Another "that moment when..."

Everything is pretty much in Normal mode chez Orchard Ranch.  It's the weekend and although the semester is in full swing, this is a rare weekend day when I don't have a stack of things to get done for classes.  I'm reading a mystery (Craig Johnson's The Cold Dish, the first of the Longmire books) and I've got the second sock for the Emperor's Christmas present on the needles and on the fly.

That's the "moment when" of the post title: I'm at the point in the second sock that I'd dearly love to set it down and do something -- anything --  else.  I'm also at the point in the second sock that I'm so close to finishing it and the pair that I just can't make myself put it down for more than a little while.

Hang on, I'll measure it and see how far I have to knit before it's time for the toe decreases...

It's just shy of four and a half inches.  That means I have just a tiny bit more than three and a quarter inches to knit, then it's time to re-divide the stitches on the needles and start the decreases.

If I'm a "good girl" I can have this project finished by the end of the week, and my by-now-traditional gift to my husband in the drawer and ready to go.  It's the only real knitting deadline that I set for myself any more, and I'll have met it.  But I can feel myself flirting with danger, thinking about setting it aside to make it into a late-December must-do, giving myself a little last-minute pressure and excitement.

The upcoming week is going to be busy anyway.  Sis is coming by to stay for a few days as she signed up for a jewelry show venue about two hours from here.  That means that we need to get the public spaces of the house into some kind of order, a project we've been working on a little at a time this week.  It's not that the house is a mess -- it's just that it needs a good dusting and vacuuming, and four piles of paper that never seem to completely go away need to go away (three are gone).  Oh, and the guest room needs to be dusted, vacuumed, and to have the sheets on the bed washed and replaced.

We have some wayward piles of books on the tops of shelves, and I'm wondering if there isn't a place we can make for them.  We rarely use our stereo any more (the DVD doesn't work, and the cassette player only works intermittently, although the radio is fine), so if I took that and put it in the craft room, it would free up some space for DVDs in the "entertainment center".  I could put the DVDs that now take up a bookshelf and move them there, and put the wayward books in the new shelf space.

You know, that's a thought.  I'll go ahead and contemplate that from my space here on the couch while I read another chapter of the Longmire mystery and knit a little on that sock.