One Week To Go

Oy! Only one week until Christmas Eve and I'm still making gifts! Am I surprised? Not at all. Last year I resolved to make gifts all year long with nobody in particular in mind, so that by the time Labor Day rolled around I could sit by the pool with my umbrella drink and scoff at those who were planning what they were going to do with the next four months. I would giggle as Thanksgiving closed in on us, safe in the knowledge that all of my gifting was already done, and glad that I wasn't them, getting crushed in that last minute frenzy of working around the clock, burning the midnight oil to get gifts ready. Yup. Those were my plans. So what am I doing right now? Well, I'm wondering why the hell I stopped working on Thelma's hat to write in a blog that I have no time to write in because I still have five more people to crochet gifts for in the next seven days. Thaaaaaaat's right, folks, as usual, my plans didn't work out.

Not to worry, though. Like clockwork, someone on the Crochetville site has started the official yearly "what are your crochet plans for next year" thread, and I am already planning my pat answer - "I am going to start working on next year's Christmas gifts the day after Christmas so that by the time Thanksgiving rolls around next year, I'm already done with my gifts and I can just relax and enjoy the holidays."

It's not just Christmas gifts that cause me to vapor lock like this. Oh no! Not by a long shot! ANY deadline of any kind is enough to throw me into that all-too-familiar last minute frenzy. In 2007, Thanksgiving Day was November 23. November 23 is also my friend Dinah's birthday. So last year the person who owned our hotel at the time decided to host a massive Thanksgiving dinner so that we could have a birthday party for Dinah at the same time. Oddly enough, I finished her gift two days before her birthday last year, which was probably one step away from being declared a miracle by the Catholic Church. I had crocheted a pretty table cover for her. It was actually a doily pattern that I did in knitting worsted weight yarn so that it would be large enough for a table cover. She loved it, and as the party/dinner ended, she said to me, "You know what you can make me for my birthday next year?" Tickled pink at the prospect of having a whole year to make whatever it was I asked, "What?" She replied, "A Christmas Tree skirt!" I was ecstatic! I always try to keep Dinah's gifts to something having to do with angels, since that is what she collects. So I was going to find THE PRETTIEST Christmas tree skirt there was, and I was going to have a WHOLE YEAR to make it! Kathy White, an extremely talented crochet designer, had designed a breathtaking tree skirt that was filet crochet and had BEAUTIFUL angels all around it! I even had the pattern gifted to me! It was going to be PERFECT! Well, it WOULD have been perfect had I been a machine, but there was FAR more work to this tree skirt than I ever imagined, and when Halloween hit and I was just starting it (the pattern was only published in the late summer/early fall) I just wasn't going to have the time to finish it. So a week before her birthday, I started working on a normal tree skirt out of knitting worsted weight yarn and finished it two weeks after the big day. Dinah wasn't surprised that it was late. She giggled. She also loved it. But once again, it was late.

But let me get back to my last minute crunch. Next year will be different. Just you wait and see.