My place of work likes to claim that 30% of our salary is in benefits. I don't quite agree since most of those benefits are not something I have any reason to use. But I do like that we get 2 days off at Christmas and 2 days off for the New year. It just happens that this year, we get the 2 days BEFORE Christmas since it falls on Saturday so that means I'm off today. I'm also taking vacation for the 3 days in between holidays so I will be off 11 days in a row! Anyway, I was stressed earlier in the week as I learned that the appraisers needed to come out and take more photos. (I'm taking advantage of lower interest rates) That meant more last minute intense cleaning when I could have been finishing up my Christmas purchases and I didn't understand why they needed photos they had already taken. Well...just before leaving yesterday, I emailed to try to pin them down to a time and that's when I got the good news that they had everything they needed and wouldn't be coming out. Yay!


That means I slept in this morning and have been more or less relaxing all morning. I did put towels away and fed the cats but that's it. It's not noon yet. I'll move into gear after noon. Really, I will.

I decided last night to try a photo and see if the hooded cowl will look the way I think it will. Once it's washed and blocked, the edge won't curl but it fits around the face the way I thought it would. I'm a little over halfway now.

Last night I also crocheted a little Irish Rose. I'd been surfing recently and found myself inspired by Lily's Ms. Crochet. There was one flower in particular that I want to learn to do but .... wouldn't you know it....the Antique Pattern Library is in the process of moving to http://www.newmediaarts.org and isn't functional yet. I have several printouts already on Irish Crochet and even have a book somewhere that I'm not willing to hunt for this close to the holiday. So I guess it will wait until next week but in the meantime, I needed a little IC fix.

The scanner tends to flatten the motif and part of the charm of Irish Crochet is it's 3D character. So I tried photographing with the macro lens and it works okay but seems dark so I tried shining a flashlight and got this quirky kind of photo.

It's NOT NOON YET! I'm having fun. I intend to continue having fun. (smile)

You know how tatters like to bling their tatting shuttles, scissors, picot gauges, and just about every tool they own?

Twinkie Chan blings her crochet hooks! You can find the tutorial on A Beautiful Mess!

The size 14-16 crochet hooks I use in tatting are probably too skinny to take on bling but...hmmmmm...if I had one of those plastic "ergonomic" softies on the shaft, that could work! Not that I have any of those softies, but it's an idea!

Okay,okay....I'll go wrap some gifties!