All. The. Knitted. Things.

This month was pretty successful. It was easy to fit in some knitting in the evenings, no matter how tired I was or what we were up to. My side of the couch still looks like a yarnpocalypse but I did end up making a lot of lovely things.

A baby blanket for my friend A, expecting a baby girl.

A hat and scarf made from the leftover yarn from the baby blanket, donated to my work Christmas Market fundraiser going on next week.

Tiny booties and a partly mohair hat for A’s baby girl.

Baby booties and a blanket for our friends L and K’s impending baby.

A new warm toque for me when the first wintry blasts came in this month.

Booties and a blanket for another friend of mine who is expecting their first child, who will receive them in a couple of weeks.

As you can see, a mini-baby boom happening among my friends right now. I didn’t even finish the *other* baby blanket and booties for my other friend expecting as well. But they’re due a little later so I have a bit of time.

I’m still working on my Hitchhiker scarf, but it’s getting close to being done.

And then I have the Advent Scarf from Ravelry to catch up on.

But, since we’re starting December shortly, I’ll be doing my last month theme. I’m also heading on a quick vacation for the next week, so knitting will have to wait here until I get back.

I decided, since there will be so much stuff going on this month, that I wanted to explore something that would be quick but still artistic, and something I could do while being present in the moment. So I will be Documenting December, and posting one picture per day to feature something from that day. This will be cross-posted to Instagram as well.

I’ll try to post something more narrative from my travels in the next week as well. I’m excited, as I’ll be visiting three new countries I’ve never been to, and a different part of a country that I’ve been to three times already (not counting layovers). :)

Knitting!

Well, it’s been fairly easy to knit every day so far. Except for yesterday, bizarrely. I didn’t do any stitches over lunch because I took myself out for lunch after my big presentation in the morning. Then I did some errands in the late afternoon/evening before heading home, and instead of knitting when I retired to the living room post-dinner, I played some video games. With several* projects perched on the arm of the couch, looking at me with their yarny eyes, silently pleading to be made whole.

Also, my knitting muscles are sore! Some of the projects I’ve been doing require some tension and I was massaging and stretching my forearms after last weekend. I’ve even been doing some crochet finishing too.

Knitting luckily fits into many downtime spaces in my life and so it has been great that evenings result in me sitting down on the couch and picking up my knitting rather than my social media. I’ve been struggling with the political posts that cross most of my feeds, finding them not very good for my mental health. ;P

And I’m not going to lie – we’re receiving our first big dump of snow today and there’s nothing quite like making warm fuzzy things when it’s actually cold outside. I went on a bit of a hygge rampage last weekend and bought a few pairs of flannel pajama pants (not all of them for me, some for my husband too). Last weekend also saw the first batch of gluhwein brewed and drunk. Must have all the cozy!

So, I’ll happily continue knitting for the rest of the month. I’m taking photos of my knitted pieces to post at the end of the month, because some are presents that will be given in the coming weeks and so they will be gone before I can create a pile o’November knitting to document this month’s progress. :)

* – seriously, counting them now, I have 3 projects being “actively” knitted and one waiting to be cast on, plus a pile of yarn with 4 assigned projects not moved to “my side” of the couch yet, plus at least one project in storage that is a repeat of a previous pattern that I haven’t started to play with yet because cables and it took a while, and it will need to be blocked before it’s put together and I hate blocking. Not to mention the other project that I got pinned up and ready to be sewn together, only to take the darning needle over to the projects I just finished… I suffer from that most common problem of not wanting to do the finishing parts to my projects. But I will! …eventually…

Well hello, November

Optional October definitely took some of the pressure off. I did manage to do some of the things, whether taking a walk, meditating, writing, etc. I didn’t always do something, so that was a bit if a downside but I’m not going to beat myself up about it.

So for November, I considered doing NaNoWriMo again. That’s National Novel Writing Month and it is really good. I’ve done it in years past and it helped my approach to writing a lot. Instead of brooding over every word and editing while I write, NaNoWriMo forces you to just… write. In order to meet your 50,000 word count by 11:59pm on November 30th, you can’t be agonizing over every turn of phrase. You need to produce at least 1,667 words per day. And that can be wickedly difficult with, you know, a real life to manage as well as a job and stuff.

So instead, since I was invited to contribute some knitted things to an auction for the United Way campaign at work, I decided on doing:

Heh, I hear that in a movie announcer voice in my head, with thunder behind it.

I have a ton of projects waiting for me as well. I don’t knit super quickly, so this might be good to help me get through Knitting All The Things.

It’s also really meditative and relaxing. I usually multitask while knitting, either watching a movie or show, or listening to a presentation. In my first post-undergrad job, the Chair of the Board of Directors for the non-profit I worked for would regularly knit during her board meetings, which I thought was brilliant.

So there you go. I will knit every day this month and see how chill (and toasty snuggly warm) I am by the end of the month. :)