Take a Chill Pill, Man

Some days (weeks, months) you really just need to chill. Not only have I been struggling with this lately, but so have a striking number of my coworkers. So, I took a break from my Old Town this week to knit myself a Chill Pill.

I love him. He lives on the shelf above my guided reading table, looking all placid and content like I should. He’s also quite mashable, which helps me with the whole “placid and content” thing sometimes. My teammates love him too.

You know what really helped me “chill” this weekend though? It caught me by surprise what a difference it made, but Sunday evening the Husbeast and I spent an hour out in the hammock, watching the eclipse.

I felt like a new woman, after. Total peace.

Back to School

Well, teachers in my district are officially back to work. The kids will follow at the end of the month. Unfortunately, that means a serious blow to my energy levels and knitting time! On the other hand, I am excited as always about the new year and new kids. I’m trying something new and putting “15 minutes of knitting” on my daily to-do list, in the hopes that seeing it there will actually prompt me to do it. It would be nice to have that little bit of visible productivity and stress relief every day! What do you think? How to you make yourself make time when you’re busy?

I Survived!

It felt like a close call from time to time, but I managed to survive to Winter Break! Time to put up some decorations,

bake some cookies,

and finish some knitting.

Return to sanity: begin.

P.S. Because I know you’ll ask, the hat pattern is Kris Carlson’s Nubby.

One of Those Weeks

I have a new design I was hoping to finish knitting this week, but we’re giving the state reading test next week and I’ve been pretty darn zapped all week. Literally all I’ve been able to manage knitting is a few desperate rounds of the “comfort knitting” self-stripers.

And I do mean a few desperate rounds. Yes, that is not even an insole. And yes, that is still the first sock.

On the other hand, it is also Teacher Appreciation Week, and my students are adorable. My house is full of flowers.

Messy Stress Knitting

My life is the messy bit right now, between having surprise-hosted Easter yesterday, the exhausting family dramas that caused and resulted from surprise-hosting Easter yesterday, the surprise late frost last night (poor garden!), and a bit of serious yuck at work today. Unfortunately, the main knitting projects I have going right now are both my own design, and thus nowhere near mindless or comforting. What’s a stressed knitter to do?

Can you hear it? It says, “Christinaaaa…come and knit meeee!”

There’s a responsible part of me that doesn’t want to cast on yet another project, even if that awesome self-striping sock yarn in my stash is calling my name. There’s another part of me that knows if I don’t have something mindless to knit on at times like this, I won’t knit at all. Maybe spinning. That could be mindless and meditative. If the wool cooperates.

What’s your go-to stress craft?

Out Like a Lion

There’s an old saying (at least around here) that March comes “in like a lion, and out like a lamb”. This March certainly did come in like a lion, with its bitter cold and unseasonable snows, but it seems to be going out like a lion too. It is still colder than average, although thankfully it’s currently raining instead of snowing. The wind is howling too, and it supposed to keep up through tomorrow. It also hailed today.

It has rained and snowed so much in the last couple weeks that things are really starting to flood. I’m actually mildly concerned for the garden. It also means that the bits of my Flutter that are blocking are taking foreeeeeeever to dry. I had really hoped to have this stupid sweater put together and finished by now. Sigh.

Instead I’ve continued to work on my CustomFit sweater and do an absolutely ungodly amount of grading. It’s amazing how much grading there always is at the end of the quarter, as students turn in all the work they’ve neglected to turn in all marking period. Remember when late grades used to be a scary and embarrassing thing? Again, sigh.

I could really go for some springtime right now.

How Cold Is It?

It is cold enough that I have now begun double gloving

Pattern is Sleekit Mitts by Star Rabinowitz

and double socking under my boots, and I am still so cold it is physically painful during bus duty.

Just plain vanilla socks. No pattern.

I am so tired of this winter. I’m always tired of winter by this time of year but really, this particular one? With its endless wind and weeks at a time of 30 degrees below seasonable? This winter can go die in a fire.

Snow Days!

Monday was a national holiday, so I came home Friday all prepared for a 3 day weekend. It was actually quite restorative and definitely brought the fiber mojo back.  Then it snowed.

 

It started snowing early enough Tuesday to get school cancelled, and then it continued to snow. It snowed until after I went to bed, and just after lunch the wind also began to howl. It was enough that my darling husband, who never ever misses work, actually came home early. People up north will probably laugh at our definition of a major snow event (we got 8.5 inches here), but the county is pretty much shut down. Our Georgia-born puppy doesn’t seem to know she’s not supposed to like snow, but everyone else is staying inside.

 

It means I’ve gotten plenty of knitting done though. I finished up the body of Flutter, and started the first belled sleeve. I also started a test knit, got a couple pattern proposals going, and spun a bobbin’s worth on the wheel. The house is cleaner than it’s been in months. Tomorrow I might actually have to resort to doing some of the schoolwork I brought home.

Field Trip Knitting

Wow, this week blew by! I did indeed finish my Visiting Linda hat before the field trip.

 

I don’t like it on me as much as on the needles, but I think it will be very lovely on someone else. Someone’s getting lucky this Giftmas! So with that hat finished and no purse project, I rather shamelessly went back and bought another GAL pattern (the patterns are all still 25% off for a couple more days).

 

This one will be the Hatteras Hat, because apparently I’m on a hat kick. The hat and I (and the kids and chaperones) spent several hours on the bus together this morning before we toured Fort McHenry in Baltimore.

 

Then we meandered over to the Maryland Science Center for the better part of the day, where the teachers and I chatted and laughed about our ridiculously excited (and sometimes just ridiculous) students and I got a very little knitting done.

After that it was back on the bus for a nice long drive home! I hit a minor snag with it though – my size 6 circular needle is with a friend right now, and somehow I only have one size 6 circ. That will be remedied shortly. Until then it’s not like I don’t have any other knitting I could be doing!

Whoa

I wore my Brambleton socks to work yesterday, and for the first few hours of the day literally no one noticed, or at least said anything. Then “shared reading” (the new, testing-era term for story time) happened, and suddenly there were children sitting at my feet. They. Were. Fascinated.

“Miss, are those socks?! Whoooaaaa” came a dozen different voices. There’s nothing quite like the awe of an elementary schooler is there? Of course, then came an entire story time full of students petting me and tracing the cables on my socks. But petting the teacher (and each other, and their pencil toppers, and the carpet, and…) is a surprisingly common thing with young kids, so you learn to just carry on uninterrupted.

Amusingly I’ve gotten pretty similar reactions from a plethora of non-knitters about the current take-along WIP, my Mohair Cardigan. Pretty much every non-crafter who’s seen it has had a similar awe reaction to a small child – “Whoooaa, yarn can do that?”

They’re utterly enthralled by its fuzzy transparency and drape, and frequently follow their “whoa” with a story about Mom/Grandma’s scratchy sweaters with yarn from the local megastore, or perhaps a whispered, “Maybe I should learn to knit”. My answer to that comment, of course, is always a resounding yes. It’s nice to still be able to inspire people!