A Hectic Christmas Season

With last minute gifts to buy and make, and travel to Thaddeus' sister's home, I'm still trying to get a little caught up and organized.

Juggling
I can juggle a number of things at one time, very successfully. But throw in one more ball than I'm capable of handling, and everything tumbles to the ground, and trying to re-establish a juggling rhythm can be very exhausting.

That's how this Christmas has been, now that I'm home and off for the week. Every direction I turn, I think, "I need to put away the gift wrapping," and then "The gift wrapping closet needs to be completed reorganized," and then "I need to finish my friend's sweater that was supposed to be done last Friday," and then "I need to take a picture of the sweater for the blog," and then "I should finish the first half of the button-band edging before taking a picture," and then "I need to find matching yarns to fix my brother-out-of-law's sweater," and then "I need to clean out and organize my yarn closet," and on, and on and on.

This is where I need to set up a to-do list, priortize the items, and start to work on one at a time. My favorite time management koan, "How do you eat an elephant?" always has the same answer. "One bite at a time."

Current Knitting
No, I wasn't able to finish my friend Nora's sweater in time for the Christmas dinner at her house this past friday. At ten in the morning on Friday, I knew I wouldn't be able to get it all done, so I just kind of put it down for a while.



I have finished all the colored knitting for the body and sleeves, and most of the first half of the button band border. I also pieced together the left front strips and the left shoulder. I only have the other half of the button band border and the putting together the right front and sleeves and sewing on the border.

Fortunately, Nora is in New York City until Friday, so I will be able to get it done before I see her next. She knows she has another gift coming, but doesn't know it's a sweater.

Christmas Gift
I've been remiss in my lack of organization to be able to publicly thank Franklin for a wonderful Christmas gift he sent.



Yes, two perfectly thoughtful gifts, and a personal note (which shall remain personal). I've always wanted the knitting lifeguard t-shirt, and now I have one. The roving in the bottom left of the picture is a beautifully dyed, superwash wool from Lorna's Laces. The colors are spectacular, and perfect for men's socks (which is very difficult to find, in my opinion). I can only hope I do this roving justice in my spinning.

Readers' Comments/Questions
Regarding my post on how much I love Canada, Ted asks, "Gosh. Now what prompted this outburst of accolade?"

I was working with a client employee, who I like very much, and then even more when she mentioned she grew up in Canada. It reminded me of how much I enjoy the Canadian sensibility.

Regarding the underwear pattern, Zaz writes, "(I) found no photo for the underpants, it does help me to actualy look at the thing to get guidance, do you happen to have a photo?"

I posted a photo of me modeling the underwear a while ago, and it still continues to get dozens of hits every day from google search. Here is the picture of both the long and the short underwear from the pattern booklet where it originally came from.