Merry Christmas

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday weekend. I woke up this morning to the sun shining and just a dusting of snow. Now I’m off to my fifth Christmas visit in the last three days.

Avoidance Projects

I set up my little christmas tree this weekend, which really doesn’t involve that much work considering it came pre-lit and I safety pinned a few ornaments onto it the first year I got it (partly to keep the cat from getting them off, partly because I had a lot of safety pins and no paper clips to make hooks from). So the thing is basically ready to go out of the box I just needed to straighten out some branches and put the little stand back on and plug it in. Boom done. I decorated. I also found a tiny little stocking ornament I made and had forgotten about. 

It’s pretty wonky and I was very new to sock making when I made it, but I’m thinking about making a few more and maybe putting a pattern together before christmas. Aside from the buckle it would probably only take an hour or two to finish and they would look super cute tied to the top of presents.

I wonder what other little things I could knit for my tiny little tree to avoid all the knitting I’m supposed to be doing. All the best projects come out of avoiding something else!

The No Knit List

Knitting Blog Challenge Day 22

Have you ever stricken someone off your to-knit-for list because they didn’t appreciate/take care of your last knitted gift to them?

I’ve definitely learned my lesson knitting for lots of people over the years. I have minimized my list dramatically mostly due to the stress of knitting for like ten people. It’s too much for my hands and it’s a lot of time to not be designing new patterns for my shop. The year I made socks for a bunch of my friends a lot of them seemed uncomfortable to be getting socks and a few didn’t even thank me. I’ve had a few people ask me to knit something for them “and they’ll even pay me” but balked when I told them a ballpark range of how much their item would actually cost or they simply never paid me. That’s the fastest way to the no knit list. I’ve limited my list to mostly family at this point. They understand how much labor a hand knit item takes and I know they’ll appreciate it. I actually went to buy my Christmas gift yarn haul this morning so now I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’ve got five items to whip out before the holidays.

What is time?

Just a quick little update. I’ve been pretty quiet across all social media for the last week or so. I was having some crazy insomniac nights. I made the decision to completely switch my sleep schedule to match The Boy’s third shift life to optimize our time. It makes sense since I’m able to do the things I need to do while he’s at work. The transition has been a little brutal, but I spent the last two nights making curtains for my living room so I no longer feel like I’m living in a fish bowl.

Once my body catches up to my brain.. or the other way around I’ll get back into more regular posting.

Autumn Adventures

Yesterday the sun came out for like four whole hours in-between the bouts of endless dreariness and rain we’ve been having. The weather seems to be affecting me way more than I’m used to. I’ve been having a lot more panic attacks and days where I just feel like I can’t/don’t want to do anything at all. The Boy and I decided to take advantage of the sunshine – even though he was going on 18 hours of being awake. We drove over to the local nature preserve  and went for a little hike.

Fall weather definitely fucked us up. In our ongoing game of temperature chicken we’ve gotten used to it being pretty cold all the time. We checked the weather before we left – 67 degrees – pretty much the same as in the house. We left with jackets and scarves… Not ten minutes in we were stripped down to t-shirts and sweating our asses off. Despite the swamp ass we had a nice little walk and enjoyed some nature and then promptly took a two hour nap.

Here goes nothing…

After having my entire life flash before my eyes two weeks ago (don’t worry it was just my computer taking a giant shit – but it’s fixed now!) I made the decision to finally, actually, really start blogging. Over the years I’ve left a trail of abandoned blogs scattered throughout the internet but third (fourth? fifth? twelfth?) times the charm, right?

At this point my brain wants to work on so many projects and do so many things that I can’t even pick something to focus on. Should I knit like crazy? Should I make a million quilts? Should I pick all the black walnuts on my driveway and dye everything brown? Should I start playing Skyrim? Hopefully I’ll be able to harness some of this mental energy and get something done.

Follow along with me and maybe see some insider information on my design process, maybe learn how to do some cool things, maybe even get really excited about the history of textiles. Who knows? I can guarantee cat pictures though.