It’s been a crazy year here – really crazy, and on the phone with a friend the other night, either she said, or I said "I feel like I’m going into this Christmas with no reserves. I don’t know how I’ll get through it" and that sentence has stayed with me since.
I keep thinking that it’s a holiday, and you’re not supposed to need reserves, and it is supposed to be about family and happiness and not some sort of insane slog through eighty-seven stores and six days of Christmas baking before exhausting yourself with knitting schedule that makes Santa look like he’s on his down time. There has to be a different way to do this, and I swore that somehow, I would figure out what it is. "Less is more", that’s what I was thinking.
I haven’t really had luck with this as a broad premise so far, but I thought I would start small. Change is hard, and luckily I did think about this earlier in the year. In January I started knitting things and contributing them to The Long Range Planning Box.™ I thought about people all year, and I chose my gifts, and knitted them as I went. This, I felt sure, would translate into a far, far less crazy Christmas knitting scene. I still have to go through that box properly, but this morning, as I was gathering my yarn and my forces, I thought things were really going to be reasonable this year.
Here is my plan.
These are socks. (Not yet, but you know what I mean.)
These are socks.
These will be another pair… 
So will these (These ones actually have hope born in them.) 
This is a hat.
Right up until I put all of that yarn in a pile, and took it’s pictures and then looked at the date and thought about the fact that I’m still on a book deadline, I thought I was holding back this year. It is, and I’m sorry to be saying this out loud to you, if you haven’t gotten there yourself yet… only 18 days until Christmas. That means that I have to more or less, churn out a finished item every two days between now and then.
I might not have the hang of this "less is more" thing yet. I’ll keep trying.