finding knitting time

My knitting time's being severely curtailed at the moment- I start a new part time job tomorrow so will be working about 55 hours a week, my colleague in my main job's been off sick for two weeks so I've been doing her job too, which means no real lunch breaks to knit in- and now my evil cat Betty has slashed my left palm (well the ball of my thumb) deeply enough to make knitting painful. Not really her fault, her claws are really long and sharp, she got stuck in my jumper and panicked- and she REALLY doesn't like you touching her paws/legs. Ouch.

So I still have a load of Xmas decs to finish, also a labrador puppy for someone at work (the only pattern I could find was Alan Dart's and they need longer than a week in my experience, so I am making it up as I go along EEK!). Still got to Swiss darn the markings on to Binford the Cat, and haven't even started knitting ponies yet.

Still, this time last year I'd never have thought I'd still be knitting now- here's what I was making then:



These were some of my first knitted toys, really simple jelly babies. They ended up being included in a present for my friend's 40th birthday- as he lives in Florida the package didn't arrive until well after his birthday because I am really disorganised when it comes to posting stuff in time. He's a pilot so I also made this plane (couldn't find a pattern, so had to improvise)



Managed to get a total of 40 things for his 40th birthday- not all knitted- and the package cost an absolute fortune to post, but it was well worth it when I got his thankyou- he is a big kid and was especially pleased with the crocheted 'juggling boobs' which I won't post here as they were incredibly crap.

So anyway, going to try to knit tonight when my hand's hopefully not quite as sting-y, got stacks to do!