Christmas cheer

The week before Christmas is always a strange mix of excitement and worry, with too much to do but lots to look forward to if everything goes according to plan. This year is fairly typical, and while I'm way ahead of normal in terms of buying presents (I set a new record by buying a present in August) I still haven't tackled the mountain of Christmas cards we need to write and send. I also decided in the last week of November that it would be a really good idea to make a scarf for each of my brothers as part of their Christmas present. Hmm. Then I decided it would be really fun to try out a design I had concocted myself to make scarves with diagonal stripes. Double hmm. The first scarf is knitted, but I still need to sew in all the ends from the stripes and do the tassels. I've done about 10 inches of the second one, and can feel a couple of evenings with crampy fingers coming on...