Counting down………

Last night I realized that I’m on the verge of sliding down the slippery slope of Christmas gift knitting denial. I have reviewed my time line, revised my plan, and factored in the additional Christmas events that have been entered in my schedule, and made the necessary revisions and justifications.

Last night I sat on the couch surrounded by the last of the in-completed gift projects. As I sat and sewed in the ends of dishcloths, socks, and scarves, I said to DD2, “I think I can do it. Really. This pile is all I have to do. This pile, and your never-ending Alpaca scarf in my tote bag downstairs. And rip out and re-knit with smaller needles the ribbing of that beret. And block those two scarves. And look if I only give the recipient s of the dishcloths half the number that I was going to, two people are off my list.” Now fortunately we are only talking about dishcloths here, and there are no plans to scrap any real projects.

And there it was. The inevitable rationalization of short gifting. I mean really, how many dishcloths does a person need, for crying out loud? And I still have one more on the needles. If all gets done and I have time on my hands, I could finish that one. Seriously – it doesn’t get more desperate than that!

I realize that I’m on the edge, and teetering madly. It will take considered focus and attention to ensure the revised plan is executed in a manner that maximizes all available knitting time. For example, today friends and family are baking cookies for a few hours over a pot of tea. Now I’m not much of a baker, but my limited skills tell me there is time while the cookies are actually baking in the oven that I could knit, right? This is exactly the type of bonus knitting opportunity that I need to be on high alert for!

And we will not speak of the ridiculous idea that I had a few weeks ago about leg warmers – I mean I never promised them for Christmas really. It was just a passing fancy that the Knitting Gods have promptly slapped me up side of the head for, with a well deserved “What the he!! were you thinking?”

Indeed. Every year I ask myself right about now, what was I thinking?

Knit on….