So, the Never-Ending Afghan is really, truly almost finished -- I just have to finish the final row of edging & I have about a side and a half of that left (which, considering this is queen-sized, is not exactly an inconsequential amount) but I get a fair amount of that done during hockey games if it's not too hot in the house. That's a LOT of blanket to be under & it gets uncomfortable if it's in the 80s (or even high 70s) while I'm trying to work on it.
The next afghan I'm going to do is underway -- it's going a bit slower because it's more small pieces and in all kinds of different colors, rather than two, and also I'm using an actual pattern for this one, which is not for as big an afghan as I intend to end up with, so... I may take some liberties with the pattern & do a few things slightly differently & just use the pattern for the squares. We shall see, as it gets further along.
In between all that, I've been making infinity scarves -- I made a really pretty green-and-white one, where I basically created the pattern myself, for a friend in Utah, and all my kids have requested one "just like it, only with different colors." And it really only takes a few hours, so I'm doing those sort of in-between. & additionally, a friend just moved to Denver, so he's getting a really nice charcoal infinity scarf that I found the pattern for off the internet somewhere. It looks really nice; it was simple to make & I think it will work well. I may, in fact, make up more of both kinds of scarves to send to people for Christmas presents. (If you're still reading this and you want one, I'll post more pictures on Flickr & you can tell me what colors you like & I can see if I can find them in super-soft yarn. I also intend to eventually finish that hairpin lace that kind of got set aside, and make it into an infinity scarf. But since it involves deliberately setting aside time and clearing off the table, it's harder for me to make it happen -- my other stuff I can just pick up whenever I sit down; I don't have to have that flat surface to work on.
Beyond that, I've been working on trying to keep my house clean and rearranging the chore thing so that my kids have a few more responsibilities, and a few different responsibilities. We're all cycling through the main rooms of the house, keeping them clean-and-neat-ish, some of us with more success than others (sadly, I'm one of the less successful; on chore days I'm too busy supervising everyone else, and during the week I'm typically caught up in more in-depth cleaning, running errands, doing one-off types of chores, crocheting, and occasionally volunteering at the boys' school).
Also, yes, I've finally been called to come in & volunteer at the school -- they had a bumper-crop of willing volunteers this year, so it took a while to work out what to do with people. I was asked to come in, and I ended up in the library shelving books for an hour or so. I ran across a few treasure troves of childhood favorites -- Lois Lowry, Judy Blume, E. L. Konigsberg -- with some books that I loved but for whatever reason don't own myself and also some books by those authors I've never heard of. I was invited to just sit down & read once I'd cleared the cart of returned material, but I had other obligations so I wasn't able to, but I have an open invitation to come back & just read sometime if I want to. And I *do* want to; but I also want to volunteer in more parts of the school than just the library, so maybe that will be my reward -- work for an hour or so, then treat myself to a book in the library on a comfy chair.
SO, yeah.
Also, the DH went hunting this morning & he tells me he got two wild pigs. I'm not so thrilled about certain parts of this (you can probably figure out which ones), but can't deny that I'm pretty happy about having all that pork! He wants to try his hand at sausage at some point; we have a meat grinder, seasoning, and casings, but who knows when he'll actually find the time!
