The edging that never ends

Yup. Still working on it. My goal was to have it done by the end of November…. I have tonight to work on it and this much left:
Totally doable if I can keep myself from getting distracted.

The first of the charity knitting

It’s a scarf for our troops knit out of bernat camo yarn. Right now Catans is doing a thing with the USO where they are donating yarn for scarves. Appantly the average cold temp. in Iraq right now is 38 degrees which I totally didn’t know. How it works is you buy camo yarn from them, knit or crochet a scarf then bring it back to Catans, and they reimburse you for the yarn. It’s a pretty good deal. And however you feel about this war supporting the troops in any way possible is definitely a good thing.

The scarf is 14 stitches on size 15 needles, double stranded yarn, garter stitch all the way. It took me not very long at all… I knit it mostly on our trip to Pittsburgh to visit Matt’s family for their Thanksgiving. Where by the way I got to re-teach a 6-year old how to knit! I taught her last Thanksgiving and this year as soon as she saw my needles she was all over me. Her enthusiasm was great – she kept asking me (even during thanksgiving dinner) "can we get back to the knitting now?" and even better "maybe just one more row." How quickly they learn.

Thuja is just a Red Herring.

So right... let's get back to the knitting shall we?

Check out my "progress" on the second Thuja Kneesock:

Ok… so in case you haven’t noticed I’ve pretty much been exclusively posting about Thuja as far as knitting content goes… and those of you who know me know that I am NOT a monogomous knitter. Yeah….

I’m doing it again. I don’t know how this happened… I don’t know how I got back to this place….but I’m starting down the slippery slope that is The Christmas Knitting. I tried a different tactic swearing that I was only going to knit one big gift. One ginormous, extremely complicated, very intense shawl that I’ve been working on since June. Its for my grandma and knitting guru so it’s totally worth it…But then my brother asked for socks….And the edging of the shawl is really boring to knit and I’m an epic procrastinator. ‘Cause if I’m knitting other Christmas gifts then I’m not really procrastinating, right?

It’s been downhill from there.

I’m trying to initiate a few rules to maintain sanity this year:

1. If they got a handknitted gift last year, they aren’t getting one this year (Mom) (Well ok so my brother who mocks my knitting more than anyone somehow is managing to get me to knit for him two years running. He did ask, though. I’m totally weak to requests for the knitting.)
2. If I can’t think of anything fun to knit for them I’m not just going to knit something random just to include them (this pretty much eliminates all of the guys in my family) (unless any of you want a hat…hats are so universal and manly)(and that’s the thinking that got me into this situation in the first place. Forget the hats)
3. I’m done now. Seriously. I’m not going to let myself think that I HAVE to knit for anyone. Whatever I have done that’s it. I’m not making lists (except this one), I’m not starting a million projects all at once, I’m just going to knit one thing at a time and consider myself done, done every time I finish a project.
4. Other forms of craft do not technically count towards the Christmas knitting.
5. Charity Knitting - it seems like nice way to spend my knitting time during the holiday season - so I'm going to try to do as much of this as I can. Even if it means that I can't knit gifts for people that I actually know.

We’ll see how sane I am come Dec. 23…Especially since this is starting to call out to me:

I so want to knit it for Matt…It just screams Matt… and the cables - they speak to me. I’ve never knit him a sweater before and I think that 2 years of marriage eliminates the sweater curse… plus I haven’t knit anything that big in a long time. There’s no way in hell I’d get it done by Christmas but it might be kindof fun to try! And if not his birthday is in March…. Have any of you knit anything out of the Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed before? I’ve heard good things about it but it’s kindof pricy…

Success!

Everything today went very well… and I learned that there are two things about hosting Thanksgiving that are indescribably cool:

1. You get to smell the Turkey all day while it cooks.
2. You get to keep the leftovers. It’s awesome.

Anyways I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Matt and Dexter carving our first bird

Thankful

Well… I got it all done. My house is clean (despite the boys weekend… holy crap can a group of guys create a mess!), the table is set, the sweet potatoes are ready to go into the oven (thanks Michelle!), the cranberry sauce is chilling, my house smells like pumpkin pie, and the turkey is occupying a very large percentage of the refrigerator:

And check out the dining room:

We had to put two tables together b/c we don’t actually own a dining room table yet but I think that it looks pretty nice. This is the first time we’ve used our china so even that is exciting.

Really exciting actually....

'cause I loooove the gravy boat.


It makes me happy...

Anyways with all of this talk of "what are you thankful for" I thought I’d let you guys know that I’m thankful for knitbloggers and for this amazing online community. Thanks for inspiring me to create, for teaching me so many new things like lace and socks, and for being so supportive when I just want to give up on projects like the interminable Tempting II. You guys rule.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Procrastination as an art form

So remember this?

That would be the Cherry Blossom Shawl that I’m knitting for my grandma for Christmas. I just need to finish the extremely boring and yet too complicated to knit while watching tv edging. Last night I should have been doing laundry/cleaning /grocery shopping or doing about a million other things that I need to do to get ready for Thanksgiving that I can’t do this weekend because my house is being taken over by a herd of guys. Instead I worked on the shawl. But it totally counts as being productive since I have to have this done by Christmas… and knitting is waaay more fun than cleaning the bathroom.

Yeah. I’m an epic procrastinator who will probably be pulling an all-nighter next Wed. night making sweet potatoes and scrubbing things.

But there will be progress on the shawl!

Thanks, by the way, for all of your encouragement about Thanksgiving! I've totally got it under control now. Sortof.