Deadlines - they sneak up on you

I fell into some knitting and forgot to climb out. ;^)

First off to put myself into the holiday frame of mind I made what was supposed to be a 'two hour Santa hat'. I must be slow. Brandon also made a request for more brim:
It used up some long ago stashed Lion Brand Chenille that I'd used part of to make a Speed Stix Scarf for his mom a couple years ago.

I whipped out a couple of Thanksgiving themed dishcloths. One to have as a hostess gift to the cousin and his wife that are doing Thanksgiving for the tribe for the first time this year. They live in Dundee so a much shorter drive than the usual trip down to Corvallis. My Aunt Zoe isn't doing to well with her cancer. I thought the pattern went so well for the first one that I'd use the excess for one for myself:


Put more effort into stashbusting by using the Baby Homespun on a baby blanket for the Baby Love Blanket Drive. I found a free copy of the 'Moderne Baby Blanket' in the Mason-Dixon book online and used that as a guide. It successfully used up the white, yellow, green and purple that I had available. Unfortunately it wasn't a lot and was coming out smaller than their preferred sizes. I tried to make it bigger by adding on a crocheted border also using up some more Lion Brand Jiffy and ended up with a blanket that is 21x30 inches. I'll still give it but it's small:
I'm glad to have this project done because working with the yarn hurt my hands and wrists. I'll give it to Bobbie for drop off on Wednesday. I have some nice soft Cascade Cherub for another Baby Love Blanket, if I can squeeze the time in to make it.

To give my hands a rest I thought I'd work on some nice soft cotton and so made a couple of very soft face cloths that will be part of William's Christmas gifts, Squidge and Square Textures:

Next up was the Brain Monster Hat for Corbin but Brandon didn't think it would be as popular as something with Spiderman. So the hat will go to the next younger male nephew, Logan:
Smokey the Bear, an antique, models the hat for me. He was a bear that was heavily loved when my sister and I were kids that we got from my mom.

Brandon thought the plastic googly eyes weren't as cool as knitted ones would be. So I had to go find a pattern on how to knit eyeballs. I modified one I found for making ball shaped eyes and I think the dimensionality adds to the hat.

I have a lovely Excel spreadsheet that has all the people on our list that we have to give to and the proposed ideas I had for knitted items. This last week after looking what I had on the list and the number of people, number of items, and the days remaining until we see them for gift exchanging, lots of adjustments were made. I double checked finished items I have stocked up, what still needed to be done and then all the things I wanted to also do and made cuts. I think I have a realistic schedule but I also have two weekends that have classes that I need to attend before the end of the year cutting into knitting time. Throw in a need to get some baking done and things may become really interesting.

I thought I was doing really well with getting all the things done that I had gotten done last month. Now I'm feeling the pressure. Anyone else with this problem?

Trying out infusing lavender from the yard into olive oil. I simmered it for most of a day this last week and have strained out the lavender. Tomorrow the plan is to get a batch of lavender Castile soap made. A couple other soap recipes may also be made but I haven't settled on which ones yet. The Castile soap needs six weeks of cure time so I'll probably look for others that don't need as long so as not to run into issues with gift giving.

ETA: Forgot that last weekend I spent time spinning and came up with this:
It's the merino/tencel 70/30 I got from Woodland Woolworks. I'm currently calling it Purpleberry.