Shocking Realizations

I had a shocking realization today about midway through the "operations meetings" at work.  I have never, in my life, enjoyed a job...until now.  And I thoroughly enjoy my job.  I'm excited about the opportunities I see there...and while I'm "just pulling orders" right now, I'm fine with that.  I'm enjoying the sense of accomplishment when I find a skein of yarn that has somehow jumped boxes...and that I know where to look.  That when I go into the retail portion I get to see what people are working on and help some out if necessary.

IT'S SO COOL!  I love being part of this group of people who work with such enthusiasm and passion.  Who actually stay on task, are pleasant, and are extremely helpful to us New Beans.

It is beyond amazing to be excited about working, not caring about when I get to go home, and just simply being in the moment.

I'm very very lucky indeed.

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Because Pearl always gets the limelight for being so darn cute, I'm going to switch things up a little and show you Zora in a box.  Cat in a box...can't get much cuter than that! (especially when she's a calico!)

Defining Moments

I think most people would agree that life is made up of moments...defining moments to be more exact...that completely change the trajectory of where we are going and what we are doing.  These moments are those that when we look back on them (hopefully at the ripe age of 90) that we see truly were momentous, of note, defining who we became later.

Getting married, finding our major, seeing the Eiffel Tower, having kids, (I assume having grandkids, retiring), moving to a new location, getting your first job.

All of these moments build character and require of the person that they dig deep and learn who they are and respond accordingly.  Our energies devoted to these things, though they are big and character building, are typically very positive.  We see them as "opportunities" not "tragedies" and usually we are happy to talk about them to our friends and family and (sometimes) inflate our role in making and urging these things to come about.

Sometimes our defining moments aren't positive, though.  I know that for me one of my big defining moments was when I was in high school and my boyfriend was severely injured in a car accident.  If I try, I can go back to that time and see and feel and hear and smell what was going on around me because getting the news was so big and completely changed the course of where I was planning to go with my life.

As I was waking up this morning I realized that what I've been thinking of as another "defining moment" (the divorce) is really not THE defining moment in all of this.  MY defining moment (and the use of MY is deliberate) is that moment when I decided to inquire about employment at Jimmy Beans Wool.  In deciding to face reality (i.e. I couldn't change his mind) I needed to live the life I want to live, and that involved starting to find employment in the industry where I want to work.

The details of "will I have enough money to live on" and "how will I get there" are just details.  Things to figure out and to do.  But they aren't the defining moment in all of this.  Realizing that the strength and power of ME was there and that I needed to tap into it is the moment defining who I am and who I will become on the other side of this.  It is why my friends are saying to me "you're so brave" and "you're doing so well"...

Don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of fear and pain and sadness going on and sometimes those emotions can almost overwhelm me.  And that's when I have to remind myself that I'm in the process of defining ME and that in doing so the ME that gets defined will truly be someone I can love and be happy with.

And that's really quite important in the grand scheme of things--loving and being happy with who you are.  Definition indeed!

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Pearl helped me get my yarn boxed up.

Y'all...I'm singing...

I can tell I'm getting happier and less stressed by the day.  Today on the way to work, I cranked up the radio and sang loud...at one point I stopped and said, "when was the last time you did that?"

And I don't know.

Clearly things here had gotten to me deeper than I realized.  Just as I wrote about yesterday, it's the little things that make you realize just where you are and what you're doing...that whole gaining perspective thing that's so difficult when you're bogged down in the middle and don't know where the end is anymore.

Things for me had gotten to the point that I didn't have enough time between work days to destress and put it aside and enjoy myself.

I didn't sing. or play piano.  or laugh nearly enough.

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One of the things I'm definitely looking forward to about my working from home will be this...sweet kitty time!

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Daddy's story:  As I mentioned he really loved the weather and would pay attention and store away weather conditions for people wherever they lived.  He'd look up the weather in Austin, Houston, and even where I lived.  If you went on vacation, he'd hunt up weather information on your vacation destination as well.  How I would love to tell him that the past few weeks in London has been in the mid-70s for highs and sunny...he'd be so jealous he might even consider getting on the plane with us...but nah...he wouldn't do that.

More and more grannies

Definitely obsessed.  I could hardly wait to get home from dinner with our friends last night to get back to work on my grannies...and then I stayed up until almost 11, which is way past my normal bedtime these days.  And when I woke up at 4 to go to the bathroom, I almost considered going ahead and getting up because I'd have all that extra granny time, but remembered that I have to drive to work AND sit here all day (and they kind of like me awake at work) so I went back to sleep and held myself off.

I'm working from Leisure Arts book 99 Granny Squares to Crochet.  If I love a pattern I'll make several until I'm bored and then put a heart next to it so I can come back to it later.  If I like one, I'll put a check by it.  If I didn't like it at all for whatever reason, I'll put an X by it.  I'm on square 7 today :)

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This morning when I went in to make sure all cats were out of my bedroom, I found this.

 I think sweet Pearl wants to make sure I don't leave her again.

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Daddy's Story:  Despite the fact that Daddy couldn't sing well, he did sing all the time.  I really think he loved listening to music, and the music got in his head because you could say something funny and he would pop out a few lines from a song.  The tone didn't always make sense but the rhythm did.  Two songs I remember him singing were "Trailers for sale or rent/ rooms to let...50 cents" and "Don't nobody love me but my mama" (Original BB lyrics are "mother" not "mama"...but he had that "not my mama" phrase down perfect.  The funny thing is I didn't know that the BB song was actually a song until I heard it traveling out to visit last year when we bought our BB Greatest Hits.  The cut on that album is a live version and the quality isn't great.  As David and I were talking, I heard "but my mother."  And I said, WAIT!  Then rewinded the song and listened to it.  How incredibly funny it was to me that day to realize that Daddy listened to the blues!

Major Life Events

I've been going through some pretty serious major life events lately.  Normally, with each one I would be excited (well the good ones, anyway), and dive in and appreciate it all to the fullest...but seriously...it's been a lot to put together in my mind all at once.

This weekend, Elizabeth graduated college.  Both of my girls are now college graduates and should be working on their master's degrees next semester (Alyssa started hers this semester).  Meanwhile in TWO days we are moving them to Orlando to begin the next awesome phase of their lives.

And it IS exciting, but what am I doing to cope?  Crocheting and Needlepointing until my hands and fingers and back and neck hurt!  It's like I get excited thinking about it and have to take that energy and make something with it.

So far I've crocheted a lot of bath cloths.  I LOVE using these little cloths instead of the store-bought kind.  So much cushionier and softer and better in so many ways.  Plus the bath cloths are an awesome opportunity to see how the yarn likes a certain stitch (or how I like a certain stitch) and whether I think it'll blow up well.  If I think it'll look good on a larger scale I'm making it as part of the bath mats I'm making for the girls' new apartment.  So far, I'm on the border of Elizabeth's first one and have ideas ruminating for Alyssa's first one, which I'll start once the border on Liz's is done...patience I tell my creative self...patience.

Highlights of the weekend:

Elizabeth in her finery with the rest of us hangers on:

Painting with a Twist as a family group:

And while not a highlight of the weekend, it was fun watching Pearl help me pay the bills:

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Daddy's Story:  I remember my daddy waking me up every single morning.  Now, I feel sorry for him that he had that duty...I have always been difficult to get moving in the morning and am cranky about it to boot.  I know that after a while Daddy decided it was safest to just turn on the light in my room and make noise, but that didn't work very well.  In his typical good humored way he would open the door, turn on the lights and start singing to me (he couldn't sing.  At. all...it was miserable).  He would sing, "Get out of that bed and wash your face and hands...toodaloodleloodaloo"  The tooda...was accompanied by turning the light switch on and off and on and off in "time" to the singing.

When I got my first iPhone, I looked for the appropriate sounding alarm to wake myself up to...that sounded similar enough to the tooda...I chose the "Trill" and titled the alarm "get out of that bed."  I wake up laughing about that now (still not easy to get out of bed) but at least I can see the humor in it all...when I was 16 not so much.

Little "gifts"

So, my husband came home from his most recent trip with a little cold which he has now given to me...just in time for my mom and her aunt to come visit for Elizabeth's graduation.  He promises I'll feel better in 3 days...hmmm...

I didn't crochet much last night.  I still haven't tidied my house for our company.  The picture for today is a kitty cat picture because Pearl just makes me laugh so much and I need a good laugh.

She was "getting" me through the slats in our rocking chair.  She's just a nut...that's all.

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Daddy's story:  When I graduated from high school my dad said I was going around saying "Free at last, free at last!  Thank God Almighty I'm free at last!"  (and I was, but I didn't want he and mom to KNOW that).

Anyway, anytime else that we moved on to a new thing in life he would say "Free at last, free at last!"

I know he's singing it for Elizabeth this weekend.

Carrying on

My father passed away on Tuesday of last week; we buried him on Thursday.  It's been a very difficult week...one that as I think back on it feels more like a month.  But it was only a week...and a very difficult one at that, as I said.

At the memorial service on Thursday people offered condolences and I remember saying "I don't know how we'll carry on without Daddy."  It's still difficult to understand, but I know we will because other people have.  It'll be hard, but it'll happen.

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And in the spirit of carrying on, I had to "rescue" a skein of yarn last night.  The kitties don't always have full access to my studio.  They like to sleep in the baskets of yarn and I don't like knitting with kitty hair flying in my face.

But yesterday, the level of activity with the yarn went to a different character...it became mean.  One of the little furry critters went in there and mutilated a brand new skein of my Cephalopod yarn:

If you're counting, that's 29 separate balls of yarn I wound off this morning.  29!  Whichever one it was (I suspect Zora because Pearl's level of play is less destructive, but I could be wrong) decided to kill this skein of yarn and did a pretty good job at it.

I'm going to make a scarf out of it.  There are still too many weak spots in the longer strands of yarn to use the yarn as warp, so it'll be weft yarn only with a lovely maroon cotton for the warp.  Or maybe green.  Haven't decided yet.

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Daddy's Story:  One of the things my daddy always did was take some silly thing we said as children and tell it back to us over and over and over again.  When I was younger he told me about being found under the telephone pole and that I was naked in that princess telephone box.  I told him "uh-uh...I was born with a diaper on."  And for the rest of his life, he told me that I was born with a diaper on...unlike every other kid in the world!

Inspiration

I'm not sure where you seek your inspiration.  Magazines, books, nature, the weather...the yarn itself...other knitters...

I tend to be inspired by geometric patterns.  I'm strongly attracted to the modern clean lines of art-deco and cubist art.  I like images that suggest rather than represent...though I'm always impressed when people can represent something.

For my home, I want furniture that is sturdy, well-made and comfortable.

I also love color and am inspired by color.  Sometimes that simply from looking outside and seeing a gorgeous blue sky...and sometimes it's by looking in the basket as I pass by the door of my studio and the yarn pops out.

I've only been knitting since June 2011, so I still feel very new and "beginnery" in a way.  I don't know all the kinds of yarn I like knitting or the kinds of projects, so am still discovering things to look at and try and experiment with.

One thing that has captivated me recently has been home decor.  I want to make pillows and afghans and upholstery.  I want to have towels and dish cloths and area rugs.  And I want all of them to be made by my hands--either through my loom of my knitting needles.

Since I still haven't gotten onto my loom (I'm really hoping this summer will afford me opportunities since I'll have Fridays off again), all of the ideas are going right onto my knitting needles.

And this weekend I had a yarn scream at me to be knitted.  It's been hiding in the back basket under one of the shelves in my studio so I don't know how I remembered that it was there, but it and its mate hollered at me when I went into hang some clothes to dry and low-and-behold it was cast onto my needles and a giant pink fluffy mitered square was born.  Behold, Pearl even wanted to eat it.

I still don't know where this square is going after I've finished it.  It will depend largely on how much of this skein I use in making this square.  I have another skein that I can use to make another square or to finish this one off depending on how things go.  I've pulled some crazy yarns from my stash and will use them to finish off a blanket, or a pillow, or a rug or something.  But for now it's coming along as a lovely mitered square and I'm really enjoying the knitting of it.

Kitten Adorableness

On this Monday, I thought I'd share some of the kitty adorableness that happened over the weekend.

Pearl hiding in a bag.

Zora showing me just how hungry she is.

And the two cuddled up having a nap.

(this pic gives a good size comparison between the two, too...that Pearl is practically laying on top of Zora should say something!)

Happy Things in Life

When times are difficult I try to focus myself on the positive things.  The happy things.  The things in life that make it worth grabbing ahold of and keep going.

Crafting definitely does that for me.  Without it I'd be bonkers, nuts and potentially dangerous to other people.

My family and friend relationships are also important to me...

You know what else?  The thing that will make me smile every time?  The cats.  I love having pets and missed them the few years that it wasn't safe to have cats around the babies...(for the cats, not the babies, please don't think I didn't have cats because I was fearful of what they'd do to my girls...they could definitely fend for themselves).

I've had some very special cats throughout my lifetime.  Oliver was sweet and funny and it was very sad when he passed away.  Lochi was my "baby" and sat with me and snuggled all the time.  She was the ultimate lap-cat.

But when I got Pearl, I knew I'd stumbled onto a special animal.  She's hilarious, vivacious, sweet, snuggly and just about the most interesting cat I've ever know.

Not only does she fetch (which is beyond charming in a cat) but I swear she understands what I'm saying and responds appropriately.  We have a ritual in the mornings where she gets on the table that has the drawers with her toys in it, she looks at me and I open a drawer, she picks out her toy and I throw it and she runs after it and we have a grand old time waking up in the mornings.

But today...this is what I found...

Three...three...glittery fuzzy balls (they are her favorites).  I usually try to pick them up when we're done playing because they have a nasty habit of getting under the stove or the refrigerator...but if I don't, she will put them in her food bowl.  Apparently she went hunting last night.

And apparently Zora doesn't like the balls in her bowl because she has knocked the food all over the floor.

They are definitely good therapy those kitties!

The difference a stitch makes

A couple of posts ago (on Saturday) I decided to leave off one sock project for another.  I was making a gorgeous "Celebrate Spring" sock that had a pretty chevron lace type pattern that required a double decrease.  I have a tetchy relationship with lace...it's gorgeous, I love it, I want it, but I don't always like knitting it.

I find that when knitting lace I have to concentrate, which isn't always a bad thing, but lately concentration isn't easy to come by.  With the Celebrate Spring socks, concentration wasn't the issue.  I was easily able to get into a rhythm with the pattern...or the stitches that I needed to do...the executing of the stitches was something else.

And it's funny because I was doing the exact same double decrease on a shawl at the same time I was doing the double decrease on the sock, but the sock just didn't feel right.

So, I put the sock down, as I mentioned at the end of last week, thought on it over night, and then ripped it out Saturday morning to cast on for a new pattern.  I'm now doing Elm by Cookie A and my what a difference a pattern makes.

And it's funny because:

• I really dislike purling through the back loop
• I have to concentrate on the pattern every other round, just like I would with a lace pattern
• I absolutely adore knitting this sock.

I wish I could make sense of what it is I like about this sock, even though there are some stitches that I don't like, and what I disliked about the Celebrate Spring sock because I would like to be able to better choose patterns that are going to get along with me.  I want to know before I get started that I'm going to be able to finish a pattern...not that I'm going to be avoiding it because I'm frustrated with one little bit of it or another.

Maybe I just need to get over the concept that not finishing a project and deciding to rip it out is part of the process of knitting...that it's ok because the yarn is still usable and pretty and the finished result is going to be wonderful and nice.  But it's so hard when I feel like I've wasted time on a project that didn't get finished...I need to learn to redefine that "wasting"...

Today's picture is of the kitties sun bathing a couple of days ago.  We had a brief day of sunshine--it's rainy and cloudy again today--but on Saturday it was glorious!

High Efficiency Knitting

Ellen commented on Wednesday how I knit so quickly and am cranking things out.  Thanks Ellen.  I never really thought of myself as a "quick knitter..."...

Because I'm really not unless I'm doing straight-forward knitting (either garter stitch or stockinette in the round).  And then I think I'm pretty fast.  I get into a sort of Zen state and just fly.  I think it may be one of the reasons that I don't like making scarves very much.  Even if the pattern is simple, I have to stop, turn, reposition the yarn in my hand, get my needles situated and start the new row until I get to the end of it and then start that whole process over again.

And this brings me to my point of high efficiency knitting, because there are some things about knitting that I'm not very efficient about and others that I am very efficient about, and I wanted to discuss those today.

Not efficient:

• I "throw" the yarn with my right hand.  I don't even position the yarn so that I can keep my hands on the needles at all times.  I sort of grab it with every stitch.  What I find about knitting this way (besides it's what just feels natural to me) is that I get really good tension.  Anything else is simply too loose.
• I have attempted to hold my yarn in my left hand, and even decided to have a practice swatch to work on so that I could improve this skill.  It just doesn't work for me.  I've tried holding the yarn in my right hand with the yarn draped over my finger so that I can keep my hands on the needles.  All are awkward and result in uneven or very loose tension.  Perhaps I could improve over time, but why would I?  What I'm doing works for me and I don't see that the benefits of changing the way I hold the yarn will do much--because then I would HAVE to swatch and I hate the thought of swatching.
• I get bored easily.  I'm kind of in this weird place right now where I don't have something that's pulling on me so I'm knitting just to knit.  Which I find a little boring, but that's ok.  I've had 4 super-wonderful projects in a row and I think I'm mentally tapped right now.  An easy hat, some plain old socks, my mitered square blanket.  All those will pull me out of the boredom and into something else very exciting.
• I don't let deadlines bother me.  I have learned over the many years of my life to not let stress come into my life unless I can't help it.  Knitting is NOT something to stress over.  Ever. I love making things for people, and apparently they love getting them because they keep asking me, but I cannot and will not let my crafting time become stressful.  Right now I'm feeling like a duck out of water in my professional life, and knitting is the one thing that makes me very happy...I couldn't spoil that by forcing a deadline on myself.  Not gonna happen.
• I have no idea how long something will take to knit.  Along a similar vein, I am still so new to knitting that I can't figure out how long a project will take, so I usually plunge in with my eyes wide open and my brain wide shut and get to going until I get bogged down.  I'm learning, but it's slow...lots of "experiences" to get through to have enough data to start figuring these things out.

Efficient:

• If I'm sitting, I'm knitting.  This is in a car (not driving), during lunch, watching TV, hanging out with the family.
• I try to work smart.  The Dragonfly Cowl taught me important lessons about complicated color-work.  For instance, big charts don't have to be scary.  They are, after all, one stitch at a time.  I have to figure out 1) how many different stitches I can memorize short-term in the pattern (4 seems to be my happy number) and 2) how to mark them off when I'm finished.  Other thoughts...if there are charts...make lots of copies of the charts.  However many pattern repeats you need:  that's how many charts you need.  This way there's no second guessing when you get back to it (sometimes months later).
• I don't make a lot of mistakes and when I do, I usually just "go with it."  You won't find me unknitting rows of lace because I forgot a yarn over.  I'll correct it as soon a I figure it out and then move on.  Sometimes I put the item aside for a while until I can feel comfortable, but mostly I just deal with the fact that there's a little error in the sock.  The Possibly Maybe socks are absolutely stunning and I'm super proud of them, but they have lots of mistakes.  And I don't even know where or what they are anymore and I'm less than a month from finishing them.
• I'm willing to dump a project.  If something doesn't make me happy, I'm not going to knit on it.  I have to be happy with my knitting.  Sometimes the project makes me unhappy right now but I know that it's a life circumstance that's making it difficult to work on so I'll put it aside (again, important lesson from the Dragonfly Cowl).  When I pull it out, if it isn't singing to me again, then it gets ripped out. Knitting is so wonderful that way.  Even after the yarn has become something it can be ripped out and become something new someday.  And honestly, life is WAY too short to knit on things that make you stressed or unhappy or frustrated.  Plain. and. simple.
• I have lots and lots of yarn.  My stash is so big it has its own room.  It shares its room with a loom and all the other paraphernalia needed for weaving (which, unfortunately I haven't done in a long time).  But, when I first started weaving, and knitting, I got so excited about all the things I was going to make that I ended up buying lots and lots and lots of yarn.  I still buy yarn.  I can't seem to help myself.  But...this is wonderful because my creative impulses aren't stymied by not having the yarn I need to cast on and get going on a project--that I may or may not hate in the end.  I learn a lot about yarn in the process--what substitutes well and what doesn't and why not.  I spend a lot of time looking through patterns and trying to make decisions about which one is right for the yarn I have (I LOVE Ravelry for this very reason alone).

Either? Both?

• I have about 20 projects on the go.  This can be inefficient in that things never seem to get finished...and yet, getting bits of work on something each day (or in spurts, which is how I tend to work) ...things get done.
• Crafting is my therapy.  Whatever craft I'm into at the time...it's my therapy.  As I'm going through what I think is the beginning of a mid-life crisis, I'm figuring out that my personality doesn't fit well into a bureaucracy.  Working from home, though...that's scary, a-social, and financially difficult (and I've done it before and had problems so it's even scarier).  So, I craft as my therapy to make the rest of my life something I can get through.  (please don't read this as me being unhappy.  I love my life...and I'm generally a happy person, but in large part because I make pretty things.)

I hope some of these thoughts can help you become more efficient--or inefficient--with your knitting. Mostly I hope that you make sure to ENJOY your knitting every single day.  While learning can be difficult and sometimes put us in places where we're uncomfortable...it can make things for us very happy and wonderful too.  Working in education all my life, seeing the moment when the "lightbulb" goes off is so inspiring and wonderful.

And I do hope that you get to enjoy knitting every day.  Because doing something just for you each and every day is the thing that makes our lives worth living!

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My picture for today is of Pearl...sleeping with pure abandon this weekend.  Getting to touch that fluffy tummy even for a minute is truly special!  I hope that I have a good bit of that tummy loving during my spring break coming up!

I spy...

...a long weekend coming up.  I'm taking off Monday and we have Tuesday off because of Mardi Gras...so that means that I have 4 days of knitting and sleeping and playing with kitties coming up and I'm very happy about that.

It's been a rough couple of weeks.  I really don't know why.  I think I may be having a mid-life crisis.  I don't want to buy a red sports car; instead, I want to quit work and go to art school.  I even went so far to look at programs on line and I'm fascinated by a few.

If only I didn't need to pay bills.

Oh well.

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Here's a funny.  Elizabeth was cleaning house yesterday and concerned because the kitties didn't come to greet her as usual.  She hunted for them all over the house thinking that they may have gone into one of the closets.  She found them here.  In David's bed.  In-between two quilts.

Weathering the storm

Loyal readers know that there was a tornado that hit our house a little over a year ago.  I have to say that it was the single most terrifying event of my life.  I still can't stand to be in a thunderstorm.  I understand Pearl's desire to hide under the coffee table all scrunched up and hope it ends soon.

We had a bad storm last night.  And I was terrified, sick at my stomach and could hardly sit still and get anything done.

To make matters worse there were tornadoes associated with this event and since that was the case and since the safety of some of the viewers was more important than their coping strategies of distraction or denial, they muted the Olympics, put the visual in the upper right part of the screen and talked us through the entire 3 hours of this storm event.

I was home alone.

And really I just wanted to cry.  I kept thinking "if we get hit, I'm not going to go through the trauma of fixing this house again."  I'm not sure what I could have done about it but I would not have fixed it.  That ordeal may have been worse than the tornado.

Not really, but it WAS pretty bad.

In case you're wondering this is how Zora spent the storm.  It should have made me feel somewhat relieved to know she wasn't cowering under the furniture, but when the tornado hit last year, she was just happy that the other two cats had abandoned their food bowl so that she could eat them all.  I think she looked up once, the dork.

At any rate, I made some progress on my sock and I found something out:

Knitting monsters really does hurt my hands.  I don't know why.  It doesn't feel any different than, say, knitting a sock, while I'm doing it, but there's something about it and my right hand is really sore today.  I was working on double point needles with a fuzzy yarn (IF I can manage to finish this one it's going to be hilariously cute)...but ouchy on my hands today.  I'll have to leave off working on it until my hand feels better, which means, of course, that I likely won't be able to get through all of them before the end of the term.  We shall see.  It kind of makes me sad.

Exercise

I hate exercise.  I don't know why, exactly, but I've hated it ever since I can remember.

About the only exercise I've ever enjoyed for any length of time is dancing and yoga.

And after losing all this weight I KNOW I need to exercise, on a regular basis...but man...I really don't want to.

Part of the problem is finding the time.  I decided I would do it when I got home from work while David was cooking dinner, but that didn't work.  I came home and put on my pjs, because that seemed like the thing to do.

Then I thought I'd get up at 5am, drink some coffee, exercise for 30 minutes and then get ready for work., but that didn't work either.  I should have known it wouldn't.

Then after much thought and wrangling with myself, I asked what my goals for exercise were and why I felt that I need to do it.  Here's what I came up with:

1. overall good health
2. toning--I've lost all this weight, being tighter would be nice
3. being able to travel and walk without discomfort or weariness

And that was really it.  I don't have any aspirations to run marathons, 10Ks or even 5Ks.  I don't want to look like a model, nor do I care to join a gym or exercise socially.  When it all comes down to it what I want is to be able to travel, see things and not feel limited by the physical condition of my body.

That accomplished I took a little advice from Dr. Phil and decided that I needed to make a rule that would force me to exercise.  I decided that I would not be able to put on my pjs and knit until AFTER I'd exercised.  That means that when I come home from work, I change into my exercise clothes, eat supper, clean the kitchen and then exercise.  

It's worked for 3 days in a row now, and I have to say that mentally I'm "getting this."

I'm doing 2 days a week of yoga, 2 days a week on our elliptical and if the weather holds out on the weekend David and I will go for a walk.  I'm good with this for now.  I'm enjoying the fact that since I'm having my shower at night, I can spend my first 30 minutes awake sipping coffee, catching up on e-mail and facebook and playing some games...

I'm optimistic this might work.

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Of course this does mean an hour less of knitting each night, but I look at it this way.  I'll live longer, so it's an investment in my future knitting possibilities.  I can handle that.

And Pearl told me last night that she's very proud of me.

Yarn Club #2: Beautiful

Ok...Cookie A has astounded me.  Her patterns are beautiful and encourage such a confidence in my knitting abilities.  I no longer feel like a beginner who can read a pattern and make things look nice but an intermediate knitter who can follow a pattern intuitively and make something beautiful.

If you're in the Cookie A club and haven't gotten your yarn yet and haven't looked at the pattern yet, look away...read this post after you've received your goods because spoilers abound.

Need proof?

I started the cuff night before last.  I just needed to get the project on my needles.  Feel the yarn, work through the easy part and build my confidence for tackling what looks like a pretty complicated pattern.  Pearl loved my work almost enough to eat the needles.  I had to convince her that it was a bad idea to eat knitting needles but she didn't believe me.

Last night I worked farther on the sock.  I was having the best time until I realized that I'd read the pattern slightly wrong.  Nothing major, I was just doing my decreases slanting in the wrong direction.  I did this for 3 rows before I realized it, but I was proud that I could look at the way the knitting was going and realize it.  I decided not to go back and enjoy the "wabisabi" of the mistake...it's not huge enough to notice, and certainly not huge enough to go back 6 whole rounds to fix (6 because there are "plain rounds" inbetween  "Pattern" rounds).

Anyway, at one point I see a black arm dash out from under the chair and looked down and saw this.  She didn't know I was watching her too:

That cat is just so freaking adorable.

I made it this far before calling it quits.  Beauty.  I could have knitted all night just watching the pattern unfold, holding onto this gorgeous yarn.

Yarn:  Plucky Knitter fingering, Colorway "Going Steady"...exclusive for Cookie A February 2014 club
Pattern:  Possibly Maybe by Cookie A, exclusive for Cookie A February 2014 club

Yarn Clubs

This year I am "doing" 4 yarn clubs.  2 are ones that I did last year:  Rockin'Sock Club from Blue Moon Fiber Arts and the Vesper Sock Club from Knitterly Things.

I have made several pairs of my Vesper socks, but saw last week that I have about 9 balls of yarn that will need to be made up into something luscious and wonderful.  I love my Vesper sock yarn.  They are all striping and while I feel like I have enough striped socks, I find myself casting on a pair as soon as I finish another one.  They make up into amazing socks that have worn well.  The colors stay true, the yarn doesn't fuzz or felt or otherwise wear out.  Really very lovely.

Rockin'Socks?  Well, I have only completed 3 projects from the RSC.  The first was a pair of purple socks.  Cables...and my first attempt at cables.  I made a few mistakes, but generally I love those socks.  My one complaint is that the dye wasn't set well and the purple bled and bled and before I realized I needed to put them in some vinegar water for a bit and the bleeding has stopped...but not before it lost a lot of its color.  The other project I finished is a gorgeous shawl that I love love love.  The 3rd was a colorwork hat that I made in April last year while living at the apartment.  The hat was gorgeous but too small for my head, so it now belongs to the daughters. I have only had one month's pattern/yarn combo that I wasn't crazy about but the rest have been wonderful....Still...I want to make them all and will do something different with that yarn with the chicken pattern.

The new clubs?  Club Dragonfly (which I got a couple of weeks ago and showed you the pic of the lime green and purple cowl with dragonfly colorwork) and Cookie A sock club.  I'm very excited about these.

And you know what's even more exciting?  That 3 of these yarns are supposed to arrive today! yea!

So, all weekend, Pearl was adorable.  More so yesterday than usual.  This, is pretty much what she did all day.

And, in case you're wondering, she is NOT inviting tummy rubs...unless you enjoy getting your arm and hand chewed off.

I'm hoping to have a pair of socks to show off in a couple of days.  Stay tuned.

Well..it didn't really snow

Worse...it was sleet, freezing rain, a little snow, and a lot of ice.  My driveway is one solid sheet right now.

While it looks pretty is really pretty awful to get out and about in.  We don't have proper de-icing anything in the south.  They throw sand on bridges and wait for people to fly off of them....then put more sand on and tell people to stay home.

Day 2 and I'm still knitting.  I'm at the point in the cowl where I can manage 3 rounds as long as no one is trying to talk to me, and then I get a little cranky.  I'm almost finished with my Bertie Bott's socks--second one...will post the pair tomorrow.  Fun, these are.  After I finish Bertie, I'm thinking another pair of socks need to be cast on.  I want all those "in progress" projects to be finished.  Somehow a skein of yarn that's been caked and is sitting in a bag waiting to be knitted counts as "in progress"...and more urgently so than the other projects that really are in various states of progress.

And if you're curious how I knit while sitting in my cold house on a cold icy day, here is my view...cat butts.

We got a snow-storm a-coming

That's big news around here.  The last time I saw it snow was probably December 2011...maybe 2010?  I can't remember actually.  It was December and David was on the coast and I went outside and took pics of snow on the palm tree.

I'll never get that picture again "thanks" to the tornado, oh well.  I'll be sure to post pics when I do get them though...they think the business will start in earnest tomorrow morning.  I'm actually kind of excited.

(and those of you who knew me when I lived in Kentucky know this isn't normal for me...to be excited about snow...)

I did spend a good bit of the weekend working on my Dragonfly Cowl. I'm laughing at my overly optimistic self of last week that thought I'd finish it on Sunday.  ha!

Colorwork is slow going.  Even if I could knit with two hands, and I can't, I'd have to keep rechecking my pattern...and I'm no good if I have to carry on a conversation while doing it...or listen to a book...or watch tv.  Or even be distracted by Pearl.  I did mention concern that I might not finish because of past mishaps...and not wanting to be stressed or frustrated...

Well, I did make it just shy of half-way.

You can see the bottoms of the wings taking shape.  I do love the look of this yarn. It's so pretty and rich and very soft.  And of course, it's all kind of gorgeous  knitted up like this.  I will persevere and finish...I do know that.  This is definitely what the yarn should be.  A beautiful cowl in dragonflies.

In order to help myself get through the pattern, I decided that I needed to call upon a strategy that I used back when I used to cross stitch.  I'd keep my place in the pattern by marking out the pieces that I'd finished.  I used to be creative and get different colored pencils each day so that the final pattern had a unique look to it too.  What i decided to do with the knitted version is mark in the white squares with the blue pencil on my first pass through the repeat and then red on my second.  It has allowed me to keep track of where I am, get back to it if I have to take a quick break, AND provide a really quick realization when I'm on the wrong row (which did happen).

After this point, I also decided that marking the numbers along the side will help me keep myself on track and make sure that I'm going back to or up on row when needed.

And because I know everyone wants to see the inside of the colorwork...here it is.

I'm working really hard to keep my tension even, but I'm not perfect at it.  I'm also working really hard and making sure that my purple yarn goes to the left when I'm finished knitting with it and the green to the right.  This way I keep them from getting tangled and making a miserable mess of my yarn ends.

And because it's really hard to resist...here is Pearl trying to distract me.  She's very good at distraction, in case you're wondering.

Color therapy

This weekend I went to see my parents.  It's a 9 hour drive each way.  While it doesn't seem like it should be, riding in a car is exhausting.  Even when the weather is gorgeous and you have your sweetheart driving you all the way.

I was trying to put a positive spin on things by acknowledging that I had 18 hours of knitting time.  I didn't think about my 6am departure as actually taking away from that knitting time...nor really the fact that on our return trip I would lose knitting time at the end of the day.  But it was a good 14 hours of knitting (or knitting related activity) time.

SO, my car knitting...therapy knitting...comfort knitting...whatever you'd like to call it is this blanket from the Berroco Comfort Afghans.  The pattern is called Autumn Haze, and while I'm not using Comfort yarns, I do find the knitting of this blanket to be very comforting indeed. You'll also notice that I'm not using autumn colors, but I've mentioned that before.

This photo shows the blanket 1/3 finished.  That's one full pattern repeat.  I've decided to reassign colors to the "letters" in the pattern to create a more random and overall colorful effect.  I'm now about 1/2 finished (expect to be tonight if I feel like working on it).

The yarns I'm using are a mix of things from my stash--some Malabrigo Worsted (the delicious purple on the end, pink and turquoise solids).  There's a fun alpaca tweed in a lighter turquoise--can't remember the yarn brand or company.  I'm using some Cascade 220 (light purple) and Knit Picks Swish worsted (the variegated purple and pink).  I love the colors in this afghan, I love the knitting of this afghan (even the slip-stitch color work is gorgeous and interesting) and I love the textural interplay between all the different yarns.  The plump Malabrigo next to the springy Knit-Picks and the slick Alpaca.  It's just gorgeous in so many ways.  And total color therapy.  It's very difficult to dwell on sad or depressing things with all that color and lovely yarn in my hands.

On the way out, though, I almost hit a road block though.  I ran out of the ball of turquoise I was using and needed to wind off a hank of yarn...I usually do this with my swift or David, but David was driving, so I had to improvise.  Thankfully I've lost a lot of weight and am more flexible so was able to get the hank of yarn around my legs and wound it off by going under my legs about 100 times.  See I got exercise too.  Need proof?

Lastly, yesterday I took the day off to recuperate.  I knitted on the Purple Blanket and rested and thoroughly enjoyed myself.  At some point I decided that it was time to examine the stash and see what I could get out of it to make Alyssa's afghan. (I'm sure this is the case when having 2 children, but it's more so when having twins...if I commit to making one thing for one, I MUST make something for the other immediately, sometimes simultaneously...)  In the interest of stash reduction, I wanted to make this happen as much as I could from the stash, but in conversation with David we decided that if I HAD to buy some yarn to flesh out a project that it wasn't a bad thing...as long as the net income of yarn was less that the outflow.

SO, I went into the studio, dug through my wool basket, my alpaca basket, my basket with yarns set aside for other projects long-since forgotten...and I even raided the sock yarn baskets.  (I had put a few skeins of worsted in their with the intention of making some thick socks for around the house).  I came up with the yarns below:

I had intended Alyssa's afghan to be much more green, but what happened is the rose colors really came through...and blues and greens...and some gold, oranges and browns.  And they all look perfectly lovely together.

And yes, that's a calico cat in there.  She totally loved all the yarn in the floor and I had to put everything away to keep her from "cleaning" the babies I'd left her.