Hello all, Mary Ellen here.

Testing out my new blog making “stuff” at our guild’s new site and platform. Seems like it will be a quick learning curve, so hopefully we’ll be back to normal very soon. From my perspective it’s mostly just a matter of new log-in credentials, and a few new routine things for letting all of you know that an entry has been posted.

I’m working on holiday gifts like crazy these days-the little things for mail deliverers, nail girls, hairdresser, etc. Soon I have to get busy in the kitchen-cookies, etc. I think that with our unusual weather my internal holiday countdown has not started yet. No wonder I’m a bit behind. Found a great recipe for fun hot chocolate stir sticks. The cook says you’ll never go back to powdered hot chocolate mix. We’ll see. (Didn’t you hate it as a kid when your mom or dad gave that answer to a question. So often “we’ll see” translated into “no”.) **I had a request to share the recipe, so am inserting this link for you. I will warn you that the measurements are in British–grams! Haven’t done the math yet, but I’m sure there is an easy translator somewhere on the web. Would hate to have to do the math, LOL!) Click here for video and recipe.

I’ve finished up my wool felt ornaments-the hand stitching in front of the DVR’d holiday specials is done for 2015. You know, that hand stitching is not so relaxing for me, but I do like the end results so I bite the bullet sometimes. I’m working on knitting a new dog walking hat and am teaching myself to double knit from a tutorial I found-yep, you guessed it-on YouTube. (Knitting in front of the tv is relaxing for me.) It’s not coming out exactly the way I remember the super warm double knitted hat my mom made years ago, but I think it will be a good substitute. Still going to look around for a pattern like she used. Sadly all of her hand written hat and mitten patterns have gone missing from her archives-read that as bottom knitting drawer. Any knitters out there have a good double knitting pattern to recommend?

Well on this beautiful spring  winter morning I’m going to drop the car off for an oil change and hope to get a big chunk of  shopping finished with a friend as my chauffeur. Lots of hops, skips and jumps to different stores for odds and ends.  Going to buy most of the gift cards I need when I grocery shop so I can earn extra gas points. Tops has most of the ones I use for various “tips” this time of year.

How about all of you? Scrambling to get it all finished? Is this a female issue? I don’t ever hear the gentlemen commenting on all they have to do for the holidays? Just remembered-have to send out the Christmas cards. I haven’t received a single one yet this year; must be others are off on the countdown as well! TTFN.