What’s “on my plate.”

So, Lake Nasty has temporarily slowed down. I’m getting more time to spend doing what I like to do.

I’m knitting on my scarf for the battered woman’s shelter. That’s great, I really like getting something like this done. I can’t wait until it’s really and truly finished.

The last big of “charity knitting” (somehow that term, while it’s entirely appropriate, sounds wrong. It also sounds quaint and fun. I can’t decide if I like it or not.) I did was a couple of hats made from handspun yarn. It was a project for the spindlers list I’m on, which is a super chatty yah00 group focused on hand spinning with spindles. I signed up, received several skeins of handspun sproingy brown wool yarn from a woman in Hawaii, and knit up a couple of hats. They were sent to the Veterans Stand Down in Philadelphia. The Stand Down takes place yearly as a non-government affiliated venue for homeless veterans who might otherwise be reluctant to go in for the health benefits they are entitled to. (23% of homeless people are veterans! Visit the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans for more information on the Stand Down.)

I remember now that I got the bulk of the hat knitting done on bus trips home after work. There’s a great limited service (express) bus that goes from 10 blocks south of my office, to right outside of my office door to near my home, and then on up to the upper upper west side which runs until 7:20 PM. If I catch that bus, it’s a quick easy trip with a seat guaranteed because I get on at an early stop. Lately I haven’t been able to catch this bus because I’ve been working so late, but I’m going to make every effort to get back on the bus, and to knit my holiday projects there.

At home I’ve been knitting stripy hats. I have some really soft yarn from ebay, and I’m making them as surprise gifts for people who don’t expect them. After I’m done with the hats I’m going to finish the lacey item for a family member, and hopefully whip up some mittens for me. I have a long list of other knitting (hats and mittens, mostly) for other people as gifts, so I’m just going to crunch along on the list and see how far I get.

I may have to take a break from knitting at home to work on some of the embroidery projects I have planned, though. Embroidery isn’t nearly as portable as knitting! It gets too dirty in my trashed canvas bag (trashed because I rarely wash it, not through any fault of the canvas bag. And, it’s link-o-rama!) But I’ve got some serious embroidery work to do, too.

Other things I want to do include:

1. Get my sewing machine fixed.
2. Cook a really nice thing for a potluck this week, and another one in December.
3. Organize my winter clothes so I’m not storing them on my desk.
4. Swiff the living room floor at home.
5. Rehang my pictures in my room from the era of the crumbling ceiling.
6. Figure out CSS so I can have styling and easily updateable webpages sans using Word.

Not too bad! And now, I have to run so I can catch the knitting bus…