Ho, ho, ho and a menorah pillow too!

You know, I'm glad Santa decided to finally get some help. He must be gettin' old...after all, he was old when I was a kid! And it's just too much pressure to deliver all those gifts in one night. It just doesn't seem right to make one jolly old man bear the grunt of all the yuletide work. I mean sure, the elves help. But come, on! So I'm really happy that this year, he sent all of our presents in advance through Canada Post ;0) And really, now that I'm at home, I don't mind helping him out with all the wrapping too. It's the least I could do.

I did most of my holiday shopping online this year and yesterday, a Canada Post mini-van stopped by to drop off the loot. My mailmain had to make trips back to get it all in the house! We got packages from Indigo, LeeValley Tools, and Future Shop and the amazing thing is that I received these at 10 am yesterday despite having just ordered them on Monday! Did I mention I did not expedite any shipping and used the "free shipping" options for both Indigo and Future Shop? That's amazing! Seriously, I may never go back to stores for my Christmas shopping again ;0) Oh, and the flowers crowning the tower of of boxes? Just a little "thinking of you" flower basket from my colleagues. Sweet, eh?

So with all the time I saved since I didn't have to drive around, find parking and wait in long lines at the till, I finished this:

The clever pattern is from Handknit Holidays (it's the menorah pillow) and was really well written. The only problem I encountered was when knitting up the i-cord bind-off (which is such a cool technique - you should totally go google it or look it up in you knitting reference manuals!). The problem is that the pattern calls for picking up one stitch for every row (112) on either side of the cushion but doing so will totally mess up your pillow so if you're knitting this, don't waste 4 hours of your time following these instructions to the letter and hoping blocking will fix that weird pulling and rippling action that results...trust me, it won't!

Been there, done that, didn't get the t-shirt cause that's an afternoon I'd like to repress thank you very much!

If you want a square pillow, pick up 76 sitiches evenly on both sides so that you end up working the i-cord on the same number of stitches on all sides which results in ... a square. Ta-da! Ah, the magic of geometry ;0) I even knit up some i-cords for chinese button knot closures on the back.

I am really stoked with how this pillow turned out and hope it will warm the heart (and holidays) of it's intended recipient.

Now I really need to catch up on all those ornaments. If I don't knit 4 of them before midnight, I'm going to have to knit 5 of them tomorrow...