Working, Reworking, Re-gifting...

Christmas is beginning to make itself apparent. It's easy to get in the mood now that the snow has fallen.

I met my son at one of the area malls on Saturday for some shopping and lunch, and it was fun to see all the people, the gussied-up stores, and to get carried along with all of it.

I have a love/hate with Christmas. Once I get into the spirit of things, I love to futz with decor and could get fairly carried away if I let myself and if I had more time. But then there are the crowds, and all the stores piled up with useless stuff that no one really needs: the light-up sweaters, the "holiday gift" books, the fancy foods. And all the budgeting and planning and cogitating and over-scheduling. But even with all of the potential yuletide hassle, on the whole I'm feeling pretty good about the holidays this year.

I'm trying to keep the cynical, bad-attitude Kathie at bay, at least for the time being.

But we all get sucked in, don't we? I've already volunteered to host the library Christmas party.... It'll be fun, but I will be frantic.

Speaking of frantic, this is my driveway in the process of becoming drifted over with the snow that we plowed out of the way on Friday. Over on the left there, it's probably at least a foot deep once again. The snow is re-gifting. I'm hoping it doesn't get any worse. It's really annoying to get stuck in your own driveway three days after the storm.

Well now. It's been a very productive weekend. The Mile-a-Minute quilt is all ready for the handwork on the binding. Almost done!

Now I'm working on another small quilting project. It's been awhile since I went into production mode, mindlessly cranking out the half-square triangles.

But once I've put in the time, those triangles will (I hope) add sparkle to a small piece that bears some resemblance to this below, my Tree's Up quilt, made last year. I finished that quilt and discovered that it was too long for the intended display area. So I removed an entire row of blocks. And now I'm using those leftovers up.

I've put the Tree's Up quilt in my entry hallway this week and the place looks Christmas-ized already.

There's also a secret project involving this:

The yarn is called Autunno, 100% Merino wool, colorway14630, but unfortunately I can't show you just what exactly is working up very nicely.