At church every year we do a food fight, which is where the congregation is divided into two teams who 'compete' to see who can bring in the most food for the local food bank. This year they asked my knitting mom and me if we'd be the team leaders, and do it as a knitting theme. We tossed around a few ideas and at first we decided we would knit 1 inch per every 10 pounds or 10 ounces of cereal (the food banks really need breakfast cereal so to encourage people to bring that, we count ounces of cereal the same as pounds of other food). But then we switched the rules and decided instead we would make one scarf for every 100 pounds (all scarves to be donated to the local shelters), and we encouraged other knitters and crocheters in the congregation to join in.

The food drive's been going on for a few weeks already and it's usually pretty successful, regardless of how the teams are led. But all of this is a lead up to explain why it is that this morning I dragged Richard up in front of the church, and my knitting mom brought her little grandson, and the two of us gleefully decorated each of them with scarves - nine for my team and ten for hers. Which means that before this morning we had nearly 2000 pounds/ounces of food/cereal for the food bank, which is pretty awesome. And after sorting and weighing all the donations after the service, I've got 4 more scarves to make and she has 3, and we're nearly to 3000 pounds total, which is even better.

It has been a very knitting sort of day, actually. It started with the scarves, of course, followed by meeting a friend in Vacaville at a craft store because she wanted some advice and recommendations on picking out yarn to make stuff for her family for Christmas. So we wandered up and down the yarn aisle and I was very, very good and bought no yarn at all (even though I was awfully tempted once or twice) but instead helped her pick out a whole basket full. And then we came back to my house, where I walked her through casting on, and also how to bind off and weave in the ends, and loaded her down with several sizes of circular needles to try, and my copy of Stitch and Bitch because it has very useful pictures and tutorials, and a skein of yarn for practicing casting on and binding off, and a set of tapestry needles because she'll need those for the aforementioned binding off, and I am hopeful that I did not completely overwhelm her with information and that she will have fun finishing off her basket of colorful scarves-in-larval-form.

And then I pondered the fact that there are only two weeks until Christmas so I scribbled out a list of stuff for Richard because he is the one who writes our yearly Christmas letter, and then it was right back to the knitting. First I made pom poms out of sparkly green yarn and then I finished a pair of socks, and then I had a little fun with my ball winder (have I mentioned how very much I adore my ball winder?) and created a lovely little pile of perfectly cylindrical skeins of yarn, and then I cast on for the body of the very last snowman that I will ever have to make (this year, that is - alas, there are many more snowman in my future but those do not need to be done until next Christmas) and then I tried to work on yet another food fight scarf, but Sebastian sat on my lap and as I have recently discovered, he possesses the uncanny ability to make me fall asleep at any time of day or night just by curling up on me and it is very hard to knit when you are dozing off and in danger of poking yourself with sharp sticks. So instead finishing the last damn snowman I ended up sitting on the loveseat surrounded by three cats who kept purring at me and sapping my will to move or do anything remotely productive, and watched Grey's Anatomy and pretended that I have oodles more time to get all my gift knitting (plus three more food fight scarves this week and who knows how many next week) done before Christmas than just two weeks.

Happy Holidailies