Well, Friday afternoon and evening were pretty much entirely spent cleaning. (My house is more thoroughly cleaned than it almost ever is). Saturday was spent obtaining the last few Christmas gifts I wanted to get to send back with my folks* and the necessary food items for the coming week.

(*And yes, you may be irritated with me for having my Christmas shopping done. But I did pay for it...it seemed like in every store, I got in line behind someone who was
a. doing a complicated return
b. buying a large quantity of things with coupons, several of which didn't match any of the items they were buying
c. buying fifty bazillion "stems" of silk flowers, each of which had to be rung up separately.

And several of those people also chose the moment to pick a fight with a cashier.

And you know? When the person in line ahead of you is buying $300 of assorted "giftware" and you've got one, $8 pair of gloves, and the giftware-person realizes they have something else to pick up and add to their total and the item is on the opposite side of the store, the cashier NEVER offers to ring up your gloves while the person treks off to get the item?

So anyway. I'm done shopping for a while now. And I'm glad to be done. It seems that the cranky people have come out early this year.)

But, I did finish one thing:



This is the knitted toy hedgehog (it is bigger than I thought it would be; it is about 6" from the tip of the nose to the butt). It's a gift for a family friend who spent a number of years in rural Britain and has a fondness for hedgehogs, and also a collection of small bric-a-brac.

I'm also nearly done with the "sample" version of the purse (the taupe one). I now sort of wish my sister-in-law wore taupe, I'm not sure I'm really up for crocheting another one of these. The nylon cord is hard on your hands and I've had to go back to my old "incorrect" crochet hold (where I hold both the hook and the fiber in my right hand) because the "traditional" hold was giving my a blister on my left index finger.

I've also dragged out all the Christmas foo and I'm gearing up to put that up this afternoon. Standard disclaimer: when I leave town around Dec. 20 for the holidays, I think it's okay to put the decorations up before Thanksgiving by a few days.