Christmas Knitting

I've got 2 things to knit for Christmas. I'm 2/3 of the way done with (fill in name of giftee here)'s (fill in name of project here). (Other giftee's name here) (other project here) will take about 4 days of easy knitting to make and hasn't been started yet. So, the logical, most stress free thing to do would be to knit on the Christmas projects, finish them up, then get distracted by my own stuff again and have more stuff on the needles. The problem with this is that anytime I am supposed to do something, I don't want to. It's a knee jerk reaction from childhood, but its still there. Also, knitting is supposed to be fun, not "have to." (Yeah, I know, I don't have to knit it, I could keep it for myself and send Amazon gift cards - HA HA!) So, I could probably finish the (first project name here) in just a couple of days if I work on it. That makes me feel happy and not so much like a slacker. It should give me inspiration to finish the project - but it doesn't. Last night I cast on for these:
These are the Child's French Sock from Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush, and despite the name, they are sized for a woman's foot. I think this is such a pretty sock! I'm knitting it in the undyed sock yarn from KnitPicks because I realized that my attempt to purge my sock drawer of all store bought socks would never work if I didn't have a couple of white socks. Those of you that have been wading through my endless drivel for a while, I mean, longtime blog readers, will notice that something crazy is going on here. Not only am I being a sock slacker, I'm knitting these from the top down! I've never knit a sock this direction. I'll tell you right now that a top down heel turn scares me. I plan to give it a try because so far the directions have been very thorough and I know that there are a lot of things that make sense when you have yarn and needles in your hand but won't make a bit of sense if you're reading with empty hands (try explaining how to make a knit stitch to someone who isn't holding yarn and needles if you don't believe me). If it doesn't work, I plan to cop out and do my standard short row heel turn because theoretically, it should work either way. Or so I think. Stay tuned - these might be really fancy hand warmers!