The most what? time of the year

Meet Etran Finatawa.

I found this music through Google Music, which has some awesome features. There was a track from this musician in a bunch of free world music I was able to download. I liked it so much, I sought out more. It relaxes me. Something about it resonates. Maybe I have Wodaabe ancestors way back, I don't know. Southern Italy, northern Africa, who knows.

Almost ready for Holiday Extravaganza 2011 NOW with half the offspring. I am so bitter and sad and just depressed about this. I'm not gonna pretend, this shit hurts. But I'll get through it. Bob is awesome and I can talk to him about it any time, Anna is helping by talking me through things. I'll just be glad when it's over. Add to it that I'm not fully over the cold I had a couple of weeks ago and the antibiotics I'm taking for the resulting sinus infection are making me nauseated, and it's a good time to be had by all.

I finished the other skein I was spinning and upon reflection, they don't really match that well, color wise or texturally. So I have two wee skeins that I have no idea what to do with. This one is under 300 yards as well. It's pretty and soft, though.



I haven't had the wheel out in so long I wonder if I'll still be able to use it. Partly space considerations, partly time. I am on the last couple of inches of my final holiday knitting project though, so maybe I'll have time to sit with my wheel soon. I plan on taking a couple of days off in January just because I need a damn vacation.

Made a tea cosy. It was long overdue. I have been drinking a lot of tea lately and I get sick of the second cup being stone cold. It works perfectly. Could have made it a little bigger.







I also made some needle-felted coasters. These are a gift for a relative. I think they look kinda primitive but I guess there's nothing really wrong with that.



Bob and I are keeping the gifts low key this year between us. Financial reasons and stress reasons. He is hard to shop for and I know I'm not easy either, mostly because he always wants me to say GET ME THIS and I prefer to be surprised.

I continue to learn the Macbook. My biggest frustration at this point is dealing with Comcast Backup because it will NOT finish backing up my files and it continues to show my vault space as incorrect. I had to get a utility to detect duplicate files because some kind of weird nesting shit happened and I ended up with most of my photos and PDFs being duplicate and triplicate and I was able to remove close to 75G of unnecessary stuff from my hard drive. The tech help hasn't been much help and I think as soon as the new year comes and I get a few paychecks under my belt, I'm going to ditch them and go with a different service. (Recommendations welcome) The other thing is when I go to work I keep trying to scroll the wrong way and use my finger on my mouse to swipe things. Oops. Doesn't work. I really like the computer though.

Not much else to say. I have a lot of thoughts running around in my head but there's not much time right now to sit down and get them in order. I do have one more thing-I am inspired to do a giveaway.

BUTTERCUP'S FIRST BLOGULAR GIVEAWAY!

This is going to be easier for local folks, but I'll send a random skein of handspun yarn to the first person who can tell me what this is.




Have fun, and if you roll that way, have a happy holiday. I'll try to post next week sometime.