Christmas Love

I am not normally what anyone would call a mellow person, and the holidays render me even less so. At my worst, I alternate between a manic flurry of increasingly futile activity and exhausted, misanthropic crabbing. This year, I believe I managed to channel my energies into a fairly grand knitting agenda, and thus avoided becoming a pissy little party pooper. The result: I really, really enjoyed the day, more so than I have in an awfully long time.

First off, my nephew liked his hat!

There was absolutely no arm-twisting-- he just put the darn thing on.

What a ham!

My brother loved his hat, which I finished at approximately 11:30 Friday night. He didn't even mind that I repossessed it for blocking:

Tami-- I think you have the answer to your question right here :)

I think Santa may have delivered this to the wrong house, but I'm not giving it back:

Martha-approved, no less. I haven't used one of these since middle school!

Some other highlights:

• Sloshing hot spaghetti and meatballs all over the backseat of our car and finding it hysterically funny, somehow.
  
• Gaping at my husband's suddenly huge and teen-aged cousins. Seriously, what are their parents feeding them? Perhaps I wouldn't be so shocked if I saw them more than once a year...
  
• Being fooled by my 95lb grandmother-in-law into taking home her unwanted Christmas ornaments during the family Yankee Swap-- that woman does not miss a trick.
  
• Having an impromptu Beatles sing-a-long-- courtesy of an unexpected but awesome gift from my brother-- with my husband while I cast on the next installment (#5!!) of 52 hats.*
  

By 10PM, I was writing gleefully mushy emails to all of my friends like a modern-day reformed Scrooge. They're probably wondering if someone hijacked my Yahoo account. Question is, will all this holiday cheer survive a three-night stretch at work... in charge? I wonder.

Happy Boxing Day!

*This one's going to be a beaut-- stay tuned for pictures Wednesday!