So it’s maybe been a while…

I looked at my last post date. It was in September. So what’s so freaking important that I haven’t posted since September? Well, I got a job. It’s not, like, saving the world or anything, but it suits me. In fact, I come up with new reasons it suits me more every day. I work three days a week, which is exactly the right amount for me right now. The Viv is in preschool, so I might pick up another day next year when she starts kindergarten. 

My New Year’s resolution was to stay off the computer so that I might be more product. So far I’m failing at that pretty miserably. It’s a work in progress. I picked my word for 2013. It’s Persevere. Why? I feel like I’m really on the right track on a lot of things, but I’m not there yet, so it’s a reminder to stay the course and not give up. My word for 2012, for the record, was leap. I thought it appropriate for a leap year, plus it was an encouragement to take risks and put myself out there.

While trying to get my feet under me with my new job and balancing housework, four kids and their activities, and my husband and his activities (he also started a new job as a high school band director, which is no small time commitment), basically all of my hobbies got dropped. I have a crocheting project that’s a massive WIP. I work on it in the car when I’m waiting for the bus or soccer practice to end. It’s a huge granny stripe afghan, which will hopefully be keeping us warm by 2015. At the rate I’m going, that’s a little optimistic.

I’ve taken only a very few photos lately – the obligatory Christmas shots and a rainbow on Monday. 

I’m feeling kind of down about that, but I’ve been coming to a bit of peace about that. I’m just not sure I am capable of being a professional photographer. I don’t really doubt my photography skills (well, sometimes), but I am not naturally a people person and I’m very shy about talking about my business. So I think I’m closing shop and taking photos for friends and family for fun again. I’m not sure yet how I feel about this in the long term, but for right now, I think this is the right thing.

I haven’t knit anything lately, but I did buy some yarn today to make a gift for my sister. I found this yarn that makes a cute scarf. I got it in a variegated purple and hopefully I can finish it in time for my sister to wear it this weekend for the Ravens game. She’s a major fan. Me, I like the Ravens – they’re my hometown team and I have a strong sense of place. Her? She freaking LOVES the Ravens.

We have a thief...

My nine month old has stolen my ability to knit. Well not my skill and knowledge about how to knit. Just my ability to have needles and yarn in my hands long enough to actually complete a stitch. And I've finally got the urge to knit something. Anything. But I'm stymied by a very active baby who would climb the stairs and eat every piece of dirt - crayon - paper - cat in the house if left unattended for two seconds.

Plus I'm having this mini-crisis of knitting faith. What's the point? What is it for? This probably stems from teh awful hat I made all winter. I worked on it a little bit every day as I picked the kids up from the bus. Finally I made it to decreasing and went to town. Bound off and tried on my gorgeous (in color and pattern) hat. Damn I have a big head. Or I made my hat too freaking small. It fits the 9 month old only slightly largely. So now I'm at a what's the point of knitting things that I can probably buy cheaper and apparently better. I have to find my way back to the "process" of it all being the point not the end product.

In good news - this mini-crisis of faith is preventing me from casting on for huge projects that - let's face it - I'll never finish. I'd like to knit a shawl for my sister or an afghan for my mother-in-law who's been asking for one for years. But I know that I'll cast on - knit a few inches - and abandon it. Much like the rubbermaid tub full of half-finished projects. So my goal now is to finish things. Start things that are finishable. Finish old projects that got left behind. Or throw them out/frog.

Preparing for my Lenten destash...

Last year for Lent (despite being one of the least observant Catholics I know), I gave up buying craft supplies of any sort. It kind of worked for me. I came up with new ideas, saved a lot of money (sort of - the post Easter spree I went on probably made up for the savings).

I'm vowing to do the same thing again this year, but a step up even. I'm going to make an effort to use up my stash. Stashes. One per hobby, since I don't seem to be able to resist creating a stash. Mainly that's because I find nothing more frustrating than getting inspired to create something and having to wait until I can get to a craft store. I have such a large yarn stash that I could probably knit through the end of the year, at least, without running out. I'm a pretty slow knitter, but I have a ton of yarn. Not even including the really horrible acrylics that I've donated to my kids' craft box.

That doesn't even take into account my fabric stash. Or my scrapbooking stash. Or my half-started random project stash. Or my newly growing bead stash.

Since Lent begins in two weeks, I'm writing lists and figuring out if I need to up my stash to make it through my self-imposed hiatus from buying. Because how else is one supposed to go two months without buying new craft supplies?

Stuff floating in my head...

Someone very close to me is pregnant. Which kind of changes my plans. Tom and I had sort of decided to try to conceive baby numero quatro this month. But I don't want to steal this person's thunder, to be a little Friends Monica about it. We decided we didn't want Miss S and the potential fourth to be a full four years apart in school, like they would be if we waited until January, like I'd been planning. So now I'm kind of torn. I probably would advise myself not to worry about it and go ahead with what we'd already planned. I just don't know. We have to wait a while anyway, so I'm just going to see what happens.

And then there's that football team I like. Dude. What is up. I mean, come on. Although I have to say it's almost better than last year where I expected them to win all their games and they got demolished. It's almost easier to have low expectations.

Other than those two things, I guess the other stuff is pretty normal day-to-day stuff. You know, knitting some hats (all part of my winter plan - I hate taking Mr. T to school in the mornings with wet hair in the winter, but I hate my hair when I first wake up. So I've been knitting hats to cover it up. Then I can come home and shower and let my hair dry inside. Don't suggest a blow dryer. I don't own one and there's a very, VERY good reason for that. Frizzy hair + blow dryer = people running screaming from me in fright.

I finished knitting stuff!

A rare thing for me. First we have the ballband dishcloth that I've been working on since April (okay, I worked on it for three days in April and then never touched again until two weeks ago).



Then while at my in-laws, I started and finished (in two days! My record of being the slowest knitter in the world was in jeopardy for a while. Don't worry, I've reclaimed it. I haven't knit since we got back) the hat from Knitting Daily's Peapod Baby set. It probably would have looked better if a) I hadn't used blue (kind of negates the "Leaf" part of the Leaf Lace, but I had this Cotton Tots that I wanted to use. I also have some Cotton Ease in a really pretty sage that I will probably use next time) and b) I had understood how lace charts are to be read. I read left to right (I'm American, that's how we read) and later found out knitting charts read right to left. But the pattern is almost visible, so I'm not too upset.



We're not going to talk about how many new projects I started that are not finished. I'm almost done a lace knit hat (it's in the car - I should probably go get it and finish it since it is almost done). I started a crocheted dishcloth (hey, I remember how to crochet!) and a knit dishcloth. I must say I found lace to be much easier than I thought it would be. You just follow the pattern and it happens. It's way cool.

The completed pair of socks...

The color seems a little off. They're really a very light pink.

A sock grows...and my newly diagnosed problem...

I like to call it "Too Many Works in Progress"-itis. I'm working on the socks mentioned in the title of this post. And so rather than just plug on and finish that, last night I decided to cast on for a burp cloth for my cousin's baby. And is if that weren't enough, I just this morning cast on for the purse I need to make for my young cousin's birthday (my oldest cousin on my mom's side is 29 and the youngest one is 4 - only a few weeks younger than my middle DD - whose birthday was yesterday. Happy Birthday, Miss G). And sometime before I finish any of these projects, I'll probably cast on for an evening clutch I want to make myself. Oh, and another pair of socks for a knitalong.

The good thing? Stash-busting. Yay, me.

As for the sock, I'm knitting my very first ever pair of socks. It's so much easier than I thought it would be. Here's some pictures of the first one. It is actually finished, but now I have come to the inherent problem in knitting socks. You have to make a second one.

A little Idol, a little knitting, a lot of yarn...

So Paul and Rudy are the evictees for the guys and Amy and Nicole for the girls. I was half right. I picked Rudy and Nicole to leave. I liked Paul from the early stages and thought he had some good stuff to come, but I guess no one much agreed with me. And Amy, well, while boring, not the worst. I guess boring is worse than horrible these days. Sad, really.

Here's my bag that I don't think I'll ever get as long as I want it. It's going to be felted so it has to be a lot bigger than the finished size I want.


And here's the baby blanket I started for my nephew-to-be:


And I ordered a ton of yarn for felting projects last week. And I'm astonished by just how much yarn I have. I'm giving up craft supplies for Lent (although if it's to FINISH a specific project I may decide that's permissable - not sure yet). That means no scrapbooking stuff, no yarn, no knitting needles, nothing. I'm going to try avoiding the craft stores altogether, just to facilitate my resolve. Look at this stash - only the new stuff, mind you:


Most of it was purchased with very specific projects, or at least people, in mind. For my grandma's birthday or Christmas (yes, I'm planning ahead - I'd like to actually finish stuff this year) and my sister's birthday felted purse - a little stripey number in this:



or maybe this for my sister:


And this is for a felted cloche hat for me - what? knitting for myself? It's revolutionary. And almost warm here, so this project may wait until after next Christmas, the next likely time for it be cold enough to need a winter hat. The main color will be the black with accents of the tan, gray and cream.

How many things can one person knit at once?

I don't know, but I'm aiming to find out. Right now I have four projects on the needles and plans for at least two more (when my yarn order comes in). I'm making a large felted tote that I plan to use as my new every day bag, but since I want it to be large after felting, it has to be ginormous prior to felting. I'm not super patient, so I have a few other projects that I'm working on when I get bored with that one. I've started a baby blanket for my nephew, who is due in May. I'm trying to knit each of my men a hat - I said to Tom that I'd like to try cables and he thought a cabled hat sounded cool, so that's one of my new projects. And Mr. T wants a hat like the one I made for Miss G/Baby S (whoever wears it - it fits both of them) but in red, white and blue. With stars on top. How patriotic of him. I took some liberties and it's going to be black, red and blue. Hopefully, it will please the rather particular young man.

Oh, and that doesn't count the scarves (ugh, how am I ever going to get to five feet or more?) I'm working on or the sweaters I started for Christmas and never got more than a back done of. But I pick each of them up every now and then and add to them. I'll get them done eventually. Maybe.

I read this way too sometimes. I keep a book upstairs, downstairs and one that travels with me. I don't know why my brain just doesn't like to do the same thing for a long time. I think I'm just impatient and bore easily. Luckily, over the years I've learned how to work around it (hence the dozen or so projects I always have going at the same time).

Somebody stop me!

I'm totally in love with felting. Check out this freaking adorable bag I knitted in - this is the best part - ONE DAY!

Pre-felting:


Post-felting:


It's small, but cute. I think I'm going to give it to my cousin for her birthday. She'll be four. The same age as my middle child. I have a cousin who is younger than two of my kids. A first cousin. My family's weird like that. My uncle is only nine years older than me.

But what I really wanted to write/talk about was my obsessions. I get like this. And it worries me. Right now it's knitting (and felting the knitted item). I latch onto something new and it consumes me until I get sick of it and then I never touch it again. I have loads of crochet stuff in my basement that I haven't touched (except to revisit it from a knitting standpoint) in a year or more. And sewing stuff, from back when I was obsessed with sewing. And scrapbooking stuff from when I was obsessed with that. Now scrapbooking and sewing are still things I like to do, just not as often as my original obsessive phase had me doing it.

So this worries me about photography. I'm exploring taking my photography to the next level and then I can't get un-obsessed. But as I told Tom last night, I think there's just so much to learn about photography that I'll just never learn it all and that in itself will keep me interested. For those other things, at least in part, it's the challenge of learning something new. I rarely make the same recipe twice, having conquered it once. If I don't get it right, I will make it all the time until I get it the way I want. And then never make it again.

Knitting update...

So I taught myself to knit around my birthday. I learned from several different books because each book's explanation was a little different and they all sort of worked together to make it make sense in my head. I've since knitted a sweater for each of my daughters and various pieces of other sweaters and scarves and stuff.

A few weeks ago I started watching Knitty Gritty on DIY Network. Do you know what I discovered? I've been knitting WRONG all this time. Turns out I was knitting in the back loops all the time instead of the front loops. I've been working on correcting that ever since. I think I'm almost used to knitting the right way.

Here's a look at some projects I'm working on:

Bottom of a felted bag (well, a to-be-felted bag):


The back of a sweater I meant for my cousin's daughter for Christmas, but I accidentally made the next size up so it's now for next Christmas (woo-hoo, I'm so ahead! LOL. It still won't be done by Christmas 07).


The earflap hat I knitted for Baby S. Her head's pretty big, but it stretches just enough:


The scarf made from the original (and much-frogged) yarn I bought to teach myself to knit way back in July. It's made on the very small circle from the Knifty Knitter I bought with my Michael's gift card from Christmas. Now I just need to look up how to bind off:



I really enjoy knitting, especially when I take on a project that is actually finishable in a few days, like a hat or the cute little thumbless mittens I made for Baby S. Sweaters and afghans and big things like that or anything knit on size 6 or smaller needles? Not so much my thing. In fact, I just yesterday bought my first size 6 needles to make a hat for the baby my cousin is expecting (same cousin whose daughter might wear the back of that sweater above). Prior to that, I didn't have anything smaller than 8 and even those I don't use. I generally stick to 11 and above. I'm impatient and have problems finishing things. To counteract number one, I keep lots of things on the needles to work on when I get bored with one thing. To counteract the second, short projects that work up fast seems to be the key.