot get a decision out of him. I tootle off to work and come back again and he still has not made a decision. I am now down to 12 days and still I not got a colour and my knitting time availability is shrinking down to zero.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to get the colour selection out of teenage child so you can attempt to knit his requested hoodie jumper in time for Christmas.

Christmas taking stock of the season

So after having yet another day of Christmas knitting interrupted by that dreaded swear word WORK I have come to the realization that I am not going to be ready for Christmas and I am never going to have a hope in Hades that I will be ready for Christmas.  After a fair bit of prayer to St Therese to help to work out what is going on.  I just don't feel that I am ready for Christmas. Ok it is time to pull out Plan C that is to go with the flow and just bumble our way through this Christmas period. I really don't have the time or effort to go all out for Christmas. I have not even done the Christmas cards that horrified one of my colleagues today. Sod it are they really that important or a true part of the meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is meant to be the time to celebrate the joy of new life and the coming New Year not being this all consuming madness that stresses everyone out and causes people to compete with each other. Christmas is not about stores and shopping events but families and the friends. For many families Christmas time is the only time families can unite in one place to catch up with each other. For some Christmas is a time of excitement and joy but for so many it is also a time of despondency and heartache.

Christmas time in our family is when we take the opportunity to gather together and remember those who are no longer with us from our Christmas Pasts. Our family, like many Territorian families, have good and bad Christmas memories thanks to Cyclone Tracy.

Even now, so many years later, I still get anxious in the build up to Christmas and am not able to get a good night sleep until I have survived midnight mass on Christmas Eve. The 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami brought back so many memories but also provided an opportunity to help others like we had been helped in the aftermath of Tracy.


The Christmas break is also an opportunity to take stock of where we are at and prepare for the New Year. I like many use the Yule time period as an opportunity to reflect on the past year and prepare for the New Year.
I don’t make New Year Resolutions but I do attempt to hash out a few goals so that we actually get something done.

This evening as I drove across the wilds of Lancashire in the Fog on my own I had time to think about why I was so stressed and was it really worth it. I came to the realization that No it was not. We are all healthy at the moment, which after the year we have had is quiet remarkable. We are not rich and not poor we have elegant sufficiency so the bills are paid and we are muddling through. The kids are growing and achieving in school, they have friends and are happy; so what else do we need. Our little, healthy family is happy and contented consequently, do we really need all the rest of that fandango.

This Christmas we will be taking time to catch up with each other and have some of that quality time which we can lose in our busy lifestyle thanks to the demands of work, school and other activities that make up normal family life in today's busy society. While we are spending time together, we will also be taking the opportunity to pass on some of our good fortune on to others though organisations such as Oxfam and Heifer.

So please have a safe and Merry Christmas with your family and friends. If you can remember someone who is not as fortunate as you are do so.

Merry Christmas from the Kota Atok family.

18 days to go

By my calculations I have 18 days and 17 nights to go until D-Day (Christmas). Suddenly the season is upon us and I am thinking OMG I just am so under prepared. Even though I am very bah humbug about the whole Xmas experience I try and make the effort for the kids. I think we will be having our first Xmas at home in about 4 years as we have not organised anything thanks to recent lung lergy.

The biggest problem I have is work interfering with knitting time. Since last Monday I have done about 120 hours at work including Graduation on Saturday. I rolled back out on Sunday afternoon to undertake student assessments for dyslexia, there has been a bit of a backlog. I have been doing slippers as stocking fillers thinking that they are small, portable and as a project would be easy to pick up and put down. So how long do you think that a slipper for a child size 2 would take? One hour, two hours, an evening Nope it has been almost a week for just one slipper!

Santa, Northpole

Dear Santa

I know that this Christmas letter is a little late cause the organised mothers would have sent this by the first week of November but I am a totally disorganised mother and this is why I am pleading begging writing to you.

Can you please send a team of your elves who work in your toy workshop round to my house so that they can help me with the following:

1. Find the floor of my children’s bed rooms
2. Do the house work that I am so behind with
3. Help me to clean up the house and put everything away in an organised manner so I can find things when I am looking for them.
4. Select, shop or make and then wrap the Christmas presents
5. Make the Christmas cake and plum pudding that I normally do in the October half term and did not get to do because I was too ill and could not be sodding bothered. I could not stand up so how could I go shopping for the required ingredients give me a break I am not Delia Smith.
6. Help me with an attitude change or some magic button I could press or tablet I could take which will actually put me in the Christmas mood cause at the moment I am giving the Grinch and Ebenezer Scrooge a run for their money in the Bah humbug stakes.
7. Find the Christmas ornaments so we can put our tree up on Xmas Eve. See I am a little bit of traditionalist and I do maintain the 12 days of Christmas but at this stage if I can find the ornaments I am certainly not going shopping for more. I am too broke and I would rather buy yarn. I could decorate the tree with some of my stash that is an idea. Thanks I think I will uses that if push comes to shove.
8. Give me enough breathing room so I can actually retain some of brain functions and not keep losing personal items such as car keys, work passes, purses, eye glasses and diary.
   With the diary please see item b and c as the hunt for that made the mess in the house even worse. You would think the local customs and excise inspectors had been in tossing the joint. Nope it was me searching for the diary without which I was totally confused for about three days. My family was ready to exile me to the dog house outside it was that bad.
9. Can we have some peace in our world but I would settle for some calm in our household were we are not lurching from one crisis to another.

If you could help with the above requests I would be most grateful and my family might actually survive the Christmas season with a reasonably sane mother instead of this head swivelling freak who looks like Chucky on a good day. I know that if I continue the way I am going I have a good chance of being an inpatient behind the wall at the local maximum security psychiatric hospital so can really please help with item f.

A good start would be finding one of the four cameras that you have given as gifts to members of this household in the last couple of years so I can use it and therefore update my projects in ravelry and the different blogs I have.

Bah humbug

Kotaatok