WIP Wednesday: Planning, plotting, planting

The good news is that I have my role and goals for 2013 at work all planned out.  The bad news is that nearly three months out of 2013 have been and gone.  But the nine that remain, oh boy, watch out, I've got them covered.  Which isn't to say that I haven't been toiling away in my cubicle throughout January, February, and March, making progress on projects and generally being a productive worker bee.  But now it's official.

Still unofficial are my swap projects.  While my handknit item for the Gilmore Girls swap is most definitely an FO, the box itself is tantalizingly close to completion.  It will be trusted to the care and keeping of the postal service on either Friday or Saturday to start it's journey to an undisclosed location.  I spent some time over the weekend getting ahead of the sometimes overwhelming task of wrapping each item in tissue paper and affixing a tag which has a quote or screenshot from the show.  The beauty of Gilmore Girls is that you can find something your spoilee loves and half of the time, a quick Google search will find you a quote that mentions it and makes it completely theme-appropriate.  The box will be filled to bursting, and I hope I can hear the squeals of joy coming from my spoilee all those many miles away when she opens it.

My spoilee in the Joss Whedon swap will have to wait a little longer, but the good news is that I did indeed cast on another handknit last week.  Again, I must only provide confusing clues:

• This is my first project I've knit using my Knit Picks Harmony needles from the kit my dad bought me for Christmas.  So far I'm really liking working with them, and they are so pretty.
• I'm also using some Knit Picks yarn which I happened to have in stash.  The colorway reminds me of an indie yarn that my spoilee favorited in Etsy, so I'm hoping she likes it.
• The pattern is one where the stitch count steadily increases, and I'm more than halfway through the first section.  The rows are starting to grow to the point where during my half hour coffee social time at work this afternoon, I was only able to get through two of them.

I'm also putting together pages in my current notebook, which is also due to go out this weekend, not to its final destination, but to it's next stop on the tour.  Last night I did two drawings to go along with the recipes I'm including, and colored my own Van Gogh 'Starry Night'.  It's one of my entries under 'Trees I grew up with' (pun intended), along with 'Ferngully' and an excerpt from a Czech book I found on my shelf the other week.  She loves trees, so I thought I would share a few that are particularly a part of me, to go along with my feelings on family and a few recipes.  These notebooks are so much fun, they bring out some random stuff, but all with a certain meaning.  I'll be able to show off some pictures of that soon.  For now, though, you'll have to make do with a thousand of my words.

For more WIPs, check out Tami's Amis!