Today is the last day before I head to San Antonio for a conference. Here are three beautiful things from the last week:

1. Our friend Brian sent us a Christmas card this week. I had lamented to Rudi that a number of our college-era friends seemed to have fallen off the communication wagon this year — and then his card arrived to let us know that he was alive and well (and reading our blogs).

2. We went out Monday night to a popular local coffee house and found it packed — so we moved on to another, newer spot. The restaurant itself was merely okay (although it holds a lot of potential), but along the way we passed a tree whose buds had popped out because of the warm January weather we’ve had recently. The branches offered a beautifully lacy silhouette against the night sky.

3. I’m hard at work on my sock and am pleased with my progress, despite the mistakes I’ve made. Several other women in my knitting group are working on socks as well and they’re all impressed with the yarn I’m using because it stripes up in a lovely way. Some yarns that purport to be self-striping tend to make the colors pool (bunch up in odd ways) once you start knitting with it, but this yarn gives me a variety of blue stripes up and down my sock.

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.

I started my new knitting project today with the baby alpaca yarn I bought on Sunday. The yarn is pretty and delightfully soft. I cannot screw up, though, because it does not unknit or unravel well.

The gauge is off a bit row-wise, but I think I may just add rows instead of pulling it out and starting over. No one will notice if I don’t tell — and you won’t blab, will you?

Knitting has made me more philosophical about mistakes. Some people pull their stitching out if they don’t think it’s perfect. I figure if the error’s not glaringly obvious, no one will notice but me. Knitting a huge project on deadline just makes you realize there are very few reasons to panic.

Another realization after working on the quilt for six months: it’s a joy to knit smaller projects. Progress is quick and satisfaction almost immediate. Tonight I managed to clear off the couch (finally!), watch Commander in Chief, and still knit 2 1/2 inches. Two and a half inches! That’s an eighth or so of the project!

Would that all my endeavors move that quickly!

There are some other photos, but they must be on a different memory card. These are the ones I found this morning…

I’m pretty sure photos like this are why it took me six months to finish the knitting. Jeremiah actually bit the yarn in two in this particular incident.

Jeremiah thinks knitting is hard work.

The final stitches of the quilt spread out on Mum’s 8-person kitchen table. (Check out the pajama bottoms and the bunny slippers.)

A close-up.

All wrapped up — at last!

We’re spending tonight and tomorrow night in Leominster, Mass., the town close to where our friends Sam and Alexis are getting married tomorrow evening. It feels strange to lie here in the hotel room without anything pressing to do because I have spent the last six months not having spare time.

Every time I sat down, there was a knitting project to work on. And more often than not, I did. I diligently knit away for six months.

193 days (give or take).
2040 rows.
106,080 stitches.

And I’m done.

Thanks to Gramma, Rudi, Mum, Dad, the folks at Stitch DC and WEB, Karen, Shelley, Jenny, and the women of my knitting group (Sarah, Suzanne, Tracy, Marty, Heather, and Chickona) for all their moral and physical support as I worked on this project.

Photos and more information will follow after I’ve actually given the present to Sam and Alexis.

My trip has screwed up my internal clock, but it really is Thursday today. Without further ado, we present Three Beautiful Things from the last week:

1. While walking back to the hotel Monday morning, I passed a local coffeehouse where I decided to get a cup of tea. They seemed like they had a promising lunch menu, so I returned on Tuesday for my midday meal and had the most amazing sandwich. It was cheddar, gouda, tomato, and lettuce on blueberry cornbread. Divine.

2. I like hats, probably because I look good in them (a trait I inherited from my mother). While in England, I bought a bright green courderoy newsboy cap that I’ve worn on several occasions since I returned. And people really seem to like it. And me in it.

3. My confidence is beginning to wane in my ability to finish my knitting project by Monday afternoon. But my friends seem to believe I will pull it off, perhaps because I have pulled off a number of large projects as deadlines loomed. I appreciate their faith in me, because it’s really all I’m working off of at this point.