Christmas fear revisited

Shortly after my last post, I decided to reward myself for being so close to finishing all the Christmas knitting by indulging in some non-Christmas knitting. No big deal, I thought, I've only got the making up of DD2's shrug and my brother's scarf to finish, and it's mid-November! WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

This. This could go wrong.

That thar is the amazing Rose Hiver's Water for the Elephants pattern, which, if you can believe it, is free. (Actually, a whole bunch of her designs are free, which is kind of crazy because they're gorgeous. And unfortunately, she doesn't have a website or any kind of email address listed that I can find, otherwise I'd shoot her some kind of 'tip jar' payment to thank her for this really lovely pattern.) I have been wanting to make it for ages so I finally took the opportunity. And as you can see, I've been spending a lot of time on it.

I also started making a pair of socks for DD1 (who has been growing out of many of her handknit socks lately; DD2, who inherits them, has been loving that, but DD1 not so much) from another pattern I've been hankering to knit for a while: Spider's Web. I haven't taken a picture of it yet, but I'm getting close to finishing the initial hexagon on the first sock.

Weeks went by in this way.

No big deal, I thought. After all, DD2's shrug is practically done:

And what's one scarf left to do when it isn't even December yet, right?

Right?

Did I mention that my brother's scarf was going to be double-thick, done stranded in the round with fingering weight yarn on 2.75mm needles?

Yeah.

Sadly, my eagerness to succumb to startitis didn't get that memo, either.

I finally started the scarf this weekend.

Twelve-ish inches in and I'm already tired of it.

We won't even talk about how paranoid I am that all that rumpledness isn't going to block out.

Just three weeks to go. Wish me luck.