The end of October

I recently realised that not only have I put aside my sweater to knit these socks, and this time last year I put aside my Kaffe Fassett squares to knit a sweater, but once I finish the socks I cannot get back to anything, because I have signed up for the Stephen West mystery knitalong.

It will be a shawl, and it needs three colours of fingering weight yarn. Of course I have three colours of fingering weight yarn lying around the house, so I found my colours in about five minutes.

I had these four to chose from, and I think I will do the yellow, the red (with a bit of orange just in case) and the multi-green. Because it is a mystery KAL, we have no idea about shape, colour placement, stitches used... so it seems sort of silly to get too stressed about it, but people are going to great lengths to chose between leventy-million colours of fancy-pants yarn. Heck, I haven't even made a swatch! (ha ha, make a swatch...?)

So, I have a bit more than half a sock left to knit, the KAL starts on the 6th and I go out to BC on the 10th. Will the KAL be sufficient for plane knitting, or do I need to get Action back in play as well? We shall see. But for now, my November plan is to knit this mysterious shawl, then in December I will pick up some abandoned project and finish it! I might even do a half-assed NaBloPoMo again, but I am out of town for a while in the middle of the month, so I don't expect to post every day. (What a plan: knit something, maybe blog.)

Plus ça change...

I have had to put Action aside. No action on Action right now, because I have a Very Important Pair of socks to make. So, I am doing my best.

Meanwhile, we are coming up to election day in Canada.

Very nerve-wracking, because I am following both my main candidates on Twitter, and they are both so keen and upbeat, so I imagine that the race is close. Apparently, according to some polls, it is not close at all. According to some polls, the NDP will be more or less wiped off the Toronto map, which would be very sad. Justin Trudeau is not his dad, for sure, but at this point anything is better than our present Prime Minister. So, we learn all tomorrow.

Imagine how wracked my nerves would be if I cared about baseball! The Toronto Blue Jays were good in the 90s, but have done nothing much lately. This year, however, they have made it... to something... not sure, but people are very excited and if they don't win tomorrow, they will be eliminated and the Toronto sports fans will be, yet again, cast into the depths of despair. But they are used to it...

And that's all that's happening around here. Soon, rejoicing or rioting, and we have no way of knowing which it will be.

Oh, and sock knitting.

Thinking of Christmas and beyond

People on Ravelry are already starting the "how much to knit for Christmas" conversations. I am not planning on knitting very much for Christmas, but I did get a bit nervous because right after Christmas is New Years and all those lists and goals!

Last January's leftovers still include the following:

1. Malabrigo scarf
2. Botticelli
3. Temperature scarf. This is ongoing and won't be finished till Dec 20, 2015.
4. Those Kaffe Fassett squares. A finite project, one would think, but you know what happens when my attention is diverted.
5. I have a number of bits of a blanket that have to be dealt with. I was going along just fine, and then some breeze blew me off course. 
6. Sunday Best

I've decided that the blanket bits and the Sunday Best will get mashed together somehow. But not much action has taken place. So, really, the list is only five things long, right?

The Kaffe squares are still languishing, though I am keen whenever I think of them. 

Botticelli... This will become my morning bit of knitting when the Temperature Scarf is finished. Boring, just needs a bit of doing a day and it'll get done. Same with the Malabrigo, but I have to do that all in one fell swoop to lessen the fluff-sneeze factor. 

But first I shall finish Action. I'm on the second sleeve, but have only done a quarter of the body. For Christmas, for me?