Work in Progress Wednesday - #21

This isn't about a work in progress - although if you want to see works in progress, check out Tami's blog for several cool projects! This is about a work completed.

Yeah!! The baby jacket is done! I have about enough yarn that I could have done one more row on each sleeve.... When I finished the body of the jacket, I realized that I had very little yarn left, so instead of trying to knit two sleeves flat and sewing them in, I weighed the yarn and divided it into two balls, then I picked up stitches around the armscyes, and started knitting out from there. I finished this on Sunday afternoon, December 26, at 4:37p, and we left for my sister's house about 15 minutes later....

Here's a story: Hubby Dearest is both the coordinator of the Mass Coordinators (the people who make sure that all of the key positions are staffed and that the tasks are getting done) and the scheduling coordinator for all of the liturgical ministries in our parish. He had been sending out beg-and-pleads for weeks for people to staff the four Christmas Eve Masses and the one Christmas Day Mass. The Christmas Day Mass and the Midnight Mass schedules got filled quickly. (We were both on the Midnight Mass schedule.) The early evening Masses were not filling, and I was muttering about people who became ex-husbands because they dragged their wives to multiple Christmas Eve Masses. Finally, the 5p and the overflow 5:10p Masses filled out enough so that he could stop worrying. We went to the 7p and got there early enough so that I could train a brand-new altar server (we generally only have one adult filling that role). She wanted to stick around and attend the Midnight because it had been years since she'd been to one.

So, after we cleared up the 7p Mass, the three of us went into the parish lounge. Of course I pulled out the baby jacket and was knitting frantically when our fairly new pastor came through the lounge. "Oh, I need to find a relaxing hobby, and I've been thinking about taking up knitting!" Hubby Dearest snorted, and I looked up from some dropped stitches that I was picking up and counting and muttering at. "Ben, if you want to expand your swear word vocabulary, this is a wonderful hobby," I said in all seriousness. This is not the sort of statement most people would make to a priest, but I've been a church mouse most of my life. He looked sort of startled, and then he grinned, and then the four of us had a real conversation about his job and its stresses.

Oh, and two weeks ago, I mentioned the stuff going on at my job. I am trying really hard to not count my chickens before they hatch, but a high-ranking person in my building came to my office an hour before the big meeting, and we had a really positive conversation about my contributions to the life of the building at present and going forward. I am pretty sure I'll be okay.