Holiday Gifts!?

It's Thanksgiving eve and I am sitting in my Mom's living room. I'm watching tv and thinking about tomorrow's dinner. Out of now where a wave of dread suddenly came over me.

OMG Christmas is a month away and I haven't started any of the knitted gifts that I thought about making for family members.

Today's post is trying to get my myself organized and making realistic goals for the next 4 weeks. Feel free to chime in. I am going to need some quick project ideas.

Below you find a mini list of items I would like to make. It is a lot less enthusiastic than what I said I wanted to make as Christmas this summer.
The only person that I feel that I have to make something for is my Cousin Debra who has mentioned to me several times that I have never made her anything.

Person	Present
Allison	Socks
Auntie Bob	Socks
Debra	?
Janice	Fashion Scarf
One of the Middleton Girls	Big Girl BSJ

The question now is what am I going to make her. I really don't know. I know she would love a scarf, but I don't know if I am going to have one completed in a month, because I am procrastinating knitter. I know what yarn I am going to use. I just don't know what I am going to make with it. I guess I should look on raverly and see what other people have done with Eco Duo yarn.

After writing this I went on raverly and I found this. Looks simple and quick. Would you be happy if you revived that hat and scarf as a Xmas present?

Plus I need to need to finish the final objects for Mr. Crawford's goody box. I am in MD for a couple of days, so I can try to finish up/start while I am done and I will make an effort to knit everyday. I can do this! I can do this! My hands may be bleeding at Christmas dinner, but I will be done!

BREAKING NEWS!

Look to your left. Do notice something is missing from the work ino progress panel? Mr. Crawford's scarf is gone. Finally! I really liked the pattern, but hated working with black yarn. I will never work with black yarn again. It is too hard to work with. And it limits where you can work a project. You always have to work in places with great lighting. I guess the next thing to add to the needles is a matching hat. I am trying to figure out if I need to make a blk hat. I feels so good to be done, because I started this scarf in May.

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I'm off da hook!

Holla at your girl, I'm off da hook!

The crochet blanket that I have been working on for the last couple of weeks for baby Legall is finally done! Not only is it done; I have delivered it to her.

I think it was the hit the Mom liked it (she oohhed and ahhhed), the Dad said he liked it and the baby just stared at it. She is only 2 mos old, so it is not like she could express herself verbally, but she kept looking at it. I guess that is a good sign.

After months of plotting, planning and a ton of mistakes I finally completed something for her.
After months and months of working on the same project it feels good to go to Raverly to check off the complete box and see one less project on the projects in process bar on the blog.

So what next (project wise):

• Must finish Mr. Crawford's scarf (so close to being done. I just need to sit alone in a brightly lit room for about 2 hours or so.
  
• I should make a hat to match the scarf. I am hoping to have his box of goodies in the mail to him by 12/1.
• Finish Baby Legall's BSJ. I am so glad that I made the sweater large, because she grew so much in 2 mos. I am hoping to have it done by Thanksgiving. I don't have much to do. I think I am 10 to 15 rows away from being done.
  
• 2 pairs of socks and 1 simple scarf for xmas presents.
  

Flying Fingers Review

Saturday, the knitting crew (Suzy, Deena, Misha, Desmond and I) with a special appearance by my non-knitting roommate Amanda left the city for a day of shopping in the suburbs. It was our day to hop on the yarn bus and go to Flying Fingers in Tarrytown, New York.

The yarn bus is a pimped out cargo van with 3 huge balls of yarn with 2 enormous knitting needles going though them that picks people up (for free) from New York City and brings them to Flying Fingers Yarn Shop in Westchester County. What a brilliant idea! I am sure if they didn't have the bus my friends and I wouldn't checked out the store. I am not sure why other suburban stores don't do this.

It was a 45 minute (maybe less) ride from downtown NYC to the store. The ride up was fun. We chatted the entire way up. I have no clue what we talked about, but I know there was a lot of knitting/yarn/pattern chatter, bad sex jokes and silly inside jokes. I felt sorry for Dillon, the driver, and Karen, the only passenger on the bus who was not a part of our group. Karen was visiting from Colorado to see her children run in the New York marathon. I am sure we gave her plenty to talk about over dinner with her husband and other travel buddies. I am sure she never expected to go a knitting journey with a van full of chatty women of color.

Flying Fingers Review:
I am not sure what I expected, but what I saw isn't what I expected. It was small and cluttered. I had this crazy idea that since it was outside of the city that the store would be bigger than a city store and I also thought that because they have a special bus for the store that is must be the most amazing store ever.

The biggest issue I had with the store was there was too much merchandise for the little space. Stuff was everywhere. If I wanted to see yarn crammed into a little space, I would have stayed home and looked at my yarn.

Yarns were mixed up with other yarns. I had a hard time finding stuff. My poor little brain couldn't take it all in. I was overwhelmed. As soon as Amanda, the non-knitter, came into the store she told me she was overwhelmed and this store was so different than the other stores that I have taken her to. She came with us to find the perfect purple yarn for her new coat, but was quickly discouraged by the disorder.

Besides stuff being everywhere it wasn't clearly labeled. It was hard to tell what the cost or what yarns created samples. Some yarns had price tags and others didn't. Some samples were clearly labeled and others weren't. I tried my best to try to take a look at each section to find goodies, because I could tell hat there were goodies all over the store. They just needed to be hunted for.

Because of the clutter it was hard for me to find all of the Manos del Uryguay yarns. I kept hearing that Flying Fingers had the entire line of Manos yarns and that they had colors that no one else has. Because I kept hearing this I didn't purchase any during the NYC Yarn Crawl that I went on a couple of weeks ago, because I knew I was going to Flying Fingers. I wish I would have bought the yarn I saw on the yarn crawl, because I couldn't figure out what I was looking at on Saturday. I t was hard for me to really see what Manos yarns were there, because of the disorganization of the store. When I have a real need to buy Manos, I am going to Yarntopia, Downtown Yarns or Purl Soho to check out their selections because they were better organized and it was easy for me to see all of the pretty pretty yarns.

The staff was super helpful, especially Dillon, the driver of the van/salesman. I am not sure if he could tell that I was confused, because he helped me a lot when I was trying to figure out what was what. I recall looking at a yarn and he said do you want to see a sample of that yarn knitted up. As quickly as I said yes he showed me the sample. He did that a couple of times and it made my shopping experience much better. If he didn't help I wouldn't have purchased anything.

I am glad that after all of these years of talking about it I finally took the ride on the yarn bus.

Recommendation:
Would I go Flying Fingers again? Hmmmmm. Maybe. I didn't hate it to the point where I wouldn't spend my money there. I happy supported the shop and if I love the Madelinetosh yarn as much as think I am going to, I would go back and get some more.

If a friend wanted to experience the yarn bus, I would go with them. It is a nice quick trip. Or if a friend, who had a car, wanted to take a ride and get some great burgers. I would suggest Horsefeathers and take a peak in Flying Fingers just because I am addicted to yarn and wouldn't be able to resist.

Lots of good products but you be good savager hunter/detective to find them and since I really don't enjoy digging for my items it is not the store for me, but I do suggest that people check it out, because the staff is really nice. But if you are like me and you freak out from clutter, then don't bother. Cause you will get caught up on thinking about how you could rearrange all of the items.

My purchase:

• 2 skeins of Berrco Ultra Alpaca - one black and one purple for Amanda's hat

• 2 skeins of Lang sock yarn

• 1 skein of hand dyed emerald green Madelinetosh merino wool

Lunch:
After an hour or so of shopping we walked over to Horsefeathers Pub for lunch. I highly recommend this place. The food was amazing and you get a lot of food for your money. I had a turkey burger and fries. The burger was well seasoned. The fries were fresh cut and they were huge! I couldn't finish my burger. I took half of it home. My table mates enjoyed their food too.