On Kool-Aid, On Dye-Pot, On Spinner and Twister!

On Foolish, on Headstrong, and Too-Optimistic!

Or, how the time does fly when it gets to be December.

This year I decided, with just a twinge of wistfulness, that I would not try to knit any Christmas presents. I didn't want to put myself under a lot of extra pressure in a season that's bustling with so many pleasant, but time-consuming, tasks as it is. This decision felt strangely familiar.

Right around Thanksgiving, though, I started getting urges. If I didn't have time to wrap my loved ones in hand-knits, maybe I could just knit a little token offering here and there. That, too, felt strangely familiar.

I begin to sense a pattern.

There have been other years when I sensibly decided I didn't have time to knit any presents. And in those years, too, a little knitting crept back into my Christmas ambitions. Or maybe a little crocheting. One year, I remember deciding to use up some yarn that, though well-loved, had been hanging around the place for a very long time, as "ribbon" to wrap presents with. First, though, without really meaning to, I crocheted it all. It just seemed like the right thing to do. Some single-crocheted, some double, some scalloped. Don't people do that?

So, late in the game, my mind started bubbling over with all the small things I could be making. And then I thought, wouldn't it be nice to make something for someone out of my handspun, now that I can produce respectable yarn?

I had some wool I thought might make something cute. Remember those Dorset locks I dyed with Kool-Aid? When last heard from, they were spread out all over the kitchen table, tickling me with their cheerful colors.

Over the summer I was gradually working my way through hand-carding it all. It took a while; at my level of hard-carding experience, 10 ounces is a lot of wool!

But it made the cutest little balls of roving. :) Needing to reclaim my table, though, I'd put the rest of the uncarded wool away, to work on other things for just a little while. I blinked, and here it was December. Well, there wasn't that much left to do. Wouldn't it be fun if there might be a little Christmas present that could come out of it? Surely it would be just the work of a moment to finish the carding. And spinning it up wouldn't take long at all, would it?

Well, maybe it would. I spun away, enjoying myself immensely, and thinking diligently all the while about how to organize the other tasks, the shopping, the wrapping, the decorating, so that I could get it all done in time without any last-minute panic. But..... I might have been a little too optimistic. I have to admit to myself that there may not be a Christmas present in it. At least not this year.

I have made an enjoyable little pile of candy-colored skeins, but with just eight days left until Christmas I now must get serious. The malls and the wrapping paper and the ornaments await.

But I might manage to knit one or two little things. :)