Turkey and Falling Leaves

Thanksgiving was interesting this year. My dad and stepmom are in the UK (staying in the castle used for the Harry Potter castle exteriors – how cool is that?) this semester, so there was plenty of advance warning that it wouldn’t be the regular Thanksgiving at their house. Now that my brother Matt is married and part of an extremely large family of friendly, happy, and slightly tipsy inlaws, I simply invited myself along.

There was precedence for this, as two years ago my stepmom went to Jamaica for Thanksgiving with one of her daughters and my dad stayed behind, convinced that he would be unable to get any suitable food (bland, as in no vegetables, spices, or parsley). So he and I joined this extravaganza then. (I should take this moment to point out that you would’ve been fine, Dad – true, they were in Jamaica, but they were staying in some hotel that was part of an American chain – there would’ve been plenty of Dad-appropriate food. Probably more than during your recent visit to Morocco… but I digress.)

Today there were probably 40 people wandering around the inlaws’ house. When you consider that my nonwork time is primarily spent hanging out with Chaos, such a crowd was pretty mindboggling for me. But I persevered (with only minimal nervous eye rolling), and there turned out to be another knitter in the crowd – yay! So we talked knitting a bit. And I realized that I’ve now been knitting for slightly over five years.

Anyway, after much food was consumed (there were 38 pounds of turkey to start with, but not a heckuva lot left but bones in the end – and I can assure you that I didn’t eat anywhere close to a pound of turkey), a group of us settled in the living room. Many fell asleep, but I pulled out my sock project (which is always in my backpack of a purse, waiting for such interludes) and got the heel turned while listening to the occasionally cacophonic chatter. It was a pleasant afternoon, although I was cursing myself for not bringing along the baby sweater for my coworker whose baby is due very, very soon.

As you might be able to tell, I was having a bit of trouble trying to photograph my sock, and gave up trying to get a good picture in the interest of saving my Addis. I’m using the lace pattern from Falling Leaves (Fall 05 issue of Knitty) in a pleasantly autumnal shade of Koigu (which might be color P615 according to my KnitAble record, but it sure doesn’t look like the pictures of P615 I found through Google).

4 thoughts on “Turkey and Falling Leaves”

  1. That cat is just gorgeous.

    I laughed out loud when I read the bit about Chaos chasing his tail and falling off the fridge – my big black cat Beezel used to wander up and down the top of the headboard of our bed – problem was, he was part Siamese, slightly crosseyed, and very clumsy. Result: we got woken up in the middle of the night more than once by a six kilo cat falling on our heads……

    How is the koigu for knitting socks? We don’t get koigu in Australia, but I just got some shipped from America and I can’t wait to start with it.

  2. Hi Chris,

    Read your Blog! Thanks for sharing. I’ll bookmark it. I’m doing a blog for my lifemakeovers book–the thing I don’t like about blogs is that you have to remember how many comments you had for each post to know if you have new comments. Humpf. It should blink or somethiing when there are new comments.

    I’ll check back now and then. Perhaps I need a personal blog? (the LM one is with a friend doing the book with me, or I’d share the site–I think she’d be horrified). I started one with Pat–he never responded. Sigh

    Oh well. For now, I’ll read yours.

  3. Kellie – Chaos thanks you for the compliment and agrees that yes, he is gorgeous.

    Woah, 6 kilos is over 13 pounds… Ouch!!! Chaos is 15 pounds (and the vet actually said that was a good weight for him). I don’t have a headboard, so fortunately have been spared him falling on my head. But if I’m sitting on the floor, sometimes he’ll start jumping back and forth over my head. Once I didn’t realize he was about to do this and I sat up straighter, causing a side of head and cat collision that lead to some major adjustments on my glasses that were hard to explain…

    Koigu = YUM for socks. I recommend knitting it tightly so that it wears well and knitting the socks toe-up so that you can use every precious inch of yarn.

    Hi Deb!! I think you should start a personal blog. 🙂 I’d like to hear more about your life in Texas.

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