For the rest of the week

I shouldn't do any knitting. Or, at least, I shouldn't do any knitting when I have enough time to do something else. If I get some knitting done while I am waiting for something else to happen or right before I go to bed, that's fine. But, for the most part, I should be doing other things, as Halloween is on Saturday, and I am not yet ready for the party.

Plus, starting Tuesday, I'll spend four afternoons at the Irving Library, and that will take up a big chunk of my time.

Other things I need to be doing--I need to find a copy of my resume. I need to get out the cotton candy machine and see if it works. I need to make jewelry and props for Saturday. I need to pick up pills and maybe get that flu shot. I need to see if Tuesday is a good day to visit grandma. I need to see if I have stuff to fix my hair properly before Friday.

And, in addition to the normal cleaning and such I should--try to make a witch hat (just in case the other plans for the Halloween costume don't work out), and see about getting an oil change (which I might not have money left for since I'll have to buy extra gas for all that driving back and forth from Irving), and decide what (if anything) I should try to buy 50% off on Sunday. I don't think there's anything that I really want of Halloween decorations, but that is a good day to go and buy kitchen stuff that gets marked down because it is orange and black.

Still, it will be hard to remember to leave the knitting alone. While I was sorting through some stuff in the back room, I found that I had seven boxes of yarn and unfinished scarves. So I had been thinking that I should go and finish those scarves and do something with them. Some of them might be Christmas presents, or I might want to wear some of them, and I suppose there is always the slim chance that I would sell some of them. Selling them is unlikely, since to get paid a reasonable amount for my time and the money I spent on the supplies, I have to charge eighty dollars and up for the scarves mostly made on the machine, and the totally handmade scarves would start at around a hundred and fifty dollars.

As you might guess, I don't sell a lot of scarves.

I wear a few of them myself, and then I give a lot of them as Christmas gifts, and I've given two away for club fundraiser auctions. But I think that I've only actually sold two scarves, and both of those were the eighty dollar ones.

Anyway, I started making a lot of scarves, but I didn't finish a lot of them, unless someone was waiting for it I just put it away somewhere. For some reason I can't really explain, I really dislike making the fringe at the end of the project. Partially, I think this is because I sometimes get my left and my right confused and do something backwards, which then has to be undone and then done over again. But that doesn't happen near as much now as when I first started, but still, I tend to put off this part of the project until someone is waiting on the scarf, or maybe the scarf just goes into a box and I never get around to doing it. And, with those scarves that are mostly made on the machine, I dislike joining the ends of the panels together, and maybe I dislike this part even more than I dislike making the fringe.

I have really no explanation for either. Making fringe usually takes about two hours, and joining panels together takes two or three hours (or longer, depending on how long the scarf is), and I think to myself that there is no hurry, and that I've already done the part that takes real time and effort, and finishing the rest of the scarf would only take two to five hours, which I could do in an afternoon whenever I decided that a scarf really needed to be finished.

But without someone waiting on a scarf, without Christmas or some other deadline approaching, the scarves never get finished, which is why there are now several unfinished scarves in with the seven boxes of yarn.

For some of them I will have to go out and buy more yarn to make the fringe. I hope that I can still match all of the colors.

So for the past month or so I have been trying to finish up a scarf every week, so that I don't have all of these unfinished scarves just taking up space, and now I have about four finished scarves and I am working on two more. And, while I should not put them away, as that would mean I might not get back to them until after Christmas, or, that they would again go unfinished indefinitely, I should try to refrain from working on them much this week, at least until I've crossed off these other things from my list that should be done by Friday so that I can relax and go to the party on Saturday.

And that is just the scarves. I'm sure if I really looked that I would find I have all sorts of unfinished business.

My husband will be mostly gone for the week, so if I don't get anything done I will have no one to blame but myself.