Stockings...

This is how my knitting basket looked this morning - stuffed full of finished, woven, blocked, sewn, and looped stockings! Yes, there are two that are still in progress and one yet to be started, but those are not for my family and the timeline on these was not to be finished by Christmas.

I thought all day about how to try to get them all in one photo - and then I thought of the big brick wall of the neighbors house that it in my back yard... To be nice I did use those hooks that come off the wall without leaving a mark. It was the perfect backdrop! (Or would have been had the tuck pointers done a better job...)

The first photo is all together. The next photos are how they will be gifted by household. First, the grandbaby and his parents - then my dad and his girlfriend and her dog - finally mr.sunneshine and myself. Last there is the skull stocking that I love, but currently has no place. I am
working on that...

I can't wait to get the other three finished and off to their new homes as well :) There is one stocking missing from all these photos and that is the red one that I am giving to my grandma for Christmas. She is doing better - attitude is improving (but feisty-ness never leaves) - and she will get home from the hospital Monday night. I told her she could open her present when she gets home, and that has been a good carrot to get her to try harder, do her therapy and such! I really appreciate all the thoughts and prayers!! She is not out of the woods, but she is
making progress every day!

And on one other cool note, I had two of the knitters that were in my stocking class, drop by the store with their complete/almost complete stockings to show me. Both Nse and Anne did an amazing job - I was so proud!!

Happy Knitting

Blocking stockings...

Mubs made it through surgery and through the night. Thank you everyone for your prayers and well-wishes!! I talked to her for a minute this morning, she was kinda cranky and not feeling well from all the drugs. I took cranky as a good sign - she has a sparky spirit. They are only keeping her in the hospital for 4 days, so I am just waiting to see how things go today - to see if I fly back to see her Sunday and Monday. She has such great friends where she lives, they are all stepping up to help her, which is so comforting since we all live far away. By Sunday, she will be surrounded with family as well. If you could please keep her in your prayers, I would be so grateful!

And on a lighter note, I leave you with the first batch of stockings blocking. Three of these will be send to Omaha tomorrow!

Happy KNitting!!

She taught me to knit...

My grandmother fell this afternoon and fractured her hip. She has been mentioned many times here and is the most wonderful woman. She was taking the neighbors trash can in and slipped in their driveway and fell. Thankfully, someone found her quickly and took her inside where it was warm and got her to the hospital. She goes into surgery tonight at 8. If you have any spare prayers or good thoughts you could send her way, I would really appreciate it. She is the strongest woman that I have ever met, but she is scared. She is the matriarch of the family and she could use more prayers and love then we can give.

Thank you so much!!

Let the drama begin...

Sorry that i have disappeared, it has been a long and stressful couple of weeks since I last blogged!

There have been a couple really fun things too! Mr.sunneshine and I went Christmas tree hunting with some friends and bagged a great tree. The Ent gods pointed this one out for us to grab - we came to a clearing where everthing was shaded but this tree and the bottom 4 feet were dead. That was great for us, since our house doesn't have super high ceilings. Now its cut down to about 6.5 feet and looks great and the forest has one less dying tree...

I ripped back my ex-christmas stocking a bit and have my new one almost finished. I spent a couple hours weaving in ends yesterday, so I will be blocking the stockings for my grandbaby and his family tonight. I also started one of the two paid stockings that I am doing. I would like at least one of them to be done by Christmas.


If you don't want to read the work drama, feel free to end your post reading here. I just need to vent.

Five months ago, I offered my Boulder store for sale to my manager. She said that she was interested and we signed a pre-sale contract. Since then, she and her boyfriend have been stalling when I have asked about the sale - they decided to take a different financing route, there were just a couple more hoops, they needed more information from me, they were waiting on the bank for their loan, ect.

In the meantime, I decided to move my other location a couple miles down the road, where rent is a fraction of what I am paying now and I can carry different lines then what I have now. Plus it is a great excuse for a sale to clear out things, instead of moving them. I knew that I had my lease till the end of January at the moving location but that the store for sale only had through December. So I kept trying to push, so I could know how much merchandise, I needed to put on sale.

The landlord was holding the space for them for these five months as a courtesy to me, since I had been a good tenant for 10 years. Finally, on the 1st of December, the landlord called me and the interested parties and said a lease had to be signed or he would send someone in to see the space. Long story short, the other party signed a lease on the space. I have to be out of the space at the latest by Dec 31st. On Tuesday the lease was signed, the sale was officially off. The boyfriend called to ask me to please not talk to my manager for a day or two because she was "fragile". Wednesday, said boyfriend's father had an adverse reaction to medication and was rushed to the hospital. Thursday, boyfriends father appeared to be on the mend, he was out of town with his family, I called my manager to try to make an exit strategy as my time is running short and there is a lot of merchandise that needs to be liquidated. She hangs up on me - in a "I'll call you back" - way. Then I get a scathing call from the boyfriend who is crying and yelling at me about how unfair I am, how mean I am to be closing the store, how is she going to pay her bills (keep in mind she has been offered a job at the other location, which is a 45 minute drive, until the end of January - if she would like to take it), and how poor my timing is by calling her. WHAT?? They had five months to get their sh@t together and couldn't do it - knowing that I was not going to keep that store - I now have a huge amount of merchandise to liquidate and the money that I was counting on getting from them for inventory is kaput. And I am the bad person. She still won't talk to me, I have told her that I will not talk to her boyfriend about her job, and right now am making the best decisions I can for my well-being assuming that she has sacrificed her voice in that process by not talking to me. AHHHHH! How did I get to be the bad person here?? She had a sweetheart deal to take an established store, with great lines, turnkey and pay cost for the inventory and a nominal fee for build-out/display/consulting... It really is crazy!

Thanks so much for letting me vent!!
Happy Knitting and less drama to all!