Have you seen the trees? Or the pictures of the trees? They make me so happy for several reasons:
* We did it! People were interested enough in the concept to participate by making stuff, showing up to work on sewing the pieces together and then coming out way too early on a Saturday to put it all up.
* They're beautiful. One of my goals as an artist is to make beautiful things--and we've succeeded here.
* I met so many lovely people through this process. People who can see that I'm not your average knitter and accept me anyway.
* It was so much fun! So much. I can't stress that enough. Man, that was fun.
* I've gone back a couple times since Saturday morning and it's just so fun to see people interacting with them.
* I can finally move on to other knitting projects now. I learned so much and coordinating a project of this scope is something I will do again. But I put some other projects aside to concentrate on this one, and now they're vying for attention.

At this point, we have more than enough material contributed to the Acacia Park "Tree Cozies" project to more than cover 6 trees and most of it has been stitched together to create our "tree cozies".

I cannot wait for Saturday morning! This project has been a roller coaster ride of panic, frantic knitting, and relieved euphoria. I have met some wonderful women and a few of their kids or husbands.

More to come once the dust settles a little. I'll post pictures of the "cozies" in their current, un-installed, state in a day or two.

A friend has commissioned a small knitted video tape sculpture from me and, realizing that it may not be available until after the gift is needed, she has graciously extended my delivery date. She would like to give it as a gift for a June 11 event, and I'm simply swamped with the "tree cozy" project between now and then.

However, knowing that I want to do her project in a specific style, I'm taking advantage of the manic knitting I'm doing now to practice the technique I want to use for her project. So last night I started in on a skein of yarn and 5 double-pointed needles, knitting squares from the center out. I got 5 squares done, starting with the simplest form and, making a few that aren't all that pretty, I worked out a design I'm happy enough with to expand on further.

I'm thinking that, come Sunday, I'll be putting yarn away for a while and taking my video tape back up.

I pulled work from my UFO pile doubled that contribution in about the last week or so. Wow, am I going to need help with this!

These are blocked and drying. This is about 22" x 36"--5.5 square feet. We need about 114 square feet to do the project as projected. Only 108.5 square feet of fiber to go. HELP!