Santa's Surprise Book

Today was the first day of the annual cookie craziness at Chez Counting. Every year I end up making hundreds of cookies which my husband then proudly gives to everyone we know (e.g. the neighbors, his band mates, the folks at the local coffee shop, etc.) Luckily baking is one of my very favorite activities, so it seems to work out for both of us. Normally I bake about 6 dozen of at least 5 kinds of cookies, usually all in one marathon day. This year I am calling it quites for day one after only finishing 4 kinds. The kids "helped" today, which was really fun, but really slowed things down. More tomorrow, hopefully.

On the knitting front, I am just 9 rows from finishing the first of my two "Great American Afghan" squares. Jeesh, about time! I ended up making three 4 inch swatches, then knitting 1/3 of the square before realizing that all of that swatching didn't help at all and the thing was going to be waaaay to big. I find this ridiculous since the final square is only supposed to be 12"x12". Anyway, it looks like I have it right this time. Since I am using the same yarn for my other square, I am going to go on the assumption that I can use the same needles again. Let's keep our fingers crossed!

So, since my current knitting is not very exciting at the moment and it is too dark to take pictures of the cookies, how about some pictures of one of my children's books? There was a spot of sunlight today so I ran out and took pictures of one of the Christmas books in my collection.

Santa's Surprise Book by Joan Potter Elwart, Illustrated by Florence Sarah Winship, Golden Press, 1975, Copyright 1966

In this little gem, Santa is sitting around thinking about what to put into people's stockings. He wants to do something new and exciting. Nice to know Santa gets bored too.

He decides that instead of the normal candy and goodies, he will make something new.

I love this picture. I feel like that so often, when a creative bug hits. I run and grab all of my stuff for whatever craft I want to work on and just go crazy - sort of like the cookie baking today...

In the end, the thing Santa made was the Santa's Surprise Book, which is conveniently sized to fit into a stocking. Such a cute little story and really great illustrations.