Well, expected by me, unexpected by the reader I imagine. A few weeks ago I was asked for another couple Christmas stockings by a cousin. It was already after Christmas, I imagine he waited so I didn’t feel like I had to rush. I figured the best thing to do was to get started right away. The way I work these stockings is that I always have 3 on hand for our family. When I get a request, I make another and then offer up a choice of the ones I have.

When I make a stocking, I first check what yarn I have in stash that can be used, then I supplement that with whatever yarn I need to purchase to complete the project. I had headed to the yarn store to get enough white yarn to complete two projects, but unfortunately, the shop only had one skein of appropriate white yarn. This meant that I could only complete one stocking at this time.

But, my desire to knit stockings isn’t that high at the moment. After all, I believe this is my 25th stocking. The recipients love them and they are well used, but I tire of them and it’s hard to knock them out when they are requested. So, I am stopping at one, I will give the recipient a choice of 2 out of 4 and then I’ll save the knitting of the second one for my own collection until later in the year.

I had plenty of the wine color in my stash so I didn’t need to purchase more and it did have the added bonus of moving a stash item out of my collection. I am down to 111 in stash, which does not include the yarns I got from Miss Marja, I still need to get those squared away sometime. With this completed project, I am at 20% of my goal of 40 projects this year.

In doggo news, we got a very highly recommended slow feeder for her to help with the upchucking in the mornings. I’ve now got her back on regular food during the day and half regular half bland in the evening. It’s going well and I hope to have her transitioned off the bland diet totally by the beginning of next week if not sooner.

Here’s the crazy bowl that changed our lives. This takes her even longer to use than two kong style treat feeders, and it’s a lot less messy. Lizzie is learning to lay off Rose while she finishes eating which was our initial challenge. Lizzie can be very pushy and she thinks she deserves everything Rose has, so at the start, there were challenges to keeping Lizzie away from Rose’s bowl. But, we aren’t having that issue anymore.

Here’s a quick little wedding planning update as well, for anyone who is interested. Because this week has been much more comfortable, though still quite busy, we’ve gotten so much done. I counted the weekends left before the big event and it’s only 10. So, I got into my planner and outlined some hard deadlines and tasks that needed to be achieved. The best man found us an officiant who is a pro but still reasonably priced, we will meet with her soon. Miss Marja and I sort out flowers tonight. We also will hopefully get invites addressed and in the mail this weekend or first thing Monday. Mr. Ink is hard at work buying the trees he wants for the wedding decor, though his first option completely fell through and he has to explore new ones. My mom and I facetimed to pick out fabrics she has in her stash to wrap the tree containers in to make them look not ugly. Miss Butterfly and I went through the basement pulling out everything we might be able to use for decor and bringing it upstairs. I spent time looking at what rental items we’d need but haven’t ordered them yet in case I need to add to that for any reason. The groomsmen are all over their potential plans for what they’ll wear and are extremely enthusiastic, much to Mr. Ink’s chagrin. They want to be a little wild, we’ll see how Mr. Ink handles their requests. So, things continue at a pretty good clip and much more pleasantly now that I am getting sleep. It’s amazing how exhaustion can sap one’s enthusiasm.

I guess that’s about it for an update around here. I DO still have another finished object to show off. Since it’s mostly black, I was really hoping that we’d get some weather that would accommodate a photoshoot. However, it’s snowing again and that’s not looking possible. But, a finished object is nice!