a pleasant surprise

You know how there's that person who will always volunteer to coordinate /run/organize something? That's me.

My oldest friend (really! I've known her since birth!) had her second baby in July. Her mom is my Godmother, and I'm to be the Godmother of this too-cute babe (make sense?)...definitely an honor. Theo's mom is a knitter, so her sister-in-law hosted a sip 'n stitch before he was born and asked me if I'd be willing to teach newbies how to knit. Sure. Could I help choose a project, so we weren't all just sitting around knitting for no reason? Sure. After lots of thinking, I finally remembered this beautiful blanket (check out all the awesome finished versions on Ravelry!).

Seemed perfect, since most of the pieces weren't huge, we could assign the biggest ones to people with experience, etc. More emailing ensues, we settle on this yarn to go with the baby's beautiful nursery, spreadsheets are constructed, I wind 14 balls of yarn, no problem--I can finish whatever the guests don't, it won't be much--we have the party, and...nobody really loves knitting.

Which leaves us (the knitters--there were five of us, and I think one other person who liked it enough to finish a rectangle) with lots and lots of garter stitch.

A couple of months later, Theo's mom brings me a bunch of the finished pieces. And there are still five left for me to do, plus I'm the one who's going to seam it all (party time!) and knit the edging.

Responsibly, I set it aside for Far Too Long.

Guilt creeps up on me. The baptism is approaching, and I really have to have it finished by then, plus I've got his gift to make. I've been plodding along on one of my pieces, but am imagining a really lot left to go. So today, full of dread, I pull it all out of the bag.

And...it's not that bad! I discovered in laying out the blocks we have that my knitting must be really loose, so a piece I thought would fill one spot can actually (miraculously!) take the place of the biggest piece, and like dominoes falling, the whole thing all of a sudden seems pretty manageable.

When this kind of thing happens to me, I get in a mood...I want to finish this thing THIS WEEKEND. We'll see if I can pull it off.