Too Soon?

Holiday gift done for 2015.

It has been late for several holiday seasons, but these are done today.

I started the holiday gift list for 2015. The first item is checked off. The second item is half done. I am okay with this. There was no list this last year.

Don't hold your breath. It's another set, another family gift, started at the same time as these.

Set of six done: set of 8 to baste, quilt, and bind.

My goal will be May. I don't think that's too soon, either.

Knitting in Trains

I confess.  I sometimes don't tell all my stories because I don't want to brag.

I taught a class overseas in January.  I now have a sabbatical - doing some studying and other projects for a semester.  That said, I stayed overseas.  Having reduced my debt prior to this, and having the skills to be a pretty frugal traveler, I am managing not to go into debt on this adventure.

I don't do all the fancy tours, and my pleasures are pretty simple;  Apfel strudel in a cafe for breakfast today, bread roll and a clementine from the store for my lunch on the train.

Getting in some quality book reading and knitting time is also a good thing.

Day Off

For a change, I am not scrambling for holidays, though I do want to get these in the mail. I am having a Day Off.

I am finishing projects and making progress on a hat.

I am eating food that's in the fridge, doing a little laundry. Trying not to go to the grocery store or to do my every other year whack of over-the-top baking. I may have to figure out a recipient for produce I don't want to spoil when I head out of town. Anyone want some squash?

I am swatching for a test knit. That's pretty exciting to be able to work on a creative project that is led by someone else.

I am making travel plans. Suitcases are out, lists are being made, completed and compiled. big adventures ahead!

Yesterday I put in a nice volunteer day at church, decorating, steaming textiles. Today I am home in my pajamas. Orange peels and cloves are simmering in a pot in the stove. I am exactly where I need to be for a Very Good Day Off.

My New Multitask Tool

So much happier making these pompons than I was using the Inox tool.

Kitchen utensils are swell.

Some Little Things

There are only a few days until Thanksgiving weekend. 

I finished a pair of baby booties.

i have more to knit.  Two family babies born this fall.  Several community babies due in winter, and a few more babies due in spring.

I will come to peace with Pom Pom making.

A  squirrel broke in to my upper floor apartment on Friday.

He left a chocolate in my bed.

That's not a euphemism, as he emptied a candy jar, stowing them as many places as he could.

Fortunately, he was not interested in the textiles.

It's the little things.

Frog Pond

I like the Baktus. I like the yarn - CTH Eat your Veggies....and some leftover greens....and the play on words.

I dislike the curling. It's too small a scarf to carry it off.

I also dislike the foul wee beastie who took a chomp out of it.

I don't often re-knit. I will here.

Frog pond, ahoy.

And Done!

Projects in Pairs

Basting. Twin nieces off to college.

Done.

August Focus

So glad it is not a sweltering summer where I live.  Getting stuff DONE as a result.  Witness:  two quick baby sweaters for a double family baby shower.  

I finished them the day before the shower.  This hardly ever happens.

Must dash, though.  Two graduation / off to college quilts to finish.  Eep!

Summer Patchwork

Quiet, yes, but not absent industry.

Lost or Found

I used to lose a lot of things when I was a little girl.  I left stuff in buses, lost track of things, etc.  We knew the way to the local CTA lost and found.  

So I have tried as an adult to be pretty calm about losing stuff. I am not always successful.  Because I lose things amidst "stuff," I try to be better organized.  I try different strategies for routine.  I still lose stuff and I still fret.  Fretting has use - I do work on finding some of these lost things.  

Losing knitting?  I've lost three scarves in the past dozen years.  I've wished them well and have moved on.  I lost three knit socks in the laundry this winter. This is rough, particularly since the singletons don't make up a good fraternal pair amongst them.

I also seem to have lost time for knitting.  

Okay, that's false.  That's cousins to "Wow, you knit?  I wish I had time for that.". Better to say I lost my focus.  Or knitting mojo, as the cool kids put it.

But good news.  I've been working at getting rid of stuff.  I have used some of that knitting time for a nearly regular Sunday sewing routine this late winter. The knitting mojo is creeping back in, just as spring arrives.

This is ye olde honey cowl - using some 8 year old stash.  It will be a gift, so it will move out of here and open up one teeny tiny bit of space - a couple successes in one.

Working on things found.  Working too on letting go.

Beware Yesterday

Ides of March.  

Snow Again.

New Hat.

What Matters

Weeks can be a perplexing jumble.  This was one.  (Uh oh.  This didn't post correctly last week.  Retry)

Colleagues at work, waiting for tenure promotion news learned answers that prompted congratulations here and sympathetic condolence there.  Those are their stories, not mine, but it's reflective of the emotional highs and lows that seem to be sweeping that community.  

I'm really focusing on the immediate work, because of that larger swirl of energy in my work community.  Loving student engagement now, in all sort of ways.  Only occasionally playing Dorothy Parker (if you can't say anything nice....) in the larger workplace, but needing to avoid really plunging into the work or the angst of the larger politics and structural thing.

And then I spent an excellent day observing in a high school.  And I spent a fortune on car repairs (combo of cyclical maintenance, needed headlight, and an under the car whack from wintry pothole/ice/something that left a sound like whirling screws in a blender.

And then.  Call from mother, slipped on ice, broken wrist.  She was one of over a hundred such ice-provoked falls/breaks in the emergency room that day.

And then.  Had finally gotten to mail room to pick up package of generous gifting from the Stash and Burn podcast folks and their year long knit along of a Use it or Lose it variety.

Beautiful Peacock colored hand dyed yarn from Baah!  - 400 yards of it.  May be too lovely for socks.  I spy neckwear.

And Nicole made a project bag to go with it.  And there's a cute podcast logo button.  And an excellent looking circular needle, size three, super lightweight.  And a sample of Eucalan Wrapture.

So.  (I break all the grammar rules.). It has been a week, what?  

What matters is being thankful.  

My mom will have surgery but didn't break hip or head.  Her spirits are good.  (ETA- later prognosis, no surgery!! Yay!)

Jobs are good, and enjoying the core of the work makes it better.  Most grateful.  (Being able to pay for the car repair also fortunate.)

Extra direct thanks to the Stash and Burn podcast hosts and to their splendid vendors. ( I will come back to this to fix links to things when I can. ) ( triple thanks apologies.  This should have been posted over week ago.  Oh technology!)

What's the Deal, February?

Yeah, so I was busy.  Blogging dwindles in knitting land.  Knitting grew sluggish in jpknitsland.

It's okay.  Holidays were lovely.  2013 went away.  January was FULL.  There was a one week roadtrip with mama driving the minibus.  We've had too much winter, all of us.  I had a three week cold, and I slept a lot for a change and tried to take care of myself.  I had a great class and we played hard.  Lots of smiles and laughs.

And.  Yet.

There was a little knitting.  Random Gift Knitting Just Because.

I did slip, of course, despite a very good start. Started in November, this was the ONLY holiday knitting I was really going to do.  Stash yarn, check.  Existing pattern info (Lace Rib Scarf stitch pattern from Mason Dixon blog), check.  Knitting done on December 24.  Found buttons to use from deep stash.  (I worked in a fabric store way back.)

Whoops.  Went from having three cards of buttons to two, which meant four buttons and not six.
Whoops.  Shopping for buttons, eventually.  Four deep stash buttons go back to the button boxes.
Whoops. Not done in December.  Button sewing today.

Gave, Giftee-smiling, Gone.

But how DID it get to be the end of the first week of February?!?

Cool

Evidently my technology had been withholding a post. This is also evidence of how busy I have been that I only noticed - or remembered? - today.

Still, it was a fall post.  I mention sock weather!

------------------------------------------------

I finished the wedding present.

Not cool:  The photos are crummy.  I cannot find the camera.

However, back to cool?  I am trying to have a super healthy autumn.  I am eating ten million vegetables.  Fun with a CSA share. And it is cool enough for soup.

Also cool?

It is cool enough to put on a pair of wool socks.

Facts

 1. My freezer had too many "I'll remember" containers.

 2. Everything is labelled now. I thawed and repackaged a couple soups. I combined a couple "for soup stock" items.

3. I didn't have too much waste to pitch.

4. When my mother comes to visit she will be pleased with the soup offerings. It's our fall and winter visit routine. I am almost too busy, she schedules lots of visits with friends, and we visit over soup late and oatmeal early.

4. The socks I had been knitting (if by knitting you understand neglecting) were just not to gauge ad would have been a tight nightmare at the instep.

5. Cheered by that bit of freezer tending, I frogged the socks in progress.

Friday Rituals on a Textile Blog?

 I was just here last week.  This is fairly shocking.

 

Friday:  Featuring One of those Famous Finished Objects

Yep.  Table runner.  Covering the full seating deck of a love-seat.  Decidedly big for table runner traditions, but who cares.

 

Funny how the blues and yellows in those greens are hightened by digital photog on a grey day.

Quarter circles were stitched by hand.  Squares were stitched by machine.  Judicious machine quilting shadows some of the curved paths.

Bound in time for the wedding.  Whee!

Who Hoppen?

That was how my grandpa would say it.

What Happened Here? What Happened to You? It's Not A Big Crisis, Really, right?   All summed up in Who Hoppen.

Not writing on the blog for over a month? Not A Big Crisis, Really.  Colleagues and friends are having some real crises lately, so it's hard to find much wrong in just being tired at the end of a week. 

I've been living by lists, so here are some samples of evidence that life has progressed Chez Textiles with Not Much Crisis:

1. That I am sitting at my desk on dinner break, getting ready to go into an evening of work on a day that started work at 9:00, on a Friday at that, and in a sentence this long?   Proof I'm working hard.   (I have work I like, in the main.  Not too shabby.)

2. That I am sitting at my desk on dinner break, having polished off the rest of salad left from lunch, moving on to last of the leek and roasted veggie leftover soup I made Saturday, sparing you the list of all the veggies I ate today, (morning noon and night)? Proof I continue to tackle the weekly CSA box of vegetables.

3. That I tried on accidentally a pair of pants I should have pitched some time ago for lack of fitting, and that the pants could actually meet (although with force) at the waist, and that this was heretofore NOT happening at ALL? Proof I am eating really quite healthily with this CSA OMG TOO MANY VEGETABLES plan.  (Meanwhile, the pants weren't quite comfortable.  I'll check back in with them in a month.)

4. That I managed to talk myself out of just calling Jimmy John's and finishing some of this week's packed dinner and lunch supply in the work fridge, having yet a choice of broccoli slaw or red cabbage, grated carrot and roasted beets salad for my third course, if I want it? Proof I am enjoying my cooking adventures. They just have to start, feature, and finish vegetables. Also proof that the aforementioned pair of pants are inspiration.  Gives one hope and stamina.

5. That I have neglected my knitting but had a costume non-drama with the last production - done on time, no late nights? Proof I am REALLY working at being extra productive and efficient, and I'm enjoying some of the payoff.   Because face it, I'm not really as productive and efficient as I want to be, but I need to shush the monkey on my back.

6. That I have cider, both fresh apple and bottled alcoholic kinds, in the fridge at home for some actual weekend time not AT work? Proof I am still TRYING to keep from going nuts, and I have plans to weekend.

7. That I have sewing stacked up at home, several projects deep, and this doesn't bother me at all because when I hit the weekend I make PROGRESS on them? Proof I don't really think working on sewing and knitting projects as a way of taking a break is TOO nuts.   Especially because I'm making PROGRESS.

8. That I finished another sewing project - quilted table runner, though it is large enough to be considered on steroids? I'm moving stash AND UFO's.

So that's life from the No Big Crisis perspective.  The crap at work and the sighs about family stuff can't come out to play.  When Grandpa asked "Who Hoppen?" in that silly gruff voice with a fake furrowed brow over the twinkle in the eye, we girls would giggle in spite of ourselves. 

Dinner break is over.  
Happy to have work I like.  
Happy to be well-fed.  
Happy I get to sleep in a little tomorrow.

Hope your weekend has some simple pleasures and No Big Crisis.
 

Journey

Road trip

Conference

Visits

Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and North, Virginia near the Cumberland Gap. A couple additional hurry-throughs.

A little knitting.
A little reading.
A little breathing.

Nice to do some things on the summer list as well as to follow a few impulses.

Impulsively threw some slipper knitting into the car.  Wasn't in the summer stash knitting list, but definite stash knitting all the same.  This was a full skein of Noro Kureyon from a years-forgotten impulse purchase.  Have to guess which second skein will yield a sisterly slipper mate.  Then on to more slippers for three sisters and their mama, my wise friend Liesl.

I have unpacked halfway, swept and mopped.  Need to get cranking and leave for the day, but I wanted the bathroom floor to dry.  Time to plan the rest of today's productive reentry into life and work and summer's end.

Hope your summer journeys are fruitful.