I think the Christmas blog post that made me smile the most was Neil Gaiman unwrapping his lamp post. And he’s already got it set up!

Day 2 of Christmas Vacation
The Snook and I went for a 6.44km run around Newtown and Sydney Uni this morning. The Snook baked a bread, which made for a lovely lunch. I worked on the crochet granny square blanket I’m making for my new niece Olivia. I wove in all the ends on the 7 existing squares and then crocheted 3 more. (I’m aiming for 12 in total.) The Snook and I finished decorating our gingerbread house. Dinner was pork fillet with mustard sauce, roast beetroot, and mashed potatoes. *yawn* Good day!

Merry Christmas!
How’s this for a holiday tableau?

Our tree is a native hoop pine that Ma and Pa Snook gave us this year. We decorated it with tinsel, glass balls, and yarn bows. The gingerbread house was bought at IKEA and assembled and decorated by us today with Chocolate Buttons, Allens Freckles, sour fruit tape, Smarties (the Australian kind), and Cadbury Snow Bites. Putting it together was fun!

Day 1 of Christmas Vacation
After a lovely sleep-in, the Snook and I made a menu for the next five days and extrapolated a grocery list from it. Then we headed off to Broadway to: Coles (groceries), Harris Farm (veg), Baker’s Delight (mince pies), Fresh Foods (meat), Broadway Cellars (booze), and Toby’s (coffee). With all luck, we won’t need to leave the house all weekend! Back at home, we tidied up and did laundry and took out the compost. I finished off my green robot skirt (and Dr. Amy promptly sat on it). We also did the basic assembly on my IKEA Pepparkakshus (gingerbread house). For dinner, we made Teriyaki Tofu with Asian broccoli in oyster sauce. YUM.

The idea here is that if I commit to blogging what I do each day, there’s less chance I’ll just sit on the couch and knit the whole time.

Brooklyn Tweed Shelter
My dining room just got AWESOME.

Back in early November when the exchange rate was really good, I asked on Ravelry if anybody wanted to combine on an order of Brooklyn Tweed’s Shelter. I knew that Knit Purl has free international shipping for orders over $300, so I was just hoping to reach that benchmark. Well, four knitters responded and our order ended up being $800. Eeep! Some of the colours were out of stock, so we had to wait a month til more came in. (Apparently the Shelter’s been really popular.) Finally a week ago we got notice that it had been shipped, and today it arrived! There are more photos of the glorious unboxing over on Flickr.

My selection was the 16 skeins of “Pumpernickel” (aka dark chocolate brown). It’s destined to be a Hipster Cardigan for the Snook. 🙂

Christmas Party Roundup
The past two weeks have been full of various Christmas-related festivities.

First there was Spudd’s annual party at a pub in Glebe. (Spudds is Mark Carroll, my trainer.) He gives an “award” to each of his corporate clients, so here’s me collecting on behalf of my office.

Next was “SKIP” (i.e. Sydney Knit in Public). A few years ago some of the Sydney knitters decided that the annual WWKIP Day in June was just too darn cold for sitting outdoors, and we wanted a summertime KIP too! So the Christmas KIP was born. Each year it’s been held at the Sidewalk Cafe down at the Opera House. We had about a dozen knitters this year, and we got some serious double-takes from tourists and theatergoers.

And then we come to the office Christmas Party, which was held last Friday at Baia at Darling Harbour. I broke out my old prom dress for the occasion, as well as my foam reindeer antlers. This is me and Josh, my new coworker from the U.S.

Another one of me and Josh from our table at the restaurant. This one cracks me up, especially with Sven looking inadvertently stern in the center.

Here’s Sandeep, Kunaal and Josh. We had nerdy tech fun at our table.

And I swear, if I ever record an emo album, this is going to be the cover. It’s me, Fransiska, and Fei looking particularly melancholy.

Merry Christmas!