I am up to my antlers in Christmas preparations!  This happens every year and I call it living
on Planet Christmas.  At present, the
preparations (which I am – mercifully – not going to list here) are being
squeezed out by events and, so, when someone asks me if I am ready for
Christmas and I smile and say I figure we are about where we should be at this
point, I am lying my head off.  We are
way behind.  But Christmas will come and,
somehow, the most important preparations will get done.  So, I am not particularly worried (okay,
maybe I am lying my head off again….). 

But, at least, I don’t let it interfere with my enjoyment of
Christmas Season events – because I love this stuff!  This past weekend:  Lakewood Playhouse’s A Christmas Carol, decorating gingerbread houses, church, the
Tacoma Art Museum’s “Snowbound” festival (where I showed a 4-year-old how to
knit using chopsticks and cording – I was not a volunteer or anything, I just
happened to be playing about at that station), Puget Sound Revels troupe’s
Christmas Revels (the theme was 18^th century Scotland and, yes,
there were kilts a-plenty). 

As a bonus, our weather has suddenly turned bitterly cold
and people are out and about in their woolies: 
knit sweaters, knit scarves, knit caps, knit mittens.  Fair Isle
fancies and intarsia deer and, of course, all those lovely cables and bobbles! 

And it is a good thing I can get a little second-hand
knitting excitement because my own knitting time is severely limited this
month.  I am doing pretty simple stuff,
too, because by the end of the day doing a little ribbing in front of a
Christmas movie (preferably one I could recite by heart) is about all my brain
can handle.

IF I were knitting
Christmas gifts, I would be playing the frenzied “knit in secret” game
now.  I would be knitting with one eye
glued to the front door, in case “intended recipient” came home earlier than
expected.  I would be knitting in bed at
night and in the morning before “intended recipient” was up and about.   I would, perhaps, be lying my head off to
“intended recipient,”  telling him/her
that the piece I was knitting right in front of him/her was a hat for someone
else (while, all the time it is a sleeve for his/her sweater).  It is a dangerous and exhausting game. 

BUT  I have declared that I am taking this year
off from knitting Christmas gifts.  The
idea was to have a calmer December. 
Well, maybe things are not exactly calm, but they are manageable – at
least, I am managing to get behind on my Christmas preparations and I am
managing to get around to some community festivities.  And I am managing a little bit of knitting in
between.