ah, November...

November is an exciting month for me. The weather's just starting to turn, Thanksgiving's fast approaching and we all know that Christmas and New Year's Eve are right behind it. November has always been the Thursday of fall -- you're past the halfway point and it's almost the weekend! I love it.

A couple of very exciting things also take place in November: NaNoWriMo, and NaKniSweMo.

I had all of October to prepare for this, but on the few occasions I actually thought about it in more than just passing, I was sidetracked by a glorious mental picture of me sitting down on November 30th, putting the last touches on my shiny new novel while wearing my pretty new sweater. Hopelessly unrealistic, yes, I know.

Now it's November 1st and I've actually sat down and thought about it in more than just passing, and I've faced the harsh reality that there's no way in hell I'm going to be able to do both. And thus I have a choice. Knit a sweater, or write a novel? Both appeal equally much to me, and I have done an equal lack of planning for both of them. I fretted for a while, then it hit me that no matter which I chose, I'm probably not going to finish it by November 30th. That took some of the pressure off, but didn't make it any easier to choose.

My darling husband actually made the choice easy for me. While I was wibbling and waffling back and forth about it, he said to me, "Whichever one you do, you're not going to finish it in a month." (yes, he knows me so well!) "...so you should knit the sweater. See, if you do the book, you're going to have a half-finished book that you'll probably never look at again. But if you do the sweater, you're going to have a half-finished sweater that you're going to want to wear, and it may take you until February, but you'll probably end up finishing it."

In the face of such logic, I chose to do NaKniSweMo. Clearly.