Holiday frazzle

Hi folks!

I know I owe you a post with photos but I can't oblige at the moment (my photos are on flickr which is blocked at work. At least I can still access blogger during my lunch break!).

I started early on planning for the holidays but even so I am feeling a tad stressed already. ugh! Does anyone else get this way? I am such an organization-freak that I need to feel organized and ready early or I can't sit back and enjoy. It's not like I'm making all that much stuff, I just want to be done with it early (including shopping and cards) so I can enjoy some of the season and not feel so frazzled. But every time I look at the calendar I do get frazzled!

For gifts, so far I've made two cotton crocheted grocery bags for my SILs that came out pretty well I think. I used this pattern, although I had to make them bigger. I ended up not increasing stitch count, just row count, and used a much larger hook. Apparently I crochet very tightly so my first one came out way too small.

I am also making two little coin purses for the SILs, which are almost done and I'm also pretty happy with them. Thus far I am using only stash yarn! Yay. I REALLY need to curb my yarn purchases for a while. (Especially since I just made an impulse purchase because of something I saw on a bunch of blogs lately. COUGH. Ahem. More on that later.)

I also have another project I'm working on for a friend that's not knitting but is something way overdue that I promised ages ago. It's just a baby blanket (it's fleece, so a no-sew project) onto which I'll be stitching some cross stitch fabric once I cross stitch the words on. I think it'll be cute when it's done, but it's time consuming. I also need to do some craft painting...for my friend's older daughter I had given her a little name train years ago, and now I need something similar for her younger girl. So that needs to get done.

I am also making the same friend a pair of socks, but that's easy peasy of course. No worries there.

Then there's this photo book I'm creating for my dad, which I need to get done so I can order it and cross it off my list and be done with it. This is why I get frazzled! There's just so much to do. And beyond all the gifts, there are a few little ornaments I wanted to make for myself as well, not to mention I might want to make some of those tiny sweater ornaments for my cousins for Christmas day. But we'll see if I'm that ambitious! Heh. What happened to not making anything for Christmas?!