Efficiency

I forgot that I had choir practice last night, so I didn't get home until around 10. This was problematic, as my sheets were in the washing machine and needed to be dried before they could be put on my bed so I could sleep (we will not discuss the incident that led to the need to immediately wash the sheets, but you can rest assured that it involved five pounds of furry mess-making expertise).

I fed the dogs and cleaned myself up and got ready for bed, and sat down to wait for my sheets to dry. Obviously, I needed something to knit. Unfortunately, I left my nearly completed coffee pot sock in the car. My garage is detached from the house so getting to it actually involves going outside, down the yard, around the garage for the neighboring unit and into mine, and back again, all in 30 degree weather, in my pajamas. Also unfortunately, I had already been back out to the car once, because I forgot the steak in the backseat which was to go in the crock pot this morning. It was clearly too late to risk screwing up the Christmas knitting, so I decided than just sitting there idle or going out to the car again, I would just cast on a hat with stash yarn. One of the ladies in my church is collecting warm things to send to her husband in Iraq, and I thought I could make a nice hat out of some green and tan yarn and give it to her, or else give it to my dad for Christmas. This would be easy and would not involve going out to the car. Let's count how many times I ended up going up and down the stairs for this.

Trip 1: Go upstairs to stash, find yarn and binder of Options needle tips, come back downstairs. Realize that I forgot the book with the pattern in it.

Trip 2: Go upstairs, search craft room bookshelf. Decide that the book must be in downstairs bookshelf.

Trip 3: Determine that book is not in fact in downstairs bookshelf, and decide that I did not check the craft room book shelf closely enough. Go back upstairs to check the craft room bookshelf. Fail to find book, think to check bedroom knitting basket. Locate book, go back downstairs.

Trip 4: Discover, through use of newly relocated book, that project calls for size 9 needles. Discover as well that size 9 needles are not in Options binder, and neither are size 10. Spend several minutes debating whether size 8 or 10.5 would work. Find that plating seems to have chipped off of size 10.5. Look at size 8, waver, remember that I am a supertight knitter. Stew in indecision for a moment or 10. Check nearby project bag for possible size 9 needles. Come up with 8 and 7.

Trip 5: Remember chocolate waffle scarf. Go upstairs armed with needle guage, discover that this is in fact where my size 9 needles are. Bring bag with scarf downstairs, deprive of needles, cap cables. Decide not to take scarf back upstairs and put it away just yet.

Trip 6: Attempt to pull center from yarn ball. Fail utterly. Get frustrated. Go upstairs, rewind ball into yarn cake on ball winder. Forget to take waffle scarf with.

All of this so that I could avoid going out to the car, where my sock awaited lacking only about half an inch of plain knitting and a toe, both of which I probably could have completed in the time it took me to start that #%$@!! hat.

I got maybe an inch of ribbing done on my hat before my sheets were finally dry.

I find I am suffering from some serious...I started to say startitis, but it's really more like craftitis. The SO's mom was making drop spine boxes from a kit she got at Paper Source and I REALLY wanted to make them, and yesterday I was looking longingly at cross stitch patterns, and thinking of the ones I have at home that have been so neglected. This is not a good time of year for the commitment to waver! I must persevere! Even if the mits I am making would fit perfectly in one of those little boxes and even if the recipient would love some of the Japanese papers that Paper Source has and ARGH! I AM TOO BROKE TO BE THINKING THIS WAY!