Christmascellaneous

Thanks to all who wished me well in my bloodletting excursion yesterday.  Clearly, I have survived to blog another day, and I'll just give a tip of my hat to the phlebotomist who was able to get an entire gallon of blood with one painless stick.  It occurs to me that when I grew up a military kid, we were always getting exotic shots for my dad's next duty station.  (Cholera, anyone?)  I can recall going to the doctor and just praying for no needles.  Now that I'm a (ahem) "mature" person, the needle is understood and expected.  Now, I just pray for only one stick.  I think I'll be a needle weenie until my dying day.  And by the way,

I got my flu shot back in September, but yesterday they gave me the pneumonia vaccine as well.  She explained to me that the pneumonia vaccine isn't well named because it only protects against the pneumococcal virus.  There are many other causes of pneumonia, and so even if you get the vaccine, it doesn't mean you won't get pneumonia.

So what's up on the Christmascellany agenda for today?  This being Tuesday, it's a swimming day, and I'm mounting my best defense against all anti-swimming excuses.  After that, I'm going to come home and make the fudge I was planning to make yesterday.

Now here's something.  After leaving the doctor's office yesterday, I decided to hunt down a Smitty Christmas ornament.  I looked at several shops I'd seen in the past...the ones where I'd purchased previous cat ornaments.  I even went to a Christmas specialty shop.  It was so disappointing.  I found hundreds of dog ornaments in pretty much any breed imaginable (and some pretty unimaginable).  The cat ornaments I found seemed to come in two different breeds:  black and white.  Further, they were hung so far up the wall in the "specialty shop" that I couldn't see or reach them.  And I'm at least average height, so I know a lot of cat lovers shorter than I were in even worst straits.

Now here's something I found irritating about the whole cat ornament shopping experience.  It's true that unless you're a special kind of feline fancier, most cats only come in a few "breeds":

Black, White, Tuxedo, Orange, Calico (patches and tortoise), gray, and Siamese.  I think that pretty well covers the various breeds with a few outliers.  So does it seem it should be difficult to come up with some creative cat ornaments?  I wouldn't think so.  Nevertheless, I found only about 1 cat ornament (white or black) for every several thousand dog ornaments I saw.  I'm thinking a kitty rumble is in order over this obvious case of cat discrimination.  But maybe instead, I'll just look on the internet.

As a matter of fact, I did find this one:

Not a bad likeness of Smitty, so I'm ordering it.  Sadly, the information is that quantities are limited, so I'm hoping I can still snag one.

My doll quilt is all finished except for hand-sewing the binding.  I'm going to try to finish that up today too.  Oh yes, and I almost forgot!  I won a giveaway last week at a blog that was new to me.  The blog is The Brass Paperclip Project.  I can't recall how I stumbled onto this blog, but I started following it now.  She has some cute and crafty items, including this post where she did some really cute and crafty work with wine bottle corks.  Here's the cool stuff I won!

Pictured are five sets of cork magnets, two Christmas tree ornaments, and a necklace, all made from upcycled wine bottle corks.  Cute, huh?  I was so excited to win!  And isn't her vintage library card packaging adorable?  

So what else is going on?  Oh yes, the tree is up.  We have a small living room, and the tree seems to be filling the remaining space.  It's a little difficult to keep that tree skirt straight too since Smitty thinks it's great fun to try diving under it.  I'll fix his little red wagon once I get some presents wrapped and stowed under it.

It's pretty hard not to get the blur when photographing Smitty.  He pretty much lives his life on the move.

Finally, I want to start on some Christmas stockings for the kitties today.  I haven't found just the right stocking pattern I want to use yet, but I think I'm going to end up combining a couple of different ones to come up with just the right stockings for the kitties.  They go together pretty fast, and so I'm hoping to get a good start on them today.

And with that...I'm off to start my day (especially if I'm going to get in a swim).  Before I go though,

I wanted to leave you this link for Janet Wickell's A Quilter's 12 Days of Christmas.  Pretty clever and cute.

Have a good Tuesday!