I’ve been busy.  But you don’t really care what’s kept me busy.  I don’t even care what’s kept me busy, because it’s finished.  So, I’ll just get straight to the posting again.  Fasten your seatbelts, it might be a long one.

My mom’s first knitting project was a Christmas stocking for my first cousin.  She is one crazy knitter.  She went straight to a project with not only increases and decreases, but also grafting and intarsia.  She proceeded to make stockings for every baby in the family, and the husbands that have been added in over the years.  My stocking is my favorite part of Christmas, not only because of the stuff in it, but because it’s mine, made especially for me.

When I learned to knit, it was with the intent that I would take over the Christmas stocking knitting tradition.  It’s taken me three years to work my way up to intarsia.  I visited my mom and sister in Nashville a week or two ago and we sat down with the pattern books that have our family stockings in them and she taught me intarsia and how to carry yarn behind and all that fun stuff.  I started out with a stocking for someone who loves me no matter if it stinks, T-Bone.

I designed the bone and doghouse graphic with the help of a little bit of graph paper and followed the pattern for everything else.I finished the colorwork portion at my mom’s house and have finished the rest of it this week.  Well, sort of finished.  Just don’t look inside . I will have a long weekend this weekend, so I can face the challenge of the ends.

In other news (start shameless plug), I’ve been riding my bicycle in preparation for the MS 150 on April 15th.  I’ve mentioned it here before, but as a refresher, it’s a charity ride for the MS Society that goes from Houston to Austin.  It’s going to be crazy, but I’m not allowed to run, so it’s my equivalent of a marathon.  I’m in so much better shape than I was even a few weeks ago.  Anyway, I still have $100 in donations to reach the minimum amount that I have to raise to participate, so if you are interested in donating, you can click here (end shameless plug).  If you want to see the chronicle of our adventures, you can visit our blog.  It’s not much to look at right now, because as you know, I’ve been busy, but it should get better over the next few weeks as we are doing more training rides and it will include a full re-cap of our adventures.

Whew, so whats been up with you guys?  My bloglines has like 700 new posts for me to catch up on!  Craziness!  I think I’ll just start fresh.