I think this will be my last post before January.

Sunday, I take off for Illinois and my parents'. I am really looking forward to it - not having to cook or drive places, and having a lot of knitting time.

I'm still trying to decide what projects to take. Purple yarn and Theresa's "Grandmother Vinson's" mitten pattern is one. The Celtic braid socks are another. I'm thinking maybe the Storebror yarn for chunky socks and maybe some variegated Socka (my handknitting.com order finally came - the socka was backordered for weeks) and a lace sock pattern for those. And I'm trying to figure out if I can either squeeze the 15 balls of Emu DK for the Lightning-Bolt sweater into my clothing duffel, or if I could possibly get away with putting it in another bag and "lashing" the bag onto my clothing duffel (you're supposed to be able to bring two 'carry on' bags; I usually take a duffel for clothes and my backpack, but there's no way I can get the yarn for the sweater into my backpack with all the books and other projects and bottles of water and whatnot that I take). I can't check bags from or to where I'm going, so that option is out.

I have seen people get on the train with like 15 bags and no one says boo to them, AND I have a compartment, so I think I'll just try the "second bag lashed onto main bag" trick.

Have a good holiday (and if your winter holiday is already past, I hope you had a good one).

And since I celebrate Christmas, here are a few links:

scroll down on this site for the words to "Nu er det jule igen", a traditional Scandinavian song for dancing around the tree.

some Irish Christmas traditions (my major heritage is Irish). More are here. And because another part of my heritage is German, here are some German Christmas traditions.