Christmas is a mere 40 days away and the knitting frenzy has begun. My knitting group sat around the lunch table today, passing around knitting books and magazines and making lists of recipients and yarns we needed to buy for their gifts. The mood was upbeat with an underlying note of hysteria.

Forty days is still forty days — for good and for bad.

“I think I should have done this two weeks ago,” said one.

“Do you think it will still count as a good present if I started it for last Christmas?” another queried.

We all agreed. If it got finished in time for this Christmas, then it didn’t matter which Christmas it was intended for.

Advice was sought — did you like this pattern, would you use this stitch, how do you do this again? Compliments were given — for color choices, for progress, for perseverance.

I join in as I work on finishing up the first half of Christmas Present #1. I have the hang of working with the alpaca yarn and this pattern now and can work and talk at the same time, except when I’m doing the decreases. Then I can’t figure out where the extra stitch came from. When did I add that? Or did I forget to knit two stitches together earlier in the row? Oh well, I shrug. This pattern has been more of a suggestion than a strict mandate from the beginning (when I realized the number of rows it requested wasn’t remotely near the number of inches they wanted).

As lunch drew to a close, we chatted about an upcoming party one of our members was throwing as we gathered our books and our projects to leave. Smiles were exchanged, knowing we were further along in the process than we’d been an hour before. And knowing, too, that this group of women would be with us as we knitted the rest of the way through the 40 days before Christmas.