Chickenlips Knitting

Rather, it's KISSmas.

It's a simple recipe: take one lump of school-fundraiser cookie dough purchased by the hapless Jason from a coworker. Roll out between sheets of waxed paper and cut into circles using a drinking glass, because who can find the dang cookie cutters? Bake and watch them spread out into pillowy masses that touch each other. Cut apart with a spatula and cool on racks. Buy tubes of black, red, white and blue decorator's icing, and turn Michelle and Heidi loose to create art while they blast KISS CD's. Let cookies languish in a Tupperware container for ten days, then throw away.

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Knitting














The first Trekking sock. Good thing I put out my holiday tablecloth, as it makes the color melange more visible. I'm about to do the heel turn of the second sock, so they just might be ready to be wrapped up for Christmas.















I liked working with the Trendsetter Dune so much that I picked up some more sparkly fuzzy stuff--something called "Heavenly." It'll be enough to make another Lacy Scarf of about 60" length.

This Was Almost a 3-Minute Pity Party

How appropriate that on the winter solstice, the shortest and thus darkest day of the year, my job-related frustration was at its most intense. I've been working since late September on a project without a project manager (the designated PM has been too busy being an account manager, and is out of the office three days out of every five,) so I scrounged for any type of work I could find to keep me busy, often doing grunt work for other PM's. As gently as I could, I nudged the powers that be to keep in contact with the agency to whom they outsourced 75 percent of the formatting, so that I could avoid a big crunch just before final delivery. Well, the infrequent and substance-free blog posts should tip off the alert reader to the fact that nobody listened to me, because I got slammed this week, and have been working my ass off. This morning I made up my mind that I was going to take tomorrow off, deadlines be damned, because I haven't finished shopping, and haven't begun baking and gift wrapping. Not to mention, I haven't begun enjoying! All the things I listed are things I look forward to doing for Christmas every year, for myself as well as my family. But if I'm constantly rushing to and from work/keeping us all in clean underwear/doing all the other various and sundry chores, while trying to give attention to my too-numerous knitting projects, the Christmas stuff becomes just another "to-do", no fun at all. Add to that a non-verbal guilt trip from the boss, compounded by a worsening skin infection I've had for most of the year that I can't get rid of (the dermatologist can't see me until January 9,) and you've got a seriously bummed-out Chickenlips on your hands.

But like I said, it's almost a pity party, because the payoff came when I least expected it! The PM deposited a $25 Starbucks gift card on my desk, made out to "Angelina Jolie" (awww) from "Santa," and sent me an email on which he cc'd my boss, the Ops Manager and company president, singing my praises to the skies for keeping the project on track and just generally being a classy sort of gal.

I ended up getting tomorrow off, with only one volume to work on at home over the next five days. To quote The Who, "I call that a bargain...the best I ever had!"