Christmas Preparations and frustrations

 I made a dozen ornaments, 6 of each kind.  They were fun and crafty, although each skein ornament has 8 little skeins in them, and they got to be a bit of a pain to wind, although they were fairly quick to do.  It was just a lot of them.    The knitted swatch ornament was pretty easy, once you got the trick to a) knitting them on those tiny toothpick knitting needles, and b) getting them into the round ornament and getting them to hang nicely.

 I also crocheted a huge hat, to felt down.  This is the second time I've tried that pattern and the second time it didn't work in a spectacular way, albeit it was a bit better this time.   I ripped that hat out 4 times and redid it trying to get the shape right, but in the end, it just didn't work for me.   No photo of that one because I'm pretty ticked at the waste of materials and the iffy instructions which I was assured work.  They do, but they don't seem to make a hat which is wearable when I follow them to a "T".

My son asked me to make stockings for him and his girlfriend.   This is the first one which is half finished.  I wanted to make sure he liked it enough before I sewed on the bells.  Next time I'd make the dagged cuff longer though as I think the proportions would be better.   I'm not sure if I'll do them both the same style or choose a different cuff for the second one.   Pattern is one I drew myself.

I'm also making myself a new stocking this year.  I have the pattern drawn out, but need to find the right materials.

I tried to take one of the feral kitties, Dion, to the vet on Friday.  He totally freaked out and in the end I had to cancel the appointment.   Monday I went to get him some happy, calming meds which will hopefully make today's trip easier.  Hubby is coming home from work early to help me catch and crate him too.

I've spent what seems like hours on the phone to Amazon trying to figure out why the parcels they send, get stuck at the courier office and don't get delivered.   The address is correct, so I can only guess that since they switched to a smaller courier with contract drivers, they don't actually want to drive out the extra 10 minutes to the rural areas.   There are several of us waiting for parcels which are well past the delivery date, with nothing happening at all.  While the customer service people in India try to help, the best they've been able to do is say to wait another week and hopefully it will get there.   It is frustrating and I can't find any other contact info for service/complaints etc.    When they delivered with UPS or Can. Post, parcels arrived quickly and on time.  Now I don't know if the ordered presents will arrive at all?   From what I've read on various forums, I'm not the only one with issues with the new courier service.     So very frustrated with this.