Parade of Finished Objects, day 1

I have been on a tear in the past few months. I have been Finishing Things. (I decided that phrase needed to be capitalized. Somehow in a very Charles Dickens kind of way it sounds more important, more momentous if it is capitalized.)

Don't worry, I have also started a few new things along the way, but sometime before Christmas I got tired of all the project bags piling up and of never being able to find the needle points or cables that I need because they are in some other project.

Plus there's something very gratifying about finishing a project that has been lingering, and these days I'll take satisfaction like that wherever I can find it.

So, I present to you the lead in our little parade of Finished Objects:

The Octopus!





I started this project a while ago, I'm not sure exactly when.

I took the following photo in January of 2007 on a day that I tried to photograph all of my works in progress.



I'm pretty sure I had started this only just before taking the picture - I plowed through knitting the parts pretty quickly, then stalled out when it came to assembling. This was started as a gift for one of my nephews, I think it was going to be a birthday present that year. I have several books of knitted toys, this was from Kath Dalmeney's World of Knitted Toys. Like I said, I got all the parts knitted up quickly, out of some coned yarn that I had that I help doubled. I even got the felt and the stuffing, and then I got nowhere for quite a while. I would pick it up and sew one leg, and then put it down again (and when you've got eight legs to sew, that takes a while!) One of the regulars at the Library knitting group started asking me about it a few months ago and I finally decided that enough was enough. Plus, if I finished it before Christmas it could be a present for my niece, since my nephews were a little too old by now. So I bucked up and just kept going and I finished it in early December. I mailed it off and according to all accounts my niece loves it, and my nephew reports that it makes an excellent hat!

testing the new-fangled whatch-a-ma-thingy

Supposedly my blog is now linked to my Facebook and when I write a blog post it will show up on FB.

Let's see if it works.

Inching toward the finish line

I am getting tantalizingly close to finishing a project that has been a while in the works.

I haven't let myself look back in my photos to see when I first started swatching this, I'll wait to do that until I'm done.

I'm up to my elbows in finishing, lots of it.



I've got this band facing to finish sewing down, I need to finish doing reverse single crochet down one front and across the bottom edge (on a 2mm hook it takes a while), weave in a bunch of ends and sew on the buttons.

That sounds like a lot, but it's nothing compared to what I've already done. I'm tired of this sweater but I have to finish it because it is for Buddy and if I don't get it done soon he will be too big for it.

I've been daydreaming for weeks about what I'm going to work on next.

Plumbing

The Italian is trying to remove his tonsils by coughing them out, my sinuses are packed, and Punkin has clogged the toilet so bad that I can't get it unplugged. And we have only one toilet in the house.*

How does a 7 year old manage to clog the toilet almost every time she uses it, can someone tell me that?

And does anybody have any tips for unclogging a toilet, since my plunging skills clearly aren't up to the job?

*(Granted, we do have another toilet in the building in the back, but that is a dark, muddy walk across the backyard to do in the middle of the night).

I'm going to bed, tomorrow has got to be better.