Thursday, November 30, 2006

On Socks, Mittens, Fast-Growing Nephews, Christmas Presents, and the Unreasonable Expectations of the Utility Companies

It is 11 am on Thursday morning and according to my to-do list, what I was going to do today was finish up a reading lesson and then clean the living room top to bottom. My list is very specific. It says I am to dust (once a year, whether it needs it or not), clean the glass, and vacuum. Implied in that is a general pickup of the floor, since sucking up books into the vacuum makes it run less efficiently.

But what I *want* to do is sit in a green living room chair ignoring all the stuff on the floor, and wrapping a blanket around my shoulders, work on my Christmas knitting.

I don't ordinarily have a very long Christmas knitting list. The truth is that I don't think most people like knitted gifts--plus my knitting skills really didn't improve much until the knitting olympics of last year showed me that if I was willing to be a little more obsessive about it, I could indeed finish projects in a reasonable amount of time. My lack of skill didn't/doesn't keep me from making knitted gifts, especially if a relative makes the mistake of showing any interest whatsoever in what I'm knitting--but it does keep me (most years) from making very long lists.

Well before Christmas I have to finish Max's mittens. He wants Rudolph Mittens. I have the first almost half knit.

Then I wanted to finish a pair of socks for Chris, Max, and the twins.
Then I have the Finnish mittens which now have an intended victim recipient. One mitten down, one to go.
I still have to finish my nephew's outfit.
I still have to finish the sweater I started for a California Baby. I brought it with me on vacation--but duh, forgot the directions.
I have come to my senses (it was the look on Aunt Charlotte's face when she saw how much I had done so far that accomplished that) and understand that the Orenburg shawl will be NEXT Christmas' gift for the piano teacher.

So I thought the simplest thing to do would be to take the month of December off from work and just knit, right? I wrote up a nice letter explaining the situation to all of the utility companies and the nice people at the mortgage company . . . but Chris says they're notoriously unreasonable about not getting paid, so until I hear back from them, I'd better get my workwork done before I sit down with the needles. Sigh.

3 comments:

Staci Eastin said...

Let me know how they respond.

Anonymous said...

AK, you are a wonderfully gifted knitter. You inspire me to face my needles head on!

Do you think you can see your way yo giving yourself the gift one one day of uninterupted knitting bliss?

Becca said...

If only we could get the dang companies to loosen up, what we could accomplish!