As the summer heat continues to beat down on us (um, 107°, seriously?!?), I’ve retreated into crafting mode. I’ve already begun planning for Christmas, because starting early is the only way to keep our budget from imploding come December. By employing a little creativity and several dozen craft-store coupons, I hope to have everyone but the kids crossed off my shopping list by late Fall.

Unfortunately, I am on an indefinite candle-making hiatus. My heart is just not in it right now.

Even if I felt like cranking out a candle or ten, the sheer heat outside means that I can’t punish my air conditioner any more than necessary, and the added heat from melting pounds of hot wax would probably do it in. With candles on the proverbial back burner, I racked my brain for anything I could work on that may have gift potential later. I needed something to keep my idle hands from strangling someone in a heat-induced frenzy.

So, I finally decided to teach myself to knit…again. I tried to learn how to knit many years ago, and was overwhelmed in the first five minutes. I think I still have the yarn buried in my closet somewhere. With a book, some needles and cheap yarn, I got after it…only to feel like I was wrestling a rabid octopus. Feeling a mite discouraged, I dropped into the local yarn shop for inspiration, and hit the Holy Grail. After explaining my plight to the shopkeeper, she sat me down and gave me a ten-minute crash course on casting on, and the knit stitch. By the next day, I knitted my first garter stitch scarf, and was on my way to learning the purl stitch. Later that week, I found Ravelry, and was sucked into searching for information about patterns, yarns and anything else that struck my fancy.

I’m still an abject novice, but it’s safe to say that I’ve been ensnared by the knitting bug. Guess we know what my family is getting for Christmas!