Christmas stuff

Ok, so in the last two weeks, I've been on a knitting, baking, Christmas binge.  I have cards sent out, I have presents bought, and most things wrapped.

I knitted up this scarf for the aide in girltwina's class:


here's a closeup when it was in progress.


 title="basketweave scarf by jodieg99, on Flickr">


I ended up putting a crochet edging around the whole thing which was mixed.  On one hand it evened it up, on the other, I think my gauge on the crochet was a little off and so was tighter than the knitting.

I didn't take any pictures of the e-reader covers I made for a variety of reasons. First, the pattern I was following made one WAY too small, and so I had to adapt the pattern.  So that made what should have been an easy sewing project into a nightmare--that I saved until the last minute.  Then I decided the end results were ugly!  However, add a gift card and who cares.

The parties were Thursday.  I had been baking for days so that all the "Specials" teachers could have some goodies, and then at the end I only made up goodie bags for the science teacher, math teacher and social studies teacher.  Some of whom already got other presents.

Part of my problem was running out of time.  Christmas snuck up on me in a way that it hasn't in a while.  Part of it was just sadness weighing me down.  It was really hard to do anything on December 14th except cry and craft angry letters to my legislators.  Then I felt because I didn't make a small metric ton, that I didn't have enough to divide up to the art, music, gym and spanish teachers and the principal.

I made: Spiced pecans, peppermint marshmallows (yes I made marshmallows!), hard candy (just cherry), peppermint truffles, and salted caramel.
Sometime in 2013 I should write the recipes down for the spiced pecans and hard candy--I did a quick search because I was sure I'd mentioned them before, but evidently I hadn't.
The salted caramel didn't ever really set to a point where I could wrap it up, so I wrapped up everything else.  Well, I clearly had too much and clearly should have at least made a plate for the principal or the teachers lounge because man do I have a lot of leftovers.

I've been slowly eating the caramel--although other people in the house like it, I seem to be always taking it to new heights (high calorie levels that is). The caramel must be eaten on a spoon or on a trefoil cookie.  Just to kick it up a notch, I add melted dark chocolate: