The end has arrived!

By dint of diligent hard work, unrelenting dedication to knitting after everyone else's bedtime, and the careful snatching of moments when the right set of eyes was not present, I have finished my Christmas knitting.

And it's not even Christmas week yet.

This is good, because I haven't even started my Christmas sewing yet. Christmas sewing cutting-out, yes. That's 3/4ths done. But the sewing has yet to take place. Theoretically it's a quick and easy pattern, but it still needs to get actually done. What I'd really love is to have a sewing fairy come keep me company (and hostage) in my craft room while I finish off both my Christmas sewing and a quilt top that's been waiting to be finished since I-won't-mention-when.

Sewing doesn't really occupy a large part of my thoughts, however. Knitting (among other things) does. This week I'll be working on socks in a sport weight yarn (48 stitches around instead of 60 ... wheee!) and other small projects. There is absolutely no point in starting something large the week before Christmas. Part of the joy of finding out what delight my mom got me is the ability to start knitting from it or with it immediately, and if I have something on the needles, the ability is not there. So ... small stuff.

And that reminds me of knitting from one's stash. Wendy of WendyKnits! and some others are participating in a Knit From Your Stash 2007. I would love to do this, but I'm not sure my stash is really a stash. My stash is composed of left-overs, with a few small exceptions. They are

1. Two, non-matching skeins of Koigu, purchased under the misimpression that they'd be enough for a pair of colorwork socks.
   
2. KnitPicks Palette sampler (with several partial skeins)
3. KnitPicks Merino Style sampler (with a few partial skeins)
4. KnitPicks Shadow Sampler (with four partial skeins)
   

I have leftover sock yarn (and what, besides log cabin stuff, can one make with perhaps 30 skeins of 100 yards of sock yarn?), leftover acrylic (which is wandering towards my daughter's stash, and I don't miss it one bit), leftover yarn from someone else's stash, 20 yards of leftover Noro Silk Garden, bits and pieces of this and that ....

It really and truly sounds like some people have stashes composed of yarn they bought for particular projects, and then never made them. Yarn, in sufficient quantity, to knit a sweater, or a shawl, or a hat, without cobbling together various brands, fiber types, gauges, and colors. Can this be true?

Six days left to Christmas, and there is no snow on the ground. There are icicles in the upcoming forecast, so not all hope is lost.