Time

Time is a curious thing.  If you're waiting to leave for vacation, or a child waiting for Santa, time seems to be moving at a snail's pace.  However, if you're trying to knit projects for Christmas, the same amount of time can just fly by. 

I was looking forward to some whimsical Christmas projects for this year.  One was going to be a Nativity scene.  I have patterns by Knitables and by Alan Dart and was going to use bits of each.  I also planned on making a cute decoration for which I have the pattern, now long-since discontinued.  It's called Santa's Clothesline:  Santa's laundry hung on a clothesline with little clothespins ... his longjohns, coat, hat, pants, socks, mittens and scarf.

As you can see I fell very short of my goal.

Click to enlarge.

On the right are Santa's longjohns. minus a sleeve and the buttons, and blocking, of course.  The item on the left is a little harder to distinguish.  It's one of the three Wise Men from Alan Dart's Nativity pattern.  That's the head at the top!

In my own defense, I did get distracted by a knitalong on Ravelry in which I'm making an Advent Scarf.  The pattern is also available on the designer's website, click here.  If you follow the group on Ravelry you'll find that there are options.  I'm doing the narrower version of the scarf, working with 49 stitches.  I think, for me, it will be more practical than the 103-stitch version which is more of a stole width.  Starting on December 1st a new section of the scarf is revealed each day for 24 days.  Each section is different.  It can be lace, cables or textured or a combination of any of these - separated by an 8-row spacer sections.  I've kept up fairly well with the clues, only one day behind.

My plan for the coming year is to leave the yarn and patterns handy and work on my little Christmas projects throughout the year, hopefully finishing in time for Christmas 2014. Check back with me at this time next year to see if I succeeded!