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.

So I'm knitting and knitting some more to make rectalinear shapes for the "tree cozy" project and I'm getting excruciatingly bored with just knitting stockinette stitch (knit a row, purl a row, continue until you can't stand it anymore and then bind off). I've exhausted the simple lace and cable patterns I have and finally today I pulled out my big book of knit and crochet patterns.

So this afternoon I learned two new lace patterns and I'm now working on a piece that uses extended stitches. There are a lot of stitch patterns in this big book. I've decided that since I'm committed to knit until my arms fall off or the project is up (June 11!) I may as well make it a learning opportunity as well. By the time these cozies go up I may have developed some mad knitting skills.

I would never call myself a perfectionist or control freak, but I am an oldest child and have directed theater so I'm pretty good at telling people what to do, sometimes. I'm part of a co-op of artists so I'm generally good at working with other creative people and seeing a situation from a variety of sides. I am a Mennonite so I can often hold two opposite ideas at once and be OK in it.

All that said, this Acacia Park "Tree Cozies" project has had me in a bit of a tizzy. I've committed my time, energies, and scant materials to this project with the idea that I would have enough support to oversee it. And I'm really hoping I haven't misjudged the interest for it.

The lesson I may be learning here, among many, is "trust." It will be, and it will be whatever it will be. If only enough material comes in to cover one tree, it will be one tree. If enough comes in to cover five trees, that's what it will be. And I think I can be OK in that.