The dreaded last-minute Christmas knitting project is finished and currently flung over my loveseat.  Tomorrow I'll look it over for loose threads and then stuff it into a gift bag only to have it pulled back out again hours later by my almost-three-year-old niece who will probably be all, "A SWEATER?  THANKS, AUNTIE LAMESAUCE."  But I bask for now in the sweet glow of accomplishment.

I'm trying to convince my dog that there is such a thing as the Christmas Cat.  Gotta love dogs, they are so gullible this way.  He's now keeping watch in my picture window emitting the occasional low-pitched warning "rrrf."  The Christmas Cat is obviously not welcome in our small yard, that evil fucker.

So -- what do I have to say other than the above nonsense?  Nothing whatsoever. 

Hope everyone who celebrates it has a lovely Christmas and everyone who doesn't has a lovely weekend.  I will be spending the next day or two with my parents, my grandmother, and my brother and family.  There will be shouting arguments over who left the baby unattended and where the toddler's socks went and also why no one is helping to SET the bloody TABLE goddammit and all that nice traditional Christmas stuff.  I have slotted into the "fewest presents ever" category of the family now that I'm the lovely spinster aunt so I will probably spend a good part of tomorrow helping care for my niece and nephew and entertaining them with their new toys.  It's like parenting without any of the glory (or responsibility, thank fuck.)

Love you all.  So glad I've stumbled back into fandom this year.  Mwah.

I'm typing this with sore hands and fingers, having knocked out an entire (child's) sweater in the last 72 hours. (Here's a link to the pattern if you're curious.)  It wouldn't have been so bad but it was a relatively bulky yarn on relatively small needles and there is a buttload of cabling (which I do without a cable needle because I am lazy) all of which adds up to ouchie hands.  It's kind of funny that I took piano lessons for 16 plus years and in that time did festivals and exams and a degree in music with piano as my secondary instrument and I never once in all that time practiced enough to give myself tendinitis and now I've managed to do it with intensive knitting over the course of only 3 days.  It's all a teachable moment in the end: "Plor will not tackle ambitious Christmas knitting less than four days before Christmas."

I know there are a few other knitters out there on my flist/reading circle/whatever and I'm curious if any of you has ever designed a pattern, like formally in the sense of releasing your pattern to the public -- maybe even for profit?  I've got a mitten design that I decided to work up into a proper pattern but I'm stuck on the part where I have the thing tested by someone to make sure it makes sense to others.

I was poking around the Ravelry forums looking to see what the process is for having a pattern tester and it's all terribly formal, like "thou shalt provide thy tester with a Time Frame and thy tester shall abide by this Time Frame and yea, thou shalt smite them with knitting needles of iron if thy tester does not provide appropriate and timely feedback" and I'm left sitting there thinking wistfully of beta readers in fandom and thinking that no one will leave me "Track Changes" notes like "squee!" and "you have a comma problem, you idiot" in the margins of a document that reads K43 K2tog K15 etc.  Why isn't knitting more like fandom?  WHY?

Anyway, that is my knitting-related rant.  I wish I had less tendinitis so I could knock out a Xmas Eve fic today but sadly today will be spent lining this sweater and setting a zipper and that sort of thing.  Hope all of you have a happy Christmas or whatever you plan to do with your holiday weekend.  I'll be icing my hands and hoping my almost-3-year-old niece appreciates that Auntie Plor has crippled herself for her sake.

p.s. I just chose "sore" as my mood for this post and of course it has McKay *bleeding from a head wound and smiling* in the icon.  You know you are a whiny hypochondriac when Rodney McKay's being a braver little toaster than you.  Sigh.