A Little Yarn On The Side

But one of us thought everyone should be up before 5:00 this morning. On a Saturday.  Andy and Theo, of course, were both able to go back to sleep, but once I'm awake, I'm usually up for the day.  And I might have spent part of that extra time trying to figure out how to make 25 projects by the end of the year.  Just part of it--I have also been knitting furiously on the begonia shawl.  I'm on row 85 of 92 (albeit really LONG rows), so I have hopes of finishing it soon.  Then maybe a quick chemo cap, and maybe some new embroidered towels for hostess gifts, as I do go through them pretty quickly during the holidays.  If I could come up with just a few quick projects to get myself back on track, I still think I could reach 115 projects for the year.  And if we count the extra hour of knitting each morning until Theo figures out the recent time change, I could still do this.......

Less than 2 months left in the year and I need to finish 25 more projects. Um, it might be time to start panicking just a bit.... I finished the 3 in-progress table runners, and while it is hardly the speediest project, decided to start cutting the next spicy spiral table runner: I kept playing with the fabrics, trying to decide the best layout, then was stressing over the fact that even though the set of fabric quarters from Craft Warehouse was fairly expensive, they weren't all actually a full 18" by 22", nor were they all cut straight.  But, they WERE expensive, and it was either use them or let them sit forever, so without double-checking my last attempt at laying them out, I'm doing it anyway.  I'm cutting the layers singly to see if I can still squeeze the largest optional wedge out of them,  or I would be if I didn't have a "helper."  If I had thought about it, this is not something I'd be attempting while on cold medicine, ...

My garden is still alive.  That means it should still be October. Early October.  Not November.  I am not ready for November. I think I have all the table runners finished that we need for Christmas--though even writing that sentence freaks me out a bit, so  maybe I should finish a couple more, just in case.  It's not that I can't count (usually--when large quantities of knitting stitches aren't involved, in any case), but every year I have forgotten someone or someone new is going to be with us at Christmas or somehow about 10 people get added to the list at the last minute and I'm tearing around like a madwoman trying to find something that doesn't look like a last-minute gift (Chia Pets, chocolates, anything in the "men's executive gifts" category).  But I think I really could be ready this year.  Or I have failed to check my list thoroughly. Anyway..... My back/hip has been sore since the trip--which is not terribly surprising.  ...

Some friends of ours got married on Long Island this past weekend, so bright and early Tuesday morning, we learned that airport security in Boise opens at 4:30 in the morning.  To be fair, I could have lived without this knowledge, but when you live in a smaller city, there aren't always a lot of flight options.  If one flies out of a little airport, one is almost always sent to a big airport somewhere, and if one is traveling east from Boise, those bigger airports tend to be in a westerly direction, so flying 2 hours west to catch a flight east is pretty standard, but dreadful when one has a sore back.  I did find an airline that would send us through Minneapolis, but that's a once-a-day option.  Still, the perk to a 5:00 AM flight is that one can take a muscle relaxer and STILL be no more groggy than most of the other people on the plane.   However, it does not to wonders for knitting, so the new begonia shawl did not get a lot of attentio...

October is almost over, so I've been thinking about my crazy goals for next year. I really like the idea of "Me Made Mondays," so that is going to be the big one.  I'm toying with upping the ante to say pajamas don't count, because what I would like this to do is to challenge me to make more clothing, which would MAYBE finally shrink the fabric stash.  And should it be something different every Monday? THAT would really make it interesting.  and how crazy do I have to make this challenge to finally see a dent in the stash?

Do you ever just look around your crafting area and think, "Wow!  What happened here?"