Black and White Christmas

Hmm, there seems to be a theme, between this sheep ornament my mom gave me (isn't he cute!) and the project I started over the holiday (any guesses as to what it is?) Pay no attention to the horribly tangled yarn in the background that wants to be Clapotis if I can have the patience to untangle it. Grrrr.

I haven't had much time to post because after the festivities it was back to work. We had some excitement Christmas Eve. My mother-in-law makes a lovely sauce for chicken for which she gave me the recipe last year (their family doesn't do hangikjöt Christmas Eve, it's always roast chicken). One of the steps is to boil the chicken giblets in broth for a couple of hours. (It really gives a great flavour to the sauce). So I was straining them out of the broth, and decided to save them to give them to the pets as a Christmas treat. Good thing. I went to put a lid on the bowl of broth and managed to knock the special broth ALL OVER my clean kitchen. Argh. So I just boiled the giblets in new broth for slightly less time, and the sauce came out fine. And the kids helped me clean the kitchen, so all was well.

We have rice pudding on Christmas Eve, and one bowl has an almond hidden inside. My little nephew was sick, and his asthma was really bad, so he wasn't very hungry, so we let him just look in one of the bowls, and he ended up finding the almond and getting the special present (this year it was some kind of weird play dough stuff made of poly beads), which is pretty cool when one is only 4. Oh, and one of the Christmas arrangements that I worked on for church caught on fire (apparently the acolyte didn't get the part about lighting the candle, and he decided to light the flowers instead. ;))

Other than that, Christmas day was lazy, lots of knitting. And looks like New Years will be lazy too, which is fine by me.

I got a really fun novel. And my Christmas gifts were well received, my mother loved her socks and my sister-in-law loved the bear sweater and the Selbu baby socks (in fact, she asked me to make her mittens! It's the first time I was asked to make someone something.)