An interlude in which things are almost finished

One of the nicest things about this quiet time between Christmas and New Year, apart from the fact that H is home on holiday, is that hunkered down feeling that comes over the whole house; we've done our getting ready, we've had our big feast and now we're enjoying a very extended post prandial nap.  And yes, that does involve extended pyjama wearing, excessive amounts of Chocolate Orange, and a host of good DVDs.

We have left the house occasionally; we bought Kitty some more pretty clothes given that her pretty Christmas dress was a size 6-9 months, and this morning the poor wee darling had her second visit to the nurse with the needles.  Today has accordingly been given over to cuddles and nursing but she's a happy little thing and currently communing with tiny monkey and trying to eat caterpillar.

And in all of this week long duvet day I've been doing a little knitting.  I don't actually have anything finished, but I do have some almost finished; some more almost than others.

Way back when I looked like I had a netball stuffed up my t-shirt I had a terrible craving to cast on for a jumper for myself.  It wasn't the most sensible of cravings (but then when are they ever), given that I couldn't reliably give any indication of my current or future size but I really really wanted to knit the Owls pattern.

So, size? Not a clue.

Yarn of the weight called for? Not a chance.

Time to finish a sweater of any size before a little bundle of joy arrived? Not a hope.

I did however, have a variety of needles, and a large quantity of Mission Falls 1824 in Cedar.  And thus, with the help of some very useful notes on Ravelry, I dropped from 6.5mm and 6mm needles to 5.5mm and 5mm and with a dash of optimism and a bucketful of reckless abandon I cast on.  On 9 September.  Three days after my due date but another 10 days before I went into labour and 12 days before Kitty actually made an appearance.

I picked it up again when she was a few weeks old and discovered the joys of snoozing on my front of a morning and a little gentle knitting in the round was just the thing to rock her softly to sleep.

It is a fabulous pattern and a quick and easy knit and so I finished the knitting part on 19 December and put it aside to wait for a chance to go and buy the perfect buttons for the little owl eyes.

And what should I find looking in the yarn bag but four and three quarter balls of yarn left over.  What to do?

Ah the advantages of having a teeny tiny daughter who has to wear just what you choose.  I know it won't last long so I'd better indulge in some matchy matchy dressing while I still can.

I finished Kitty's Mini-Mummy Owlet yesterday morning while watching England retain the Ashes (via the replay highlights) so now I just need to do some serious button shopping.

All of this almost finishing left me with some rather empty fingers; I've got a million and one things that I want to knit, and some of them I even have yarn for (I'm eyeing up some laceweight cardigans for the next new project), but I also have three rather neglected projects on the needles; a shawl that 'just' needs the edging, and two pairs of barely started socks, one from the Tsock Club way back when, and one from my Cookie A class last summer.

It must be the influence of all of these impending New Year's Resolutions ganging up on me because I've dug out the Flowing River shawl from its appropriate strata of craft project geology and rapidly discovering that this may well be the very last thing I ever knit.  I will be edging f o r e v e r and e  v  e  r.

Judging by my last Ravelry pictures I'd done 4 repeats of the edge before it was abandoned for something that actually makes progress and I've now done 14 but each repeat only absorbs 5 stitches of the central triangle so you can see why I'll be here for a while.

If you need me, I'm knitting a river.