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 Do, In Fact, Have Internet

Hi all. It occurs to me I haven’t updated in…2 weeks? I’m still here, but we had an unexpected death in the family and we’ve all been scrambling to stay afloat, so the blog has kind of fallen by the wayside. Hopefully next week I’ll get up a proper post, but in the mean time here are a couple quick and dirty photos of the Flaming June sweater. It’s been done for ages but I somehow never managed to post photos or mark in done on Ravelry!

Happy Halloween!

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?

Not Quite Dead

But maybe nearly so. Life has been mostly a matter of keeping my head above water in recent weeks, and spending all my time and emotional energy on that means there hasn’t been much time for blogging or knitting. I will keep trying to get regular posts out, but we’ll see. My apologies if you’re missing me! I did manage to get some swatches off to a yarn company this week, which has been a big project I couldn’t share. It really wasn’t until today that I’ve had the energy to do anything that wasn’t an absolute, time-sensitive obligation though. I picked up the last sleeve of Flutter again after what feels like a million years, and am pretty sure I’m going to run out of yarn.

I can’t decide if I want to go ahead and order the new skein now or wait til I actually run out in case this skein winds up as miraculously endless as the Coldwater Springs yarn. With my inability to make decisions in any form recently, it’ll probably wind up being the latter. Speaking of the rainbow stripes though, my scarf/cowl is flying along nicely and the skein of yarn shows no signs of running out.

 

The last bit of knitting news I have is really more of a decision I want your help making. I have a sweater pattern which should be back from the tech editor and ready to go in the next week or so. It took much, much longer than planned to produce. It is also somewhat hockey themed. So, do I hold onto it and release it at the start of the NHL playoffs, because yay hockey and yay knitting and who cares about the fact that you’re making a sweater in April? Or do I hold onto it and release it at the start of hockey season in October, because no one in their right mind wants a sweater in April?

Uninspired

I am feeling decidedly uninspired by absolutely everything lately. It seems to be a case of the “Winter Blahs” mixed with some serious stress at work this week. Normally my solution for a lack of inspiration is a hard workout (outdoors if I can steal some daylight), a hot shower, and some Pinterest trolling.

My aptly named Knitspiration board is a particular favorite, as is my Feel Good board. Maybe if I  browse through them (and new entries from a few pinning friends) long enough I’ll feel like knitting more than a row per episode of the Netflix series du jour. What do you do to get your mojo back this time of year?

Balance

After last week’s chaos, I think I have recovered a bit of balance. It’s showing up in the fact that I’m sleeping better and don’t have so many inexplicable aches and pains, but it’s also showing up in my crafting. I’m in a mood to finishing things (so much better than start-itis, by the way) so I’m slowly plugging away at the last bits of the silk-merino I was spindle-spinning before I got my wheel.

 

I’ve also put in enough work on the Black Hole Cardigan to get to the underarm on the second front. At this rate it may be done by spring. 😉 Several hours at the mechanic over the weekend also means I got a fair bit of the Hatteras Hat done.

I love the way the lighthouse cables are knitting up, and am intrigued by the beginnings of the waves cables too. It’s a nice little bit of summer back as I work on it, and a nice bit of the waterfront back now that I’m living here in the hills. Not that Cape Hatteras was ever home, but it certainly is familiar territory, and similar enough to other places I’ve lived to make me nostalgic. By the way, this hat is part of the Gift-A-Long, which is still going strong. There are still tons of prizes left to be given away, and with all the participating patterns (including 20 of mine) there’s a good chance you’ve got one in progress already anyway! You should definitely join us!

Alas, even the lure of the rare and beloved finish-itis is not all-powerful. This week I had a sudden craving for a sweater that only exists in my brain, and I wanted it so bad I could not wait for a publisher to pick it up. So I also ordered yarn and swatched for a new design this week. I’d pretend I’m embarrassed but I’m way too busy being excited.

 

 

Messy Cave

We have a room in our apartment I refer to as The Cave. It started out as my office space, and then mine and Hubby’s office space, and then it just sort of exploded. Between my expanding stash and Hubby’s brewing gear and Hubby’s military gear and all the books that no longer fit on our bookcases, there’s barely room to walk in there anymore. It’s become the cat’s favorite room, but I tend to stay out of it as much as possible.

The problem is, The Cave is where my stash lives. Or lived. It started out innocently enough, in two little boxes like this:

Not incredibly neat, but organized by fiber type and tucked away out of sight. Then the yarn and pattern books/magazines no longer fit in the same place, so I added this:

Eventually The Cave got to be such a maze than new yarn began to go elsewhere rather than having to navigate it.

A friend got me a lovely little “yarning box” as she called it, which I put by my knitting spot on the couch, and that quickly filled with yarn too.

Then it filled a little more.

Of course, the needles and notions collection bred when I wasn’t looking too. It now requires two very messy boxes as well.

Guys, my stash is out of control. Some of it is sweater-quantities for specific projects that are already planned. A few skeins are random pretties I just couldn’t resist bringing home. However, the overwhelming majority are partial skeins leftover from old projects. I can’t bear to waste most of a skein, but I can’t re-sell an open skein either and I just don’t know how to use them myself. I like the thought of a scrap blanket but I know myself well enough to know it’s probably not ever going to happen.

Luckily, I am moving next weekend. Our new home will have more room, and hopefully I can build myself a proper organizational system and start getting this stuff under control! Got any hot tips or suggestions?

No Words

There are no words to accurately describe all the weirdness going down in the U.S. this week. Surreal is about the closest I can get. So, rather than try (and fail) to add anything meaningful to any of the situations, I’m going to take a moment to just be grateful.

It rained this morning, which means we are not in a drought or at a significant fire risk.

Pollen!

In spite of this morning’s rain, my car currently looks like this. That means we are getting enough sunshine and warmth to avoid floods and allow everything to grow all healthy and beautiful.

I have a steady job and a safe home in a town where absolutely no one has been killed this week. I have fresh food in the kitchen and the garden, and the time and resources to cook it with ease. I have luxuries like knitting, and I know where all of my loved ones are today.

Seasonally appropriate knitting, even.

This week, I am feeling really, really lucky.

Mea Culpa

I’ve pretty much disappeared from the internet the last little while; sorry for that! Things are pretty chaotic in the real world right now (mostly drama with Hubby’s job and my mother being in the hospital) so there hasn’t really been much time for the web. Or knitting. Or spinning.

My friend came over to hang out a bit yesterday though, and we went shopping for my bridesmaid’s dress as well. She always is good at pulling me out of my own head, so it was just what I needed. It’s also now Spring Break (although it sure doesn’t feel much like Spring!) so I plan to do some “fiber therapy” over the next week as well. Time to start taking care of myself again. Look for a post on the details of my fiber therapy in the next couple of days!