A Little Yarn On The Side

You may have noticed that there has been a tendency for all lace patterns of late to be "Begonia Swirl" shawls.  This is because I am madly in love with this pattern.  Can you blame me? Well TODAY I finally wore one for Me Made Monday.  That's right--I'm on my SIXTH Begonia Swirl shawl and the fifth one for me, and I've never worn any of them.  To be fair, packing and moving aren't shawl-events, and one of the shawls was finished shortly before the move and still needs to be blocked....found and blocked, that is.  And now I want to make 10 more of them.   I hadn't really intended to continue Me Made Mondays, but there were people who wanted to continue with the thread on Ravelry and I do have rather a lot of me-made items, so I have not missed a Monday yet this year.  I haven't even forgotten a Monday yet, which is the REAL news.  

Yesterday and this morning we cleaned AGAIN, and since it only took the photographer about 30 minutes to shoot the house and the listing doesn't go up until tomorrow, I had free time.  So, There was sewing!!!!!!!!!!!!!  The sewing room has been looking so clean and wonderful and I've even been able to move Milo in: Callisto was hanging out with me, doing some yoga in a sunny spot  until something woke Theo up in the back room.  Apparently when there is a shortage of sewing, it can NOT be shared, and not only did he drive Callisto out of the sewing room,  he parked himself in the doorway just to make sure.  To be fair, he was REALLY excited about the sewing, sleeping right beside my chair, then, of course, right on top of my pattern decorations when I spread them out on the floor to find the next step.  Prepping the house has been stressful for us all.  The listing is supposed to go up tomorrow--not sure exactly when, but ...

I think it counts for Me Made May that I am lounging in my penguin pajamas while drinking my coffee. I haven't used pajamas for Me-Made Mondays, but Me-Made-May is a bit more of a challenge. Today I have a phone interview, but the rest of the day will be high-gear cleaning.  Yesterday for excitement I took my valuable jewelry to the bank to store in our safe deposit box.  And it WAS exciting.   Seriously, I walked into the bank and didn't have to check their paint for spots or their carpet or anything--truly exciting.  Yesterday launched the second Race To The Bottom challenge on Ravelry.  In 18 months, the idea is to use up (or donate) 30,000 yards OR use up the rest of one's stash.  I failed abysmally at the first challenge, but this time I saved the two skeins of acrylic to donate DURING this challenge to give me a bit of a boost, as my knitting time has pretty much evaporated right now.  It would take me closer to 18 YEARS to knit up my yar...

Between looking for a job and trying to get the house ready for to sell, my stress level is just a wee bit high right now, as I think most people would guess.  I say "most" because there are always those family members who never think you're doing enough for them no matter what is happening in your own life, but everyone has at least one of those relatives, right?  Anyway, the hobby party turned out to be both a nice break AND a really fun event. We had a "display" table of things that people had made for us that weren't going to be eligible for any voting, but were still fun.  I have a pair of pillowcases my favorite grandmother made me, tin can furniture from my other grandmother, both of which were made from old Band-Aid boxes, a doily one of my volunteers gave me, a ceramic owl Andy's cousin made, a ceramic Santa a friend painted,  a quilt from Andy's great-aunt and one from my grandmother,  and a rock table made by my great-grandmo...

I'm always ready for spring, but after this winter, I'm even more excited. And...........I HAVE JOB INTERVIEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!  2 to be exact.  One this week and a final interview with another organization next week, so I might be back to work soon!  Conversely, if I go through all of this and don't get either job, I might be spending April curled up in a ball in the back of my closet.  Ah, the possibilities...... I finally have a picture of Andy's new shirt with buttons, and started my next project,  which you might notice isn't pajamas.  It's another one of these which is what I'm wearing for Me Made Monday today.  At least this is also a very old piece of fabric--probably 2006/2007.  It's a fine-wale corduroy, and I bought it to make a shirt for Andy, apparently before I figured out how much fabric it takes to make a shirt.  Since the jacket involves a LOT of pieces, it takes less fabric, so it's almost the only option for thi...

  And ready for Me Made Monday tomorrow .  And since I can't remember if I already did one for last week, I had a chance to wear my new yellow floral jacket for the very first time ye sterday: so I'm feeling a bit Amish this week.  I even started Andy's Valentine's Day gift.  I KNOW!  It isn't even March yet.  Aren't I just speedy...............?

I had actually forgotten about Me Made Mondays, but later I'll be donning this  to go out and deal with this: Yes, it's snowing again.  And had I checked the weather forecast, I might not have done a second set of arm exercises at the gym last night, but sometimes you just don't want to know.  They stopped discussing record snowfall about 3 or 4 storms ago.  I wish people would stop calling each other "snowflakes" to imply fragility.  They've obviously ticked off Snow Miser, who is taking it out on the northwest.  There is NOTHING fragile about snowflakes when they unite.  More than 50 buildings in the town closest to where I grew up have collapsed under the weight of snow, including the grocery store.  And it's only January. I am crafting today.  I've made progress on the new flannel shirt, and am trying out some of the new embroidery designs, starting with towels followed by a new icicles design,  and hopefully b...

So in the interest of wearing more of my me-mades, this year I decided that every Monday didn't have to be a different me-made item.  Last year I found myself wearing fewer hand-made items the rest of the week to try to "save" them for Mondays (which probably says sad things about my enthusiasm for doing laundry).  Yesterday I had a doctor's appointment, and since we have been housebound quite a bit this winter, I celebrated being out by wearing the blue microsuede ensemble AND a blue bowknot scarf that has apparently never gotten a "finished" picture.  It felt so festive! And I learned a very important lesson: If you are trapped in a waiting room for an hour with some "Discovery" Channel show about hillbillies making moonshine (and boasting about not knowing what they're doing), the actual exam is NOT the worst part of the annual "woman's wellness" exam.  Heavens.  I like my doctor, who is a very educated man who probably s...

We have managed to not lose power, but other parts of the state haven't been so lucky.  Now we've had 3 days of heavy rain here, which melted off much of our snow but has led to flooding, rock slides, and avalanches.  In one of the weirdest twists of fate, one of the nearby ski resorts is closing tomorrow because of TOO MUCH snow .  I've never seen that.  With everything going on with our crazy winter, I was a bit unenthusiastic about putting these up and my hip/back was even less so as I did something and threw it out, landing myself in bed for the last day and a half.  I'm better today, and I keep trying to remind myself that winter justifies knitting lots and lots of sweaters.  To emphasize this, for Me Made Monday I wore the first wearable sweater I ever knit: Sure, it was supposed to be in cotton and I made it in some bizarre acrylic that Red Heart no longer even makes, but compared to my earlier sweater attempts, that was only a mildly wrong...

Okay--100 finished projects.  I can do this--and have done it many times. But it is a bit daunting when one is at zero. For the first Me Made Monday of 2017, I wore what I call my "clown" socks.  They're so loud that I put a bobble pattern on the leg: which didn't go as badly when we went snowshoeing as I had thought.  It's been too cold here to do more than a mile, but since we're in the middle of yet ANOTHER snowstorm, it's nice to have snowshoes to be able to negotiate the local streets.  Subdivisions never get plowed here--they barely do the main streets--so my little Toyota Corolla is going to be safe in the garage for a bit.  Thank heavens I haven't found a job yet! I took down Christmas decorations yesterday, but I did take a break to start the stippling on the second runner,  and am working on it again this morning over morning coffee: (Note to self:  make sure at least SOME coffee has kicked in before trying to sew.) While I...

Thanks everyone!  I have to admit, I didn't think I'd make it a full year without buying fabric as my previous attempts have failed spectacularly.  I'm struggling to make it to 100 yards for the year, but today I'm at 92.76 yards used up so far, and with NOTHING coming in all year, that's a dent.  Maybe not a big dent, but a dent all the same.  In case you were wondering why I haven't made more progress this week, I have taken up a new hobby called "snow shoveling."  We have a corner lot and a 3-car garage, plus some older neighbors who can't shovel snow, so it's become a time-consuming hobby.  While I can do it without injuring my back/hip, it does wear it out pretty thoroughly, and Mother Nature being a bit of a jerk, we get the most snow when Andy isn't here, so it's often a solo hobby.  I think I'll be giving it up as soon as possible.  Boise gets snow, but it rarely sticks around this long, and until a heat-wave of 30 de...