Month: November 2013

Winter is Coming

And in this neck of the woods, when winter is coming that means that Christmas is also coming.  Let me tell you, desperate times call for desperate measures.

It probably doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that I’ve been busy.  I have blogged in a month.  I haven’t been to knit night in much longer than that.  I run into the yarn store, grab what I need and run out.  It’s not that I’m not knitting, I am.  But I’m knitting in fits and starts when I can get a little down time and settle down enough to put sticks and string together.

So why am I desperate?  Well, my hubby got hurt at work a while back (almost exactly at the same time that my job went into overtime this fall).  He’s ok, but it’s a slow heal.  It means that he’s been on light duty and hasn’t been able to work any overtime.  So not only have I not had any time this fall to do much early Christmas shopping (I like to spread the shopping out over a longer time) but I also haven’t made many gifts yet.  I didn’t even have a plan for gifts.  Or I didn’t until I found this…

More Last-Minute Knitted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson.  As you can see, I found this on the clearance rack at Barnes & Noble.  I flipped through and found several things that I could make for gifts.  Mostly it’s gifts for babies or women but there are a few men’s or unisex things thrown in.  All the projects are sorted by the time it took the author and the test knitters to knit each project.  Obviously these are guidelines as no one knits at quite the same speed.  Plus, I can guarantee that mothers of toddlers know just how little can actually get done in the course of one hour.  For that matter, mothers of hungry growing girls know the same thing.  🙂

My first project falls in the 2-4 hour range.  I’m slightly skeptical of this time range, but then see above.  I spent all day today in the kitchen – making pancakes, soup, dinner, baking cookies, and doing all the accompanying dishes.  So very little knitting got done, but the kids and I are well fed.

I’m using some lovely Misty Alpaca that was found deep in the stash along with size 15 needles.  This will be an incredibly soft fun gift for someone.