Ringin' in the new year

We're home after a wonderful Christmas with our mothers. The first time in many, many years we've been able to spend the holiday with them.

Our plans for New Year's Eve? A quiet evening at home with DD playing the new Wii game "Santa" brought. ;)

Happy 2009 to everyone!

Happy Holidays plus Winter 2008 LKC is live

We are visiting family for Christmas. I hope your Christmas is a joyous one!

My 2008 Christmas ornament (love him!)

Oh! And Winter 2008 Loom Knitter's Circle is live. Enjoy!

P.S. Thank you for all of the notes wishing me a speedy recovery.

Fractured Fibular

That pop I heard when I stumbled (not very gracefully) last night was the crack of a bone. The extreme swelling, pain, and bruising was a good hint that I needed to see the doctor today. So I did. The left side of ankle is broken (fractured fibular). At least the "cast" is this boot thing that I can remove for showers.



And I can still knit.

New loom knit patterns and free tutorial

Twist'n Hat and Scarf patterns are finally finished. It took awhile to put together the tutorials so that I was happy with it. I think you'll find it was worth the wait.

Hopefully I'm not confusing anyone by offering not only the hat and scarf pattern separately, but for loom knitter's who want both I'm offering the Twist'n Combo at a discount.

And since I needed to do a tutorial on decreases (needed for the hat), I put it up as a free download.

Find it all by clicking here.

Holiday lights spectacular last weekend

We drove through the holiday lights spectacular this past weekend (at night of course). Wow. It really is spectacular! It's at Joe B. Barnes Regional Park in Midwest City, OK (the soccer fields). If you are local, go. If you're not - enjoy the pictures I took with the cell phone. These are just some of the light displays that are there.

Santa in his sleigh over the world.

Two bears having a snowball fight (the light in the middle is the snowball moving).

Santa and his reindeer

A few displays here. The Christmas tree in the background is huge!
The display on the right is a chimney with Santa's feet dangling.

My favorite. The carousel ponies "move" up and down. Wonderful light illusion.

A bear standing on the shoulders of another bear (who is standing on Christmas presents) putting the star on the Christmas tree. The bears tilt inward toward the tree

Santa's candy cane factory. It was close to the road and so very bright!

Santa at his computer. Reading Christmas letters I suppose. ;)

The Nativity. Beautiful.

Truly amazing that these are done with frames, lights, and electronics. No real reindeer, bears, or santas were harmed in the making of the displays. hehe

Hiding in plain sight

A recent discussion on a Yahoo group about patterns from More Knitting Wheel Fashions made me realize that I'm not as active in groups as maybe I should be. For that I apologize. I'm not intentionally hiding. I just get so immersed in *real life* that I forget to read message boards.

I did try to stay on digest with these groups in the beginning. But there are two groups that generate so much daily email, I couldn't keep up. After a few days of not being able to read the digests, I decided it was pointless to keep trying. So I went to "read online only"; and then I forgot to visit the group. sigh

Anyway, that's my excuse. Good excuse or not, it's honest.

I do manage to check direct email (typically) daily. If you want or need to contact me, email me direct at kathy @ kathynorrisdesigns . com (just remove the spaces). I will respond. Really!!

The weekend

Doc really knows what he's talking about when it comes to Boniva. The 2nd dose didn't cause the horrendous side effects from last month. Just a little muscle aches. Go figure.

So instead of the terrible weekend I was expecting, we had a great family weekend complete with decorating the Christmas tree.

And playing with the dogs.


Elvis has really grown! He's starting to look like a Dachshund.


We also managed to drive through the local park where there is a display of Christmas lights. More about that later complete with pictures.

And knitting....I have knitting!! Yay! Great weekend!!

Ugh...monthly Boniva time

Doctor called in November after my first bone scan. Bad news. I have osteopenia. Good news, there is medication to reverse the bone loss and prevent osteoporosis. He had me try Bonvia. Well, Sally Field "takes it" so it must be OK, right? The everyday-women that took it and said side effects were terrible must be wrong, right? Yeah, right.

I took the first pill on November 5th. I carefully followed the dosage instructions...take it with 8 oz of water on an empty stomach; do not lay down or lean back nor eat or drink anything else for 1 hour. The first day went fine. No major issues at all! I just knew it would be breeze to take it once a month. Wrong!

I underestimated this pill. The next 4 days were miserable!! Stomach problems that nice people do not blog about. Muscle pain that woke me up in the middle of the night but did ease up with 3 tylenol - yet never really went away so I moved around like my Mother who is 85 yo. Joint stiffness, a general feeling of being sick. And I swore I wouldn't do it again.

Sigh. But doctor reminds me that the instructions say the first dosage is the worse and it should get better with the next. I hope so because I'm giving it a 2nd chance.

Tomorrow is the next dosage. There goes my weekend. CYA afterwards.

It's a total waste of time but...

...it's just as entertaining as popping bubble wrap online. Perfect for when your brain needs something to do other then think. hehe

Here, click on the link and have fun! Holiday Snowglobe Be sure to watch the house on the left of the screen for the old man.