I still have stuff to do

Saturday at the pilot's house was nice, and the following Sunday dinner with more of my friends was nice, and this past Saturday was also nice, though I did feel a bit rushed with the whole thing of having to be in Irving and then in Arlington and then yet another place in Arlington. Following that dinner some of the group went to see the Interlochen Christmas lights, but not me. Maybe my husband will offer to drive me tonight, since we didn't get to go to that other thing in Oklahoma.

Right.

Well, something interesting happened during the meeting Saturday. I was wearing a Slytherin scarf, and I got some comments the nice looking scarf. And one of my friends asked how much I would charge to make a scarf if she already had the yarn for it, and I had to tell her that the scarves are eighty dollars, and if she bought the yarn already it would still be about seventy dollars, cause it takes about seven or eight hours to make one. And she said okay, she'd think about it, which usually means no. And then I thought how this particular person is usually good with crafts and such herself, and I went back and suggested that maybe she could just pay me thirty dollars to do the three or four hours of work on the knitting machine, and then she could do the remaining work that did not require the machine, which still takes about four hours but requires no special equipment and is not brain surgery (or at least for her it would not be brain surgery). And she said that she'd think about that.

So right after that, this guy that I don't know very well was trying to ask me something. And it's a very noisy room with all of us having different conversations, and I couldn't make out what he was saying at first. He was asking if I had a Hufflepuff scarf.

Now, normally, I don't have a lot of scarves just already made waiting for someone to buy them. Normally, if you want to buy a scarf from me, you have to give me the details of what you want, and then I'll make you one and you can pay me when it's finished. And usually, after people hear that it's a minimum of eighty dollars, they lose interest anyway. But it did just so happen that last year I'd made one each of the scarves from the third or fourth Harry Potter film, and that I was going to give two away at a Christmas Party last year, which I figured that everyone would want either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, but I also had Slytherin and Hufflepuff ready to go just in case someone wanted to trade. And as expected, no one at the party really wanted Slytherin or Hufflepuff, so I had them leftover. And it just also happened that I had both these scarves in the car (along with a few others) cause I had taken them somewhere to show someone else, and I just forgot and left them in the car. So when this guy asked about the Hufflepuff scarf, not only did I have one, but I was able to go out and get it for him, though I figured that he'd change his mind after hearing the price.

He didn't say that eighty dollars was too much, only that he didn't have that much with him. I let him look at the scarf while I talked to other people, and he said that he still wanted it, only he'd have to buy it some other time. And it was not a gift for someone else, he just wanted to wear the scarf himself, so he wanted to buy it before it got cold again. He asked if he could pay with PayPal.

Now, my husband has a PayPal account, and I certainly buy enough things with it, but I'd never before had anyone want to pay me with it, other than on eBay, so I didn't have all that information in my head. It certainly would have been possible, in the room with all those nerds and their smart phones, but I didn't have a clue how to go about it, and I couldn't get my husband to answer the phone (he was at someone else's house playing video games, but I'd forgotten and didn't try calling there). And this guy did not really live nearby, and he would probably lose interest if he had to wait another month to get his scarf. But we did manage to exchange emails and figure out a place to meet Sunday afternoon, and he has his scarf, and I have eighty dollars.

Or I did have eighty dollars. I've already spent some of it.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. This is only the third time that someone has ordered a scarf and actually paid for it.

Okay, so I've bought some more supplies and will try again to make some ornaments, which will probably be a Christmas gift for K, though we will not be exchanging gifts until New Year's Eve, and it will be too late for him to use them this year. But he'll have them for next year. If that doesn't work I don't know what I'm going to give him, probably some homemade dessert, but he's said that he'd rather not have candy as he's already eaten way too much of the stuff and is starting to feel ill, and G already gave him (and the rest of us) cookies, so that's probably not a good idea either.

I'm still thinking that I might make a scarf for the pilot, but again that is something that won't be needed until New Year's Eve. There's still stuff that needs to be done by Friday. I need to get something for my brother in law (probably a gift card for a restaurant), I'm thinking of knitting three hats, and I need two $5 gifts for the Chinese gift exchange. Also I'm wondering if I should put a gift I recently got in a similar exchange in with my brother's gifts, or if I should just keep it. Cause as cute as it is, I don't really need a Star Wars computer mouse, but probably my brother doesn't either.

Okay, in order of things that need doing: buy gift card, buy two $5 gifts, make candy and maybe cookies, knit three hats, wrap gifts, make ornaments, knit scarf, and wrap more gifts.

I still haven't put up a tree.