Holidays hah! Busy Busy Busy (aka the longest post in the world)

These holidays have been so busy I haven't even had time to scratch myself, and I've been itchy!

Holiday pressie knitting was a fight to the finish, I ended up staying up until 1pm on Christmas eve finishing off my sisters Noro gloves. Bonus was that she loved them.




Unfortunately my mother had the bright idea of going to my Grannies house on Christmas day, just for the day. after less than 5 hours of sleep I got up at 6am, had breakfast and did presents at Mums half asleep and then had to be on the road by 8am to get to Grans by 11am. We had lunch and then left again at about 4pm. Man was I tired! But it was good to be with family and hang out.

I get over-socialised very easily, so it was a bit difficult for me to be happy and bubbly the whole time over the busy period. Christmas, new years, and my birthday are all in 2 weeks of each other. There were lots of family BBQ's at Grandma's house, dinners with family friends, and catching up with good friends. Nice, but so much at once wears me out! Lee and I were invited to a new years party, but we ended up coming home and starting to paint the house instead, we just couldn't handle any more partying :)

The house looks SOOOOOO much better now, but it was a hard slog. we started out with 2 rollers and some brushes, we didn't even get one side of the house anywhere near finished in 3 whole days of work. After dehydration, sunburn and fatigue we decided to piss off the rollers and buy a paint gun. We broke the paint gun in about an hour..... don't ask me how! So we took it back to Bunnings (love them by the way), and hired a super cool industrial strenght awesome and kickarse paintgun for nearly $200 for over night. We then broke that in an hour too! Oh was I stressed :) Luckily we went back the next morning (at 8am) and had it fixed. The nice guy let us have the spray gun an extra night after a panicked 3pm call from Lee asking them pretty please if we can keep it overnight since it broke earlier. There was also drama with buying extra paint, I went to Magnet Mark (hisssss booooo) and the cocky bastard there mistinted the last 15L can of paint I got him to mix, and he sent me off empty handed to a near by paint shop. they then didn't have the paint we wanted (he tried to give me a different brand.... Ha! I went a bit nuts and screamed in the car, nearly scaring my poor little sister out of the chair). II then had a flash of brilliance and I went back to MM and asked the manager if I could have a 10l and a 4l can for the same price as a 15l, they agreed but in hindsight I should have asked for 2 10l cans the bastards).... I at least got a different guy to do the tinting for me, and the manager came and hovered around while he did it. LOL I hope the other guy got his stupid arse kicked. Any way on the 4th day we managed to do a good coat of paint with the spray gun to the whole rest of the house, well worth the money! My lovely little sis came and helped us, which helped make it more fun and less work.

BEFORE

AFTER

So what do ya think? Its not finished yet....

I have been having fun doing some knitting in my down time (which as been very little unfortunately). I have made good progress on Sylvi, the red cardi I fell in love with earlier, but I have made it in charcoal. I have done the back minus 3 of the flowers, and nearly 1 whole sleeve.


I have also started some pressies for my orange swap pal, which I need to get done before the 19th of Jan, so I have to get cracking. can't spill the beans on this but I will when it has been received!
Swaps are so awesome! I have had one of the best Birthdays ever this year, and I have been spoilt by some lovely people on Ravelry!

Present from Sproutknits

Present from Toffle (she made the bag and the stitch markers!)

And I have 2 more pressies to come! yay! I can't wait until I get to spoil my birthday group back :)

Oh and Lee got me 9 skeins of Malabrigo for my birthday, which I had to cast on with the day I got it to make the Amelia cardigan from the winter Knitty.


I could write even more, but I will save some for later.... need to post more often!