Finishing the Year

It's been a crazy end of the year for me.  After finishing all my grading, sending in my grades, having Christmas with Scott, and finally cleaning the house up a bit, I had to pack to head down to Florida to visit my parents on Christmas Day!

Not only that, but after I got back a couple of days ago, I've done nothing except frantically work all day the last few days to try to finish the Snowflake Shawl, which is for Kim's wedding today.

I really wanted to finish this for her wedding today, but I guess I underestimated how much time was needed.  I figured it would be fine with the two full days I had after I got back from the warmth of the south, but even working the entire time, I wasn't able to finish.  I'm about halfway through grafting all of the snowflakes together, and I haven't even started picking up the 900-ish stitches for the edging.  I could have pulled an all-nighter last night to finish the grafting and start the edge, but then I would have been destroyed today for the actual wedding itself.  Instead, I'm going to simply give her the card with a little voucher for her shawl, which I'll have to send down (probably in a couple of weeks) when I finally finish it, and finish it well.
When I came to the realization that I wasn't going to finish it in time (this was last night around 9:30 pm, around the 14th CSI episode I had watched over the last few days), I was really frustrated upset.  I thought that I would be able to finish this shawl in time.  If I hadn't taken such a big break between knitting the snowflakes and starting the backgrounds to the snowflakes, I know that I would have finished them.  Heck, I could have even taken the snowflake backgrounds with me to finish in Florida, even though that would have been a lot of needles and white yarn and I doubt I would have really worked on it anyway.  Instead, I worked on the Kleio shawl- mostly in golf carts, because I don't golf, and I needed something to do...

Lame.
Well, one of my "13 in 2013" (which I'll cover in my next post, once I truly decide on all of them) is to finish the two big Christmas presents that I haven't yet- the Kleio Shawl for my Grandma, and Kim's Wedding Shawl.  By the end of January.  Because if I can't get her the shawl today, I will not put it off until spring to finish.  It's covered in snowflakes, for goodness sake...
Oh, and Florida was lovely. :)