Santa's workshop

I made a batch of gingerbread cookies last night. I've had a craving for them since the beginning of December. Something about seeing Christmas lights go up in the neighborhood and smelling woodsmoke just brought it on. I managed to make almost two full pans of cookies out of the one recipe; this is a store bought gingerbread mix and the cookie recipe is on the side of the box. We just sprinkle colored sugar on our cookies; we're not into all the icing and stuff like that.

Nana made some shortbread yesterday afternoon and is making sugar cookies today. She can't stand for very long, but as she says, she can stand long enough to make a batch of cookies. We aren't going to bake a whole lot; now that everyone is getting older we're not quite as into the sweet stuff as we used to be. Usually I don't bake much myself; Joe is the one who bakes the gingerbread and last night was the first time I've done it. What was he doing instead? Just look....

This is his workshop. He is busy making candy sleighs for all the staff at the church. Plus the kids. Plus their friends and roommates. You need candy canes, small chocolate Santas, mini Hershey bars, and some decorative bells and such.

Here is the finished product. It's really quite cute. And he only burned himself with the glue gun five or six times.

Here is the finished fleet. Pretty impressive, huh.

On the fiber front, I've been spinning a little more each day and so far it isn't aggravating my arm. I'm adding more to the singles on the spindle, but it still looks basically the same as the last picture I posted. I hope I can end up with a pair of socks out of the four ounces I have of the roving.

I have been knitting more as well, but I haven't touched the Red Scarf for a couple days as I think the heavier yarn was aggravating the arm. I worked on the sorely neglected Pumpkin socks yesterday and on the whole I felt pretty good doing it. I really have to sit down with the WIPs and the stash and decide what needs to be done first and work out some kind of knitting priority list. This arm of mine needs to get well so that I can get rolling on the projects again.

My mother's Branching Out has been blocked. Nothing special, just the classic throw the towels on the mattress and pin the thing out, plus grab a fan and turn it on high to speed the process.

Ahhh, there's nothing like the seasonal scent of wet alpaca being blocked.







The catsanddoggers think it's pretty cool, too.