Finishing up with winter

Thanks for all your lovely, kind comments regarding yesterday's post. It can be so hard sometimes to shield yourself from the bombardment of materialistic messages, and remain focused on what really matters.

There's this wonderful JD Salinger story that I have loved for many years called Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters. The story details the wedding day of Seymour Glass, although the man himself fails to put in an appearance - rather, it is told from the experience of his brother Buddy. Anyway, this Glass family had a number of wonderful habits, one of which was writing messages to each other using a sliver of soap onto the bathroom mirror. Sometimes it might be a haiku, composed whilst in the shower, or sometimes just a plain old admonition for somebody, for heaven's sake, to pick up their dirty clothes and put them in the laundry hamper. I've always been partial to this writing on the bathroom mirror biz, and am seriously considering scrawling on my own "It's not what you have that matters. It's WHAT YOU DO!!!", probably with the extravagant surplus of exclamation marks.

Speaking of doing, I've been sniffing the air like an animal coming out of winter hibernation today, whenever I have chanced to find myself outside. The air is soft and fragrant, and the promise of spring is so close that you could almost grab it with both hands if you tried hard enough. This means two things:

1 - I really should think about what I want to plant in my garden for summer (otherwise known as jamming seeds into a motley collection of pots and hoping for the best); and
2 - I've absolutely gotta finish up my winter projects so I can start sewing summer dresses!

The winter projects to-do list stands likes this:
 - Green knitted dress. Requires seaming and buttons (I can practically hear it growling from the bedroom at me for leaving it so long).
 - Another green knitted dress. This time with cables! Needs to be completed (so far only 1.5 arms done, and don't even ask why I tried to knit two green dresses in one season. There simply is no answer, other than I am insanely optimistic when it comes to my own knitting ability).
 - One bright orange dress. Cut out, requiring sewing.
 - Cross stitch. As you can see above, L is complete, but the rest of the alphabet must still be sinking shots in a bar somewhere.
 - Another striped baby jumper that I rashly promised to the lady who runs the fruit and veg shop. Why, oh why do I do these things to myself???

So I'm now banning myself from even thinking about beginning anything new, until the above list is checked off. How are everybody else's projects going?