It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

[Feeling: pressured]
[Music: Big & Rich - Save A Horse, Ride a Cowboy]
[Knitting: Paloma's Christmas Scarf]
Yup, it is. We put our Christmas tree up today (decorate tomorrow), the house smells like pine, I'm thinking of making pumpkin pie empanadas (local treat, no recipe, sorry), and the knitting is getting kicked up a notch a la Emeril. I used this tutorial to unravel a cheneille sweater I had lying around that made me look like a large, pink... thing. So now all I have to do is get the kinks out of the yarn, which is going to be more difficult than I first thought. I took a nice, hot shower this morning, hanging a few of the hanks around the bathroom to receive a dose of steam... most barely even smoothed after 20 mins. I'm thinking I'll hang it inside the shower while letting the water run for a hot bath (we have a tub/shower combo) and let the steam get rid of the kinks. I'm thinking of going to thrift stores for my yarn now, as in, to buy sweaters that I can then unravel for yarn. For a little more than a dollar, I can get enough yarn to make... ahem.. a sweater, or use it in combination for other things. I'm not a girl to be governed by gauge or weight or yardage. I know I should be. I know the knitting gods will send their wrath upon me for disdaining the mathematics involved. I hate math. I don't do math. Hopefully they'll understand. Maybe when I become a *real* knitter I'll start to care about those things. Yea, like when I start making sweaters and stuff. However, with all wool sweaters all I need to do is give them a little Woolite bath, run them through the washing machine's final stage (the spin-dry or centrifuge, as my mom says) and hang to dry overnight. In the morning I rip, rip, rip, and get yarn yarn yarn! I saw a J. Crew handknit sweater in the second-hand shops, and I stopped myself from buying it, realizing that someone else could use the sweater and the yarn wasn't really my style, but also because of the work that went into it. To have someone undo what I put hours and hours into seems like a bit of a crime, really (which is why I won't undo my aunt's too-short, too-small mohair sweaters to make my own new ones). Indeed, on Monday, when every item is $1.25 instead of $2.50 I'm going to spend about 20 dollars on sweaters. That way, I don't spend double... even on thrift-store cheapness I'm still frugal/stingy/cheap. But hey, where else can you get cashmere, angora, and wool, all for less than five bucks, and double what you'd get at your LYS? May you all have a great Christmas and happy New Year. And to all you non-Christmas-ers, have a great Holiday!