Lily the Christmas Eve

I stopped blogging over a year ago.   I would like to say it was because I was busy writing the next great American novel....promoting it on Leno before he decided to abandon late night TV,  cashing huge advances, fighting off paparazzi, potentially scuffling with one,  like Alec Baldwin.  I would like to say it was because I was relaxing at my villa on Lake Como in Northern Italy with my tanned hard body that took that whole year to achieve.  I would really like to say it was because I was the front runner in some political campaign that didn't involve hookers, texting, corruption or bridge closures.  Sadly the reason I have been gone so long is simple....Lily the Christmas Elf.  Well, let's not blame Lily, she is actually the product of my back burner mentality.  I excitedly start something and as soon as it is not as entertaining as it originally began I put it on hold, stick it in a bag, banish it to my hoarder room.

Lily is a crochet project I began some two years ago for my then 3 year old granddaughter.  She has a head,  her pointy little ears pinned on to where they will be sewn at a later date (Lily, not my granddaughter), she has a stuffed body although still naked and a striped leg with one green boot.  Lily has been bagged and banished through two holidays seasons.  I found her while looking for white wool to complete a Valentine project which is coming dangerously close to being dismissed as boring and repetitive.  Lily will probably ready for my granddaughter's Sweet 16....I hope her color scheme is red and green.

Crochet and knitting projects aren't the only things I do this with.  I have half-written novels, countless un-submitted and un-published short stories, a book of 10 poems only 7 of which I like, and two possibly three journals that started out as cathartic, liberating scripts only to end at the bottom of an end table awaiting a new entry.  I have sewing projects that are cut, pinned and ready to sew.  I have matched the thread color with irrationally eccentric accuracy, wound a bobbin with matching thread and then....nothing!

I am a frame freak.  I have collages that say FAMILY is fancy scroll letters, I have bohemian woodgrain 5x7's in every color that wood doesn't naturally come in, and dozens of modern-glass-no-border-break-every-time-they-fall-off-the-wall 8x10's.  Each frame has an array of smiling happy people in various situations enjoying life and each other....too bad they are not my family.  I have yet to get around to printing any of the thousands of pictures I have imprisoned on my cell phone.  There is even a picture of a completed Lily on there just in case I forget what the finished product should look like.

I am working on my inability to finish things.  I started a diet in November which I abandoned before the holidays.  I gained 3 pounds.  I restarted the diet and subsequently suspended it until after Super Bowl...same results.  The key to this dieting thing may just lie with Lily.  If I could complete what I start out so tenaciously robust for I could probably fill those frames by Spring, complete a novel by summer and have poor Lily's dismembered body resurrected.   And maybe then I could....I'll finish this later.