Planning for September

Last week was awesome. I spent lots of time crafting, but I wasn't under any pressure. All I had to do was finish Spock and work on Dragonflies. I finished Spock ahead of schedule and life was good. I even prepared for the upcoming KALs I'm starting this week. My crafting mojo rocked. But September is almost here, which is just that much closer to birthdays and Christmas. I'm going for a completely hand made Christmas, which means I should have started the crafting a couple months ago. Oops. At least I'm thinking of it now instead of in early December like I usually do!

Even though I should be focusing on gifts, I started the Mad Hatters KAL today with my super awesome TioLiRR swap group. For those that don't know, KAL stands for knit-a-long. This time around we're knitting bettymcknit's Ggester (pattern is on sale now for the KAL if you want it at a discount and knit along with us) and since there's a bunch of HP fans in our little group there's at least one person from each house knitting in house colors. I am, of course, knitting mine in green and silver for Slytherin. Yeah! I've decided this is going to be my lunch time knitting project so I'm not eating up my big blocks of crafty time with something silly just for me. I'm already to row 6 of the ribbing!

Wednesday will be the first day for the After Hours Shawl KAL. I'm really excited to start this one because it will be my first attempt at knitting lace and working with beads. Mom really liked the look of it, so this is going to be her Christmas present. I hope to finish it fairly quickly so she still has time to forget about it before December 25th rolls around. The pattern won't be released until Sept 1st, but my yarn and beads are ready to go!

I just put the finishing stitches in on the first triangle of Dragonflies. I'm under my predicted time and hope to keep reducing speed. Didn't take a new picture because I'm lazy, but it doesn't look a whole lot different than it did yesterday. I have a month left until I have to ship it out - lets hope I don't so distracted with the new projects that I forget about it. I'm still really enjoying working on it so I don't see that being a problem... yet.

This afternoon the BFF sprung on me that she'd really like some fingerless gloves in Seahawks colors so now I'm looking up patterns to see what I can throw together for her birthday. I have between now and Oct 19 to figure out and execute colorwork. Eek! Somewhere in there I should also start working on my Knitting Masters program since I received the coursework today and bought my swatch yarn, figure out wtf I'm going to make for Dad for his birthday and/or Christmas (he's the worst person to shop for, even harder to make things for), and start crocheting sparkly snowflakes. The next couple of months are going to be crazy!

Day 9, Triangle 1: 17 shells = 1 hour 10 min
Average: 4.1 minutes per shell
Total: 153 shells = 11 hours 25 min