Figgy Christmas

Author’s note: This occurs during the Christmas during Half-Blood Prince, six months before Dumbledore dies, and seven months before the events in my story Dust.

“Well, Mr. Tibbles, I’m back and not a bit too soon. That Muggle bus was wheezing and belching and will be lucky to make it another block or two, I say. For all I know, it hasn’t. It stops down by the market; I’ve walked the rest of the way. Well, the devil may be in the details, but I’ve settled his hash tonight, and no mistake – three delivered in time for the holiday, and the house that much quieter.” The old coat, hung in the cupboard, sagged on its hanger: the wet carpet slippers, changed to the ones only worn in the house, sulked on the mat. Mr. Tibbles circled them cautiously, sniffing out the story. It matched what the old woman said.

“Here’s a nice can of tuna for you. The human kind, no less, for a bit of a holiday treat. I’ll have a toddy and turn in early then.” It was silly to miss them, the kneazels, they were never meant for keeping, and she had not been particularly fond of them, anyway. Well, the little one, with the half pink nose, perhaps….but she and Mr. Tibbles and Wigglesworth and Tamsin and the few others about now would be fine, and it was a few fewer mouths to feed.

Slapping down the uncarpeted hallway to the kitchen she paused at the glass door. Silly thing – you can’t see anything through it, and yet, you feel exposed peering from behind it when you’re trying to see if the mail has fallen through the slot onto the mat. Silly Muggle house entirely. I wouldn’t have chosen it. Well, you don’t chose your life, it chooses you , she thought, the words running down a groove in her mind worn deep by repetition. It chooses you.

She didn’t bother putting on the light in the kitchen, just navigated by habit over to the counter next to the sink and filled the electric kettle. I don’t like water hanging about in these. It should be fresh every time. Not too much then. A waste to pay the rates to heat water I won’t be using.

These were the careful economies of a woman with no family, no safety net. Oh, she knew people. The cards from Muriel and Bernice and Esme sat next to each other on the mantel in the adjoining lounge. They didn’t know her from Gryffindor’s cat, really, but they might notice if she took to her bed and died there and never came back to the beauty parlor when Petunia was having her weekly do, or the church, where she chatted with Esme and kept an eye on the three people in a forward pew sitting properly and paying absolutely no attention to the service, or the market where she got her cans of cat food and picked up news of the children by surreptitiously eavesdropping on them as they picked out sweets, Mark Evans complaining to James Jeffries and Chelsea Daniels about that cousin of Harry’s while she pretended to care intimately about the ingredients in the dry soup mixes.

The kettle came to boil and she shut it instantly, pouring the water into the cup she had taken from the nearly empty cupboard over the teabag of moderately priced tea which had no scent and no particular flavor but did come in a box with lovely little prizes - something to look forward to. She’d had one that morning – another sheep. It was about an inch and a quarter long, and you could only tell it was a sheep by comparing it carefully to the pictures on the box, and yet she should have left it for tomorrow morning. It would have been a bit of a celebration.

I ought to have bought myself something. That’s what they say in the Muggle magazines, isn’t it – to be good to yourself. I ought to have gotten myself – a new scarf. A silk one. Pink, I think, with embroidery. Perhaps, peachy pink, with peonies.

She bent over and reached under the sink for the whiskey. When had Dumbledore brought it by - that first New Years with Harry at Hogwarts? It never got empty. She knew because that fleabag of an excuse for a sack of sodden laundry had drunken from it more than once, and it was always just as full when she went to have a dram of it herself. Well, the thought of him dressed as a witch was worth a small smile, at least.

The bell rang, and she hit her head standing up while still halfway under the sink. Bottle in one had, she crept to the glass door, and looked through it. Probably a neighbor, she half prayed, probably a neighbor and not a Death Eater come to finish me off as a Christmas present for the That One. Everyone else could call him “He who ..,” but she didn’t dignify the old monster. He was just “That one” here, even if she was fairly certain she needed to change herself at the thought that they might be outside her door.


Mr Tibbles was curling around her ankles. That was odd. It couldn’t be Death Eaters, then.

Still, she kept the bottle in her right hand as she moved cautiously toward the door. Much good it would do her if Tibbles was wrong. She’d go down swinging, though. “Whoever you are,” she called out with false courage a few feet from the door, “go away and don’t come back. I’m not buying anything at this hour.”

But Tibbles was sniffing at the mail slot, and mewing oddly that he knew this one. She cautiously touched the knob, turned it, and pulled the door in towards herself with a sense of dread, unsure of what she would find, even if Mr. Tibbles was satisfied.

Mundungus Fletcher was leaning brazenly against her doorframe, several sheets to the wind. He opened his mouth to speak, and she revised that. He was under full sail.

“Allo, Figgy. ‘appy Chrishmush. ‘Appy Chrishmush. Ah jes’ come by ter wish yer an ‘Appy one.” He leered at her, beyond normal expression, and, overbalenced by leaning in her direction began falling toward her, his long tatty locks and the many scarves and bits of overcoat he seemed to have about him waving in the wind on his way down.

She put her shoulder into it and caught him as he headed for her foyer tiles. “Tanks, Figg. No’qui’myshelf, preciselike”

“How you can get a word out of that mouth of yours…well, come in, come in, no need to display you to the neighbors. They’ve got another six months of needing to think I’m balmy but harmless, and you don’t enhance my standing in the community, not in this state.”

She glared at him, or, rather, she glared, but her eye was being ground into his chest as she wrestled with his nearly dead weight and chivvied him into her lounge through the hallway door, rather than the kitchen, because it was closer and he weighed more than she would have thought. She was doing her best not to inhale, which did not simplify matters.

“There!” Breathless, she had dumped him on the sofa, and he had managed not to roll off of it. “What in Merlin’s name brings you here? Dumbledore can’t be wanting me, can he, you moronic excuse for a regurgitating toilet?”

“Can’ a lad show up jes ter be frenly, like, Figg?” he mumbled. At least, she thought that was what he mumbled. He was face down. Well, she thought he was face down. Between all that matted hair, and all that shabby greatcoat, it was hard to tell which end of him was up, really.

“s Chrishmush. Want comperney, like.”

Her face was sour. “You want company, or you’re daft enough to think I did? Because if I were looking for company, it wouldn’t be a drunken sneak thief I’d pick, first off.”

She got no response. Sighing, she assessed him from a distance. “Well, he’s slept on this couch before,” she said to Mr. Tibbles, who was observing her from the hearth rug. “The only way he’s ever on time is if he shows up early and sleeps it off where he was supposed to end up, and he did that a few times this last summer, before Dumbledore took Harry away to the Weasleys.” Mr. Tibbles, who knew this already, having witnessed it himself, made no comment.

The question was, how likely was he to be sick, and how should she arrange him so that he was least likely to choke to death on his own sick, like some sort of has-been Rock musician, the kind she used to read about in the tabloids years ago, when she worked in that Muggle insurance office and had to take trains to get there..

“On his side, I think, Mr. Tibbles. That ought to keep him from choking – or drowning in it once it’s up. Still, you’d better keep an eye for me. Come get me if has trouble in the night.”

She took her cup of tea upstairs, and lay down to sleep. She’d been too rattled to fix herself a hot water bottle, and yet, she was not quite as cold as usual. It is a sad, sad situation when having the likes of Mundungus Fletcher sleeping on my couch IMPROVES my night, she muttered to herself as she fell asleep.

She made her way down to breakfast the next morning, warm and clean from her shower and dressed in her pale yellow sweater set. The color washed her out, but it was much the nicest thing she owned for this time of year, and it was Christmas. She’d repeated that over and over to herself as she put it on, and her best skirt with it, and the newer pair of slippers that she usually only wore up in her bedroom, because when she was feeling very cold she would wear them straight into bed, and if she wore them downstairs they tended to pick up tracked in dirt which she did not want on her sheets.

A faintly foul odor met her as she opened the kitchen door, where Dung was more or less vertical, and fussing over her tea kettle. “Mornin’ Figgy. ‘Appy Chirstmas.” He looked up, his mournful, bloodshot eyes almost focusing, and made a grimace he might have thought was a smile. “Got yer tea reddy, jes’ like you like.”

“Pummeling Pixies, man, is that TEA? It smells like you’ve been washing your clothes in the water and then pouring it in the cups!” She looked at the proffered cup with horror where it sat on the counter – he was too smart, this morning, to try to actually carry it anywhere, it seemed.

“Lapsang Souchong. Very fancy. Jes’ the thing for a celebration breakfast.” He looked at her, bloodshot eyes peering up from under his wild and unkempt brows, perhaps a bit uncertain.

I could tell him he’s been celebrating enough already, but he already knows it. It’s Christmas, after all, even if the old sod knows I can’t refuse him on Christmas, and knows I know it. she thought, wondering vaguely how half a pound of sliced ham, a can of soup and twenty three tins of cat food could yield a Christmas dinner she could put on the table.

“I got a goose. Transfigured it myself. It’s pretty fresh, I think. Well, they didn’t teach us how to do spoiled ones,” he said, answering her unasked question. Of course, he must have been into her refrigerator, seen how - neat - it really was.

“All right, then,” she said, after a moment spent staring at a spot just over his shoulder and beyond him, on the cabinet. “All right then, but mind you stay in the lounge while I cook it, and be off with you when we’ve eaten.”

*****
With the front door safely shut behind him after dinner she turned to shut the lounge door – how had that gotten open? - and stuck her head in to reassure herself that he hadn’t made off with the furniture. The tree sat in its corner, the electric lights blinking oddly up to the point in the string where they stopped working altogether. The afghan she’d drawn over him the night before was folded tidily on one end of the sofa. All looked remarkably commonplace until she turned at the mantel, and saw…

She advanced on it. A once-white sock that had seen better days and a few barely adequate scourgifying spells was hung from a nail in the mantel, with a paper bag hanging partway out of it. On the bag was scrawled “Figgy.” She reached out with a trembling hand to take it. If he’d given her some stolen…

But no, what slid out first, when she put her hand in the bag, was a very ordinary receipt from Marks and Spencer, and with it a small box. She opened it, and a little enameled Christmas tree pin looked up at her. It was the sort of thing an eight year old boy might buy for his mother.

Turning over the receipt, she saw he had written on it. “Honestly bought” it said.

As if anything he has isn’t ill gotten, she thought. But after all, he’d made an effort. Pinning the little brooch to her sweater, she did not know quite what to do for the moment. She sighed, then, and went to clean the kitchen, Mr. Tibbles following her wordlessly, and getting a second can of tuna in two days, for reasons he did not entirely understand.

Still, when she slept in her clothes that night, she was wearing the little Christmas tree, and the receipt was in her desk, an old grocery list of her mother’s, found in an old purse long after that death, on one side of it, and the letter explaining why she was not being accepted to Hogwarts on the other.

Pretty girl!

Here is the very fuzzy picture that I got off of Craig's list of my new sewing machine.

In teh top picture you have the machine itself, in the bottom picture, it's the one on the right, which shows that it is a little smaller than the one on the left. I can't really take it out of that wooden thing, which makes it not really smaller by much...I have not mentioned this to DH, who does not like old stuff and who has been being really really nice about this..

Anyone who knows what company manufactured this, please come forth!

Finally begun

So, I have cast on and am halfway through the garter stitch section of the February Baby sweater. I cast on in the kettle dyed gold Knitpicks and I had to transfer the cast on to the other needle to start with a knit row on the right side. I am about halfway through that part, I guess. It seems a tiny bit rough but I felt the swatch I washes, which is softer - I think it will be ok.

I am using Elann Sock it to me in whatever they call their burgundy color.

EZ would be so proud...

I have been wanting to make the EZ February baby sweater at least since Ellen of my spinning group made one for my now-4year old, maybe before.

"One ball of wool, quick project, they're great," says Ellen. I am willing to believe her. However, I can't seem to decide which particular yarn to use for this baby, who is the product of a Gryffindor father and a Ravenclaw mother who writes. I keep rehearsing yarns in my mind and in reality, but as of yet, not feeling the love.

So I check out teh Rav.

3199 projects of this sweater. They don't all look alike. Some are made from acrylic worsted, some are made from baby wool, a lot are Dream in Color Smooshy, a yarn I have to buy and knit socks from eventually if only because I have a friend who will SWOON at the thought of having SMOOSHY socks. (She's not a knitter, but she knows a good word when she sees one.) Anyway - in less than 20 of the 128 pages of pictures they have of these things, I found another one made in Paton's KRoy and asked said maker if it was soft enough. Tactless? Maybe. But this is what you get when you put up a project and picture but leave no useable notes.

The son-child is thinking that some nice Gryffindor indie-dyed sock yarn that I have would be a good idea. I have Caron Naturally Country in Grey and in Periwinkle blue. The baby lives down south, so very airy, or else made of not all wool, are probably good ideas...

What do y'all think???

Why am I so delusional?

Why am I so delusional that I can't even figure out what the reigning delusion is?

For example, let us take the socks I am currently slogging my way through...

I like the pattern. Even though I wrote the pattern, I like it and the way it is coming out.

I like the yarn. It is not perfect yarn, but it is not PITA yarn, either, and it is really a good color for these socks.

I like the person I am knitting them for. We have been in several swaps, and while I have never had her for a spoiler or spoilee, we have been in the same house and she is a very nice person.

Clearly, then, the major reasons things take longer than you could possibly believe are not in force here. I am not reluctant to finish this pair of socks because I don't like them, or the yarn, or the person, or even the person who wrote the pattern.

So I must be suffering under some delusion. The socks must be coming out about as fast as I should have thought they would. I must simply be delusional about something, and here are my possibilities...

1. Did I suddenly think I would be getting enough sleep?
When the nurse told me she would be gone for a week and a half, did I think this would not affect my sleep?

2. When I realized I would be trying to finish these socks at an athletic event with 1500 athletes, one of which was my son, while living in a dorm and eating under a tent, did I think that somehow this would make it easier to knit? With very small needles? On darkish yarn?

3. Did I think I could knit at night? I know I thought this. I know I thought I could knit when I was tired and could barely see. Why did I think that my pretty pathetic eyes would work better than they do? Just because the girl who knitted me socks last swap is legally blind and got hers done on time?

4. I know I thought I would be able to knit in the car. I was able to knit in the car. I was able to make a mistake that took me an hour fix is what I was able to do. Why did I think knitting in the car was a good idea?

5.Why did I not foresee that the little online school I am currently headmistress of would have a drama attack as I reached the painful point of realizing I was already over one week late, and make me even later? (Why are there nearly adult humans who can refer to the character of Severus Snape as "Sevvy-Poo" and expect other people to treat them as if they are sane?)

6. And lastly, Why did I not realize that the only way for me to ever be on time is to be early? Since even then I can't manage it half the time? Why?

No idea which is the controlling delusion, but I think that I should probably remember this all in case there is ever a next time...

Ok - I thought worsted was bigger than sport...

I don't expect a lot out of the world, really. It should keep turning on is axis, and certain established and totally inconsequential items should keep on making sense. You know, the things that I already understand, and which are so unimportant as to really pose neither threat nor opportunity to the world at large - those are the things that I prefer remain the way I have always known them. I figure it would be nice if something did, and this seems to me as if it would not be skin off anyone's nose...

The world violates this continually - as far as I can tell, it is still turning, but the fact that I needed to dial one plus my area code to call across the street was predictive of bad times for established and inconsequential items. I don't really care that you needn't be president or famous or even dead to get your face on a stamp now, but the messing around with yarn terminology is bothering the hell out of me.

I've noticed that Knit Picks does this a lot, and I am wondering if anyone can explain this to me in a way I can understand...

As far as I ever knew, you had, roughly

Fingering - very small, for socks.

Sport - about 6 stitches to the inch.

DK - 5.5 stitches to the inch

Worsted - 5 stitches to the inch and

Aran 4.5 stitches to the inch.

After Aran, the names start sounding like they describe MacDonald's meal sizes and I don't bother with them, but up to Aran, they seem useful.

What I do not understand it sportweight that knits up to 20 stitches to the inch and DK which knits up smaller than said sportweight.

In this case, the perp is Knit Picks and I will give you solid examples in the hope that someone can straighten it, or me, out.

I downloaded two free patterns from Knitpicks for pretty one skein projects.

One Pattern, the Cathedral Purse, calls for Knit Picks Shine Sport.
Shine Sport is 110 yards to the 50 grams.
An awful lot of DK weight yarn is 116 yards to the 50 grams. I know, because I bought a lot of it at one time... Different brands, different yarns, but all cotton, and all about the same length to weight. Ok, maybe Modal is heavy. Very heavy.

So then I look at the gauage, and it calls for 20 stitches to four inches. That is five stitches to the inch.

I looked back at the bag, which did not look loosely knit at all. If anything, it looks quite firmly knit. And why would you knit a bag loosely, anyway - you want it to hold it's shape and you want it to not have stitches so loose that stuff falls out. (Especially when it is not a market bag and you will not be putting large items that can take care of themselves, like Cantaloups and whole chickens, in there.)

I did not buy the assigned yarn because I have numerous balls of sportweight cotton lying around here. I am now looking with interest at various worsted weights and wondering how they will look as a bag...

The second pattern is for the Victorian Lace Headband Pattern Now frankly, I have a feeling you can use DK, which it calls for, or Worsted, which would give you a marginally wider band... (It is designed as 2.5 inches wide. that means what, about 14 Stitches? [for soem reason they call for 18, but ok...] Well, if you have 17 stitches in Worsted Weight it comes up to just over three inches. This is presuming you can't get the lace to block a little narrower and longer, which frankly seems unlikely to me.)

Or, you could probably use a real sport weight, and at 6 stitches to the inch you'd get..(.exactly 3 inches with the 18 stitches you actually are asked to cast on. So wouldn't that mean in DK it would be at least 3 inches? But they say it is 2.5)

I know my math skilz are lacking a bit here and there. I just didn't know theirs were too.

That, or these useful yarn names have gone the way of the 7 digit phone number, stamps you had to lick and car ignition keys that are actually metal and actually physically unlock something...

My dumb luck...

All this and the H1N1 Too.

Butts with building permits and abdomens with their own zip codes - this is what it comes down to as we approach 50? Who says this is so great? May I strangle them, please? I assure you, I have been wearing clothes that don't match whenever I want to since my salad days, so don't think you're luring me with that one, world...

Anyway, I did think you knittin gfolks would be interested in some of the rest of the yarn I remembered having...

Like the Brilliance I bought for the Wren that never got longer than an inch

And the Zen I bought which has yet to even be swatched

And something else I have 19 or 20 balls each of a beige and a pale yellow, for that cabled Berroco sweater...

And then, of course, the 48 or so little balls of some kind of cotton boucle in chartreuse.

Three or four large men's cotton sweaters I have frogged for the yarn...

A bag and a half of jade green cotton somewhere around worsted weight.

Enough of this linneny thing mixed with wool or something that I bought years and years ago to make a summer top out of only it never got made and is probably all still in there.

Oh, yeah - the brown stuff that I started a shrug with, only Chris made the shrug and it wasn't worth it so I stopped...

And I think I have a sort of dark pink with darker pink, also dk...

We are not counting the sweater I knit in like 1995 which is all done except for being put together, and except for that I lost the sleeves...

But now onto the flu...

As you may or may not realize, where I live is under seige to at least some small degree. Schools are being closed. An assistant principal has died. The mayor is making at least daily public statements. There is news truck out at the county jail where the union is complaining about it...

And here I sit with one kid under six and one with what they like to call "An underlying medical condition" wondering if I should leave town, or stay put.

Why am I even contemplating this

Ok - if you have known me for six years, like Bets and Eileen and Benne, then you might know that I started out my online knitting life weighing 190 lbs at five foot two and not that thrilled about it. I did make myself one sweater at that size, true. And I loved it. But I can't say it had a slenderizing effect.

Then, I got pregnant and I couldn't knit for months and months because I got carpal tunnel.

After that I did lose some weight and got down to 140, which is where Bets and Daryl got to meet me. And I was thinking of making myself a sweater.

And now I am back up to 173 or so, look like an oil drum with a little head on it, and have decided to knit myself a summer sweater in a better size. If I get thin again, fine. If not, at least I will have a pretty sweater.

This does not make a lot of sense as I have friends who are a bit more portly than I am and I think they look fine, but I despise my shape, I always have, even when I was 110 pounds, and I just refuse to knit myself a tent. It just is not worth it.

So, I went to Smiley's yesterday and bought enough yarn for five summer sweaters, because, of course, when you feel lousy about yourself spending money is always good, right? Actually, since each bag of yarn was only 12 dollars it was really a steal - tell me the last time you saw Rowan Cashcotton at 1.20 USD a ball. (They only had two colors, but one is ok on me...) Or Nashua Ribbon. you get the drift... And trust me, I left a lot of good stuff behind - Rowan Biggy Print, some fantastic looking boucle, and a sort of airy thing in my favorite periwinkle. Besides all the worsted weight wool I did not get at 1.99 for a skein of 100 grams because - well, because I have enough balls of that wool, that very very same wool, to make not one, not two, but at LEAST three cabled sweaters, and if I could only find the two bags I bought years ago, I would have more... And I have enough 100 percent wool worsted weight from other brands to make, I dunno, off hand, another seven sweaters, most of them cabled. This is only worsted...so it is not like I am going to run out of stuff to knit any time soon..but I digress... The point was, I limited myself to five bags for sweaters and one for socks. (regia with silk for 1.20 a ball.)

So, I was thinking - just what do I have in terms of summer sweater stuff, and what can I make from it?

I have - enough - of a red cotton/acrylic blend for one of those pinwheel sweaters. Maybe something else as well.

I have enough of a very pretty blend with a multi strand for a shell or tee.

I have enough acrylic boucle for something.
(in Two colors So really, two somethings.)

I have a red slubby yarn - one shell or tee

I have this funny sort of ribbony tapey God knows what yarn in a peach variegated - enough for more than one thing...

I have WAY MORE than enough of a cotton/acrylic mix in orange, green and who knows what to make a shell, a sweater - whatever I think I can stand, really,

I have enough of a pink yarn in cotton

Green and black yarn in cotton

white yarn (not my best color) in cotton/acrylic

variegated that Betsy gave me - maybe a little short, but the kind of variegation where you could probably find one of the colors in a solid that would work for say, straps or whatever...

Enough Lion Brand Ribbon for a racer back tank.

Enough Cotton from brown Sheep - you know the stuff - it has Merino in it - for a tank, far as I can tell - maybe a tee. Or maybe a tank and the rest can be straps for the variegated...

This is what I can find offhand...
There is supposed to be more, which is probably in there somewhere...

And it does not count what I bought yesterday.

I also have access to Ravelry - not every knitting pattern ever invented by knitter kind, but close. Available on my screen, 24 hours a day, with wonderful sorting mechanisms...

So why can I not decide one flipping thing to start???????????????

I am usually the last on the boat.

Really. As any given boat is pulling away from the dock, I am running, and they are screaming, "jump, jump," and then some burly guy picks me up and tosses me across the water and there I am in the very nick of time.

Ok, well, maybe not the burly guy part. Anyhoo, seriously, I figure if I know about something, EVERYONE else, I mean, in the UNIVERSE, must know about it already. However, today I happen across two peoples, Bevin and Kims, who don't know about this pattern for a crocheted acorn project bag, so here, without further ado, is the pattern for the Acorn Project Bag

It says it is for little projects. I think if I was putting a really small sock project in there, or a beading project, or anything of that ilk, I would maybe want to line it first, as my crocheting seemed to leave holes that needles could find their way out of.

But I LURVE this acorn, I really, really, do, and I can think of lots of things besides knitting projects to put in here. Like hows about you stick a little grommet somewhere on the lid, or else a sort of piece of straw in the part of the lit that turns into the little stem, and use it just for the ball of yarn for the project?

OR for a little snack. I would put the snack in a little ziploc bag, maybe, to keep the thing clean, but a half a tuna fish sandwhich and a few oreos could go in there with room for a clementine and maybe a few pickle chips, you know?

OR for those of you who put your fruit in cozies - you know who you are, you pervs - maybe your fruit could be more modestly housed in this acorn.

OR if you had really really big earrings, you could keep them in here when you travelled. I have seen earrings that would just barely fit in here, and not just in National Geographic, either.

OR you could cleverly fit some clean undies and a toothbrush and any necessary precautions in there, you know, in case you run into a really really cute guy on the elevator on the way out of work.

OR you could use it for your gambling stuff - you know, the dice, or the chips, or the cards, or the lotto tickets.

OR, if your car is really stinky, you could fill it up with baking soda, or maybe potpouri, or dead fish, or anything which smells a little less bad than the car, and hang it from the rearview mirror.

OR you could, you know, totally confuse the uiverse by throwing a set of really large Rosary beads into a nut which is sacred to some pagan god, I forget which one, but I'm with the rosary crew, so maybe it does not matter so much in my case.

You can even be sort of, dunno, maybe cannabalistic, or something, and put one of the pattern writer's other Amirigumi things in there - like one of the little owls, or tree frogs,or maybe the toad...

Anyway, it is too cute to live, it really is. Took me longer than 3 hours to crochet, but I am no speed crocheter- your mileage or trip time may differ.

What I am up to...besides general procrastination

What I am up to, besides general procrastination, is trying to remember to breathe when I think of all the things I really should be doing at any given minute, as opposed to all the things I tend to actually do with those minutes.

Maybe I should knit the stuff for Reducio 4 already. It is all small stuff, it does not take long, and yet, I am always just about the last one mailing, and in a panic. And then DH wants to know why I do these swaps, since they are just so stressful, and it would not be nice to say "Because then I end up with nicer stuff than anyone I know offline actually gives me for gifts" since after all he is one of those people I know offline...so I should knit this stuff.

And My mother is turning 70 in the fall, so shouldn't I really make her shawl, which I have allegedly been working on for over three years now and which was supposed to be a 65th birthday gift, but which is a grand total of, let me see, three inches long? As in 69 to go? And that is assuming I do not run out of wool even though I have made it wider than it was supposed to be because I had to because I could not get gauge and she knew how wide she wanted it and so I added stitches to the edging and now I suppose I am very likely to run out of yarn and ought to get me some more of that,

Please picture me running around in little circles, pulling my hair out.

And please also recall that I have two children and a husband, all of whom seem to think I owe them some attention in between my knitting and spinning and writing and general socializing, etc...

Ok, so, that is what I am up to.

So what have I done so far this evening? I have started frogging a thrift store sweater and read half of the posts on Ravelry.

And why have I started frogging this sweater? Because, of course, I need the wool for yet another project I intend to start, the little amigurumi acorn yarn bag that is so adorable...