Christmas is coming ...There should be a giveaway !

It's December and the craziness of the season has begun. It began with my knitting injury.  Yes, I said knitting injury.  I'm pretty sure that the brace from my elbow to my fingers on my left hand is a consequence of trying to knit too much with too many small needles in too short of a time.  Although there was some kitchen and dining room remodeling, and it could have been a consequence of having to scrub linoleum glue off of the concrete floor with a wire brush for several hours for several days running in order to put down the Travertine tile in the kitchen and laundry room, I prefer to think that my left hand is toast because of the hat and mittens for Rocket, the cowl custom order (knitting and spinning involved in that one) for a friend--who incidentally after a week is still trying to decide if she likes it, the sweater for Honey, the chulla for Scout #1 (Scout #2 has decided he also needs one by Christmas, please), and the new cowl for myself. I'm thinking that the new cowl for me may be about the only thing that is actually finished by Christmas at this point.  The more I knit, the worse my hand becomes, even in this high-dollar brace and without actually doing anything but holding the needle and the working yarn in my left hand.  I think I should probably go to the doctor about this tomorrow, since it is starting to seriously affect the important things in life (my knitting projects).  Too bad that this injury isn't to my right hand, and it was grading papers that I couldn't do anymore.  I think I have multiple stress fractures in my forearm and wrist.  But, hey, since my cowl is, by comparison to the other projects that use US3, US5, and US6 needles, being knit on tree branches (US11), that's coming along fairly well, even if it's at a very slow pace.

But you know what I CAN do with this injured appendage ... Elf hats.  I can make elf hats for my Brownies.  No one else noticed the correlation between the Brownie Elf that is the foundation of the Brownies in Girl Scouts and the fact that my Brownies were all dressed like Elves in the Loganville parade last night, not even the other Brownie leaders, which is sadly kind of par for the course.  I spent all day yesterday making sparkly red and green elf hats for the Christmas parade last night.  Who knew that glitter spray paint could look so good on felt?

My girls were cute.  The parade was a whole lot of drama I didn't need.  I think we walked about 1.5 miles from the line-up place to the actual parade route in the dark, and then, the actual parade route was about 1/2 mile and it moved so quickly that start to finish we had to practically run and it took about 10 whole minutes.  It was the dumbest thing!  And there was so much leader drama created by the leader of one troop who showed up with her own FLOAT to set her troop apart from the other troops that were walking together to represent all of the Girl Scounts in the county that I was ready to go home before we even lined up.  We even lost a girl from our troop at the end of the parade.  Yep, you heard me.  LOST a 3rd grader!  Talk about a moment of panic.  Turned out that, when we said "get in the van" to our girls so as to ride back to our cars at the line-up site instead of walk, she saw people she knew on a float and, in the mass confusion at the ending point, got on the float.  FORTUNATELY, the float turned out to have her mother on it and after we searched high and low for about 40 minutes, we found mother and child.  You know what I wish?  I wish the holidays were like this:

Don't you?

I guess it can't be an Irving Berlin Christmas in reality, but wouldn't it be nice if the drama was over whether or not it would snow in time for the Christmas production instead of the craziness of our personal calendars?

With that said, I think that it is about time that I did a giveaway.  I haven't done one in quite some time.

So here's the deal:  I'll give one lucky winner a $20 gift certificate to my shop, and y'all follow these rules:

1.  One entry for responding to this post with a comment about what you would like to buy with a $20 gift certificate from my shop by 12/10/11.  Here's the link:  Zibeline Knits @ Etsy

2. Another opportunity to win by liking Zibeline Knits on Facebook--even though I will know you've done this, you have to comment here to let me know that you have done this so that you can get your extra entry.
3.  Another opportunity to win by subscribing to my newsletter--even though I will know you've done this, you have to comment here to let me know that you have done this so that you can get your extra entry.

All entries will be submitted to an automatic, computerized selection tool and I will announce the winner on 12/11/11.  Please be sure that in your comments you make it possible to contact you via your web page or your email address, at least through your avatar.