Quick rundowns of various days lately that I haven't covered here:

11/26/15: I already covered the morning of this, but I am happy to report that Thanksgiving was pretty mellow. The most surprising thing about it was that Mom and I actually got to play with the 2.5 year old baby (as opposed to the 11-day-old one, there wasn’t a whole lot of playing with him). Every other time I’ve seen him, he’s being bombarded by his grandparents and aunts, but on Thanksgiving, somehow everyone was busy. So we followed him around in the fancy living room, watching out for possible broken items. He was surprisingly gentle with everything and mostly just liked to put things in other things and throw little felted acorns down the stairs for Mom to catch. Dang, he’s cute and sweet, and he wanted Mom to go play with him in his playhouse. Of course, when his mother found out what was going on, she probably wasn’t too thrilled so that may never happen again, hah hah.

11/27/15: Went to the Grass Valley Fairgrounds Fair. We didn’t buy that much at it this year--I bought some pins, Mom bought a few more things--which is either restraint or “we already have a lot of that.” We even had time to go over to the Cornish Christmas event and park a few hours ahead of time so we could FIND parking. It was frigid outside, but otherwise fun. We both hit the massive used bookstore. Mom bought me a Christmas present of another waist belt--a reversible one!--and finally found an outfit for whatever fancy holiday party she’s going to. We even went to a restaurant--Christopher’s--that had a good Monte Cristo sandwich. Seriously, the only places I’ve ever been that do good ones are the Blue Bayou at Disneyland and the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. Christopher’s didn’t fry theirs, but otherwise it was deliciously crisp and moist. So so far that’s the closest one to where I live where it’s edible and good.

Also, Mom spotted a poncho at the craft fair that she wanted her own version of. It turned out to be the Martha Stewart poncho, but I’m amazed I managed to ID it perfectly while looking on Ravelry.

11/28/15: After picking up yarn for Mom’s poncho, we went to the Walt Disney museum in SF for the special exhibits-- a Tomorrowland one that I wanted to see that was...uh, they didn’t have much to that--and their big special exhibit, Disney and Dali. What this boils down to is, “Dali considered Disney a surrealist” (and really, if you watch certain films, HE IS) “and they were mutual fanboys and became friends, decided to make a movie called Destino and then had differing opinions on what it was” (Walt was all “it’s a love story between a boy and a girl” and Dali was all...well, more surrealist), “so Walt canceled the film and then regretted it. They still stayed friends until Walt died and were going to make a Don Quixote movie together and then Walt died.” And then in the 2000’s Walt’s nephew decided to finish Destino and it got nominated for some awards. The end. I thought this wasn’t going to go well because Mom doesn’t like weird and ... yup, that about happened. Then she drove home very late to beat the traffic.

11/29/15: I spent this day driving around looking for small Christmas lights to sew into clothing. For the record, while Evangeline’s in Old Town Sac offers them year-round, the Christmas store across the street offered them for 3 bucks cheaper...so kicking myself on that one. I now have six packs of the things for the current crazy Christmas project I’m working on that won’t get done in time, but maybe next year. Or maybe it’ll be my Halloween costume. Or both. More on this later, probably.
After that, I drove around to Target, Goodwill, and the SPCA looking for ugly Christmas sweaters to photograph.

Target has good stuff--I still haven’t uploaded about 2/3 of what I shot. I was tempted, but stuck to buying a Christmas ornament SKIRT--hey, “ugly Christmas skirt!--which is actually pretty classy with ornaments on it. And very thick. The one issue with it is that it’s a short skirt (in winter?!), but when I wore it in public recently I layered it with a velvet skirt underneath it and it looked good to me.

But seriously, Goodwill. OMG.

Literally, these are THE ugliest, genuinely ugliest, sweaters I’ve ever seen. As in, “I just sewed a random bow and some holly twig onto a sweater” level of amazing crap. If you’ve seen the “Ugly Sweater Kits,” this was sort of the same idea but even worse. My favorite, the one I was almost tempted to get, was the “Festivus” one because one of these years I want to do a Festivus something or other. Except for the part where (a) frankly, it looked like it’d fall apart walking out of the store, and (b) they were charging $15 for all of these. I might have paid $5 for charity or something, but hoo boy, $15, nope.

Amusingly enough, Meg mentioned the other night that she saw the same sweaters. I also shared the details of them with another coworker and she said she’d have to check the Goodwill in her town to see how bad they were there.

12/4/15: Craft Center party tonight--ugly sweater theme! Okay, so not too many people actually did one, but I did talk Meg into going and wearing one of my sweaters (the Hawaiian one) and it got some love. I don’t have much else to say about the party, but Meg had a great time bidding on things.
Ugly sweaters seen: one guy had a Christmas Pac-Man, one guy wore a rugby sweater but it had a matching Santa hat, one guy actually DIY’d by sticking stockings to his shirt, wearing a Santa baseball cap, and attaching lights to himself. The fellow who gave them the idea for the party, on the other hand, didn’t have one on. I was all, “dude, you’ve been wearing ugly Christmas sweaters since October, what happened?” and he was all, “I slept until 4:50 and forgot it.” He stuck a paper tree to himself instead. And the head of the CC told me he was wearing an ugly shirt because normally he borrowed a sweater from his mom, but his mom was there tonight. (Hers had a bear, pretty cute actually.)

12/5/15: More craft fairs! Went to the Art Center show with Mom and spent uh, quite a lot. Bought fancy blue barrettes, cute cheap earrings and pins and a tiny stuffed bunny, and a blue-purple moon pendant. Mom bought another poncho (what is it with ponchos? well, at least this one had a little style) and an ornament and some jewelry. She had a great time talking to people there--we had some interesting conversations with some vendors about philosophy and about dating.

Which reminds me: Mom finally got the Gentleman Caller to go on a date last night! They were talking and talking. She was going to some party, got super lost and only found the place an hour before the party was going to end and then was too embarrassed to go in, so she called him up and ahem, somehow got him to go out for a drink at the last minute. I gather he hemmed and hawed but said yes, and they went to Deacon Dave’s and out afterwards...and then were up until 2 a.m. on the phone after. I am very proud of her and said that if he keeps saying he wants to go out and then chokes on the asking, she may need to do this more often.

After that, we went out to old town Folsom for their craft fair. Mom stocked up on watches and random stuff at booths (she didn’t make it too far before closing), I roamed up and down the street and got a book and found a new game store out there. I got a few games, mostly for other people (I think?) and a hula minion toy. After that, we very briefly saw a lighted-up kayak parade in the river--that went by pretty quickly--and then hit a Hawaiian restaurant.

That’s probably it for craft fairs for the moment...I’m planning on going to Dickens in a couple of weekends, but I don’t have any set plans for other ones. Shocking, eh?

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