October and November are two of the busiest months. Halloween (which I am not going to finish my costume for), holiday bazaar season, NaNoWriMo, my husband's birthday and Thanksgiving combine with the desire to do gift crafting into a hideous mess of sleeplessness and potential crankiness.
Over the last couple of years I have determined that doing custom orders is not working for me. I bust my butt making samples that no one buys and then spend my next 3-4 weeks making orders for which I often need to buy new materials. It is just not very tenable. So, this year I am making small things: hats, coffee cuffs, wrist warmers and the like. Most of these things can be done in a day or two, and I hope to have 30 to 40 items ready by the time I actually doing the holiday bazaar. I don't want all of December to be filled with making more stuff. Like I said, not exactly tenable especially when I have to then carry this stock for another season. Yuck.
I need to make more dice bags. One of the coolest things I've made is still the prototype dice bag I made for my husband. It doesn't quite match my standards for crafting excellence (mostly the sewn in lining), but it gets the response I want pretty much any time it is pulled out. He uses it and it is super geeky. I liked making it, and it is one of those things that can be assembly lined so I can work on parts when I have the energy to do so. Of course, I might not have the right materials anymore. We'll see. I have a lot of yarn in the stash.
Then there is NaNoWriMo. National Smut Novel Writing Month. What? I am planning on writing a m/m paranormal romance. Blame Chris. She got me hooked on reading a lot of books that were not part of my normal genres (sci-fi and fantasy) starting with the JR Ward books. None of this is high fiction, but I tried writing that story 2 or 3 NaNos ago and it flopped miserably. The meet-up is this Saturday and writing will commence after midnight on October 31st (as soon as it is November).
Can I knit for 2 hours a day, write for at least 1 hour a day and walk the dog for at least 1.5 hours a day and not become a crazy woman?
Probably not. But only time will tell.
