I'm baaaaack!

Christmas is always a busy season for almost everyone I know. But, for me it has become a different type of busy over the last few years. I disappear from my "normal" life and am absorbed into the life of The UPS Store. :) Our oldest daughter joins us too, when she is able and this year she spent as much time there as I did, that was very special fun for me. It is fun for me to be able to go to the store to work, and hopefully, a help to our crew at the store. I work between 30 and 40 hours a week coming into the Christmas holiday, to help our customers out. This year, we added a third till to our store, to keep lines down. AND it worked. What a great idea that was! Hurrah, to the UPS Store guy! We also served cookies, candy and pastries to our customers, to make their time in the store even sweeter. :)

On the project front I had seen a blog post about someone making tiny balls of yarn by wrapping yarn around styrofoam balls, and then making tiny knitting needles from dowel rods, cut short and sharpened at one end, then she glued beads on the unsharpened end and those were the knitting needles. After the glue dried, she then inserted the needles, criss-crossed, into the "ball" of yarn. For the finish, she tied yarn to the top of the ball and hung it as an ornament on the tree.

Here is what I did. I took a small amount of clean fleece(some that went through Himself the picker) and wound the yarn around that. (you can use a cotton ball if you want to) I ended up with a ball of yarn about 1 inch, maybe a little smaller, in diameter. Instead of the dowel rods, I used toothpicks and glued beads to one end of the toothpicks. I then inserted the toothpicks through the ball of yarn in a criss-crossed fashion. Instead of an ornament, I glued a magnet to the ball of yarn. The magnet has been the challenging part. Which glue to use? I tried E-6000 and thought, nope that won't work. So, I tried the hot glue gun. That worked great, or so I thought. Some have fallen apart. I am gluing those that fell apart with the E-6000 and leaving the hot glue on the yarn, it seems to be working wonderfully that way! Who would've thought to use BOTH glues?

Now, I didn't use the strip of magnets that you cut. I wanted to use a more substantial magnet. Well, the issue with that is, the magnets were so strong, that they kept sliding across the table and popping onto the others. Now, that doesn't sound like a problem, but when the glue isn't dry and the yarn balls are falling off all over the table.......... well. So, I had to devise a system. I had to keep them at least 3 inches apart, so I arranged 9 in a section of 3x3. Then placed a pile of books on top of them while they dried. That worked.

Below is the picture of the finished ones. To transport them with any sort of sane-ness, and not one huge huddled mess of magnets, I decided to attach them to an old baking sheet from a long gone toaster oven. Perfect. They travelled very obediently to the spinners Christmas party. Phew. Then came the time to take them off the tray! The spinners are very talented gals and they succeeded.

I did get some time to knit, too, over the last couple of weeks. My granddaughters are at the age of really enjoying the American Girls dolls and books. At the Texas state fair they saw Molly in the lady's pavilion. She was in a showcase of knitted items, wearing a sweater with a snowflake on the front. The girls absolutely loved that sweater. So, what is a knitting Gramma to do???? But, make a sweater for the girls to use on their dolls. Below is my version of the sweater, made from the picture their mom took of the doll. Thank you, Rebekah, for that picture!

I had so much fun making that sweater. For the white yarn, I used a yarn that I found at Hobby Lobby, that had a silver strand plied in it. So, the snowflake sparkles! I had so much fun, that I decided to design a skirt to go with the sweater. That was exciting to see the whole outfit.

Felicity then took a trip with me to spinning for show-n-tell. I had been thinking of making a purse for her. After I showed the doll and outfit, the consensus of opinion was a purse would be a great idea. So, here we are with the full outfit. I made a messenger bag and embellished it with a flower.

While I type this, we are preparing for a winter storm. Our part of north Texas is under a winter storm warning. While those to the north of us, don't think this is a real storm, for us it is. They expect 2 inches of snow in my area, with icey roads. We don't have the plows and sanding trucks down here, like we had up north. That is why we are having the warning.

The GOOD SIDE?????

For the first time in years, I may have a white Christmas.