I need an off switch...

Firstly, yes - it's two-thirty in the morning and I'm making a blog entry.

I seriously need to just turn my brain off for a few days. It's not that firey, manic, I have to create mode - the one that I have no idea something was even wrong until well after the fact. It's just the, "my mind can't stop thinking about creating" kind of mode - the one where you want with all your heart to lock yourself in a room and just create but you have a two year-old, a husband, and a house to take care of. I'm probably a few steps shy of a true hypo-manic episode for me which is a mixed blessing, because a true episode comes with ignorance of what is actually happening where my current state just carries frustration.

Now that we have my mental state taken care of, on to what's on the needles. The unfortunate by-product of my current mind-set is that I have 6 things on needles right now. This does not include the 3 dozen stitch markers in various states of completion, nor the several half-written patterns waiting to go up on Knitty Keen.

Needle 1 - socks on Great Adirondack Silky Sock, Serengetti colorway. I'm about an inch from turning the heel on sock 1

Needle 2 - socks on Rainbow (read - neon) variageted acrylic/nylon DK weight. This is an odd one because I had finished one knee sock, started the second, turned the heel on the second one, decided that I needed to re-do the calf on the first one so I frogged it back to the life-line (God, I love these) I put in after I finished the heel, then did the first third of the calf on the second one. Take that Strunk and White - I laugh at run-on sentences and strange non sequiturs (yes, I know it's spelled wrong in the banner).

Needle 3 - Bias scarf for Red Scarf Project (about 1/3 done)

Needle 4 - Linen Stitch Scarf for Red Scarf Project (less than 1/4 done)

Needle 5 - Version 3.0 of my stuffed fish toy prototype (I knit two of these in the past two days, the one on needles is my third).

Needle 6 - Version 1.0 of a Tree Frog prototype

The frog prototype keeps wanting to be explored and expanded into any number of reptile and amphibian toys and I keep having to beat it back. In bags around the living room, I have at least another half-dozen works in progress. I'm lucky that I designed Michael's sweater to be a 4T with a lot of ease since it may not get finished until next year. I really have to put the toys aside for right now and concentrate on finishing the scarves and then the socks because my feet are cold. yesterday I was completely consumed by the fish - hell I even had patterns written in my head for everything from a really cool/funky felted lantern fish to a Chineese dragon. There just aren't enough hours in the day and I will seriously be paying for this tomorrow.

On the Michael front, the trip to Maryland went very well - well enough that we are seriously considering doing Maryland Sheep and Wool as a family trip. Since I knew I was stressing a great deal about it, I made a point of telling Michael all morning before we left that we were going to have an "adventure" today (I said this often enough that even I started to believe it - in a good way, I already believed it in the sarcastic way). The only problem we really had with him was food wise - he ate a ton of dairy. It's almost impossible to control him when everything is served buffet-style (read: child-height). It's still working its way out of his system and I'm sure there has been some behavioral effect this time as well which I haven't really noticed before.

Now it's three and I need to get some sleep. 'Evening all....