A Little Yarn On The Side

As you might have guessed from the general lack of activity on this blog, the new job is pretty demanding.  October was our big "sale," so there was tons of pressure to get everything signed leading up to it, but of course now that it's over, the pressure hasn't let up.  Plus they're remodeling the office to an "open office" design--throwing out, of course, the egalitarian origins of no offices for management--and just taking away all personal space from the sales team.  Originally, they were just going to send us home to work during the remodel, but then no one could micromanage, so even though there's no real space,we're expected to show up and work in the office, regardless.  Did I mention that I think we're up to 11 or 12 people leaving just since I started? I've been knitting a lot to reduce stress, which really isn't helping, though I'm getting a sweater out of it:  The back and now both fronts are done, and I'm wor...

It's September, and I'm 14 projects away from my goal of 50, and 5 projects away from my goal of 6 finished quilts, sweaters, or shawls.  And I have a new helper: Believe it or not, I am making some progress on quilting the dragonfly quilt, partly because Charlie can sleep/play under the table I bought for the new machine, and I can still actually quilt--unlike her version of helping me cut fabric: I don't have a picture of her "helping" me knit because I'm diving to save the yarn too quickly.  She can hear me taking knitting out of the bag from across the house, so the only knitting I'm really doing is in my car or outside, which at least is getting easier now that it's no longer 100 degrees, but I'm still not that close to finishing a sweater right now.    To preserve my sanity speed things up, rather than using the quarter-inch channels I'm using on the squares, I did half-inch channels for one side of the blocks,    ...

Back in 2007, I started a pair of flannel pajamas for Andy as a Christmas present out of what I thought was a fun coffee print, only to discover after making the pants, that I was about a yard short for the top.  We searched Joann stores everywhere, friends searched--nothing.  Three years later , I gave up and bought some brown flannel.  Andy actually never wears brown because his mom insisted on dressing him in brown when he was a kid and he's never worn it since, but for the sake of a finished set of pajamas, he agreed to try.  However, when I started cutting, I found I hadn't bought enough of the ugly brown flannel either!   And it was probably around this time when I discovered I didn't know where the pajama-top-in-progress was, so mixing the two fabrics was out.  When Andy and I were driving back from our trip to Ashton and Yellowstone, we stopped along the way for lunch in a town that just happened to have a Joanns, and by this time I'd acquired ...

Charlie has been so much of our last month,  that several weeks just slipped away, but BEFORE Charlie: *  I MADE A KNIT SHIRT!!!!  I've not really sewn much with knits in spite of the fact that I own a serger, and usually I would have talked myself out of doing this because I might ruin the fabric, but instead... I made a shirt almost entirely on the serger!  I couldn't figure out how to do the hem on the serger, and it turns out I didn't do a great job on it with my old sewing machine either, but it's done and I'm pleased with my first attempt.  In fact, while the things I would change were still fresh in my mind, I got two yards of another velour knit to make the same shirt again to make sure I was really learning how to do this--and getting some fun new shirts for fall.  I don't think I had any velour in my wardrobe, so these are fun additions. *  I also finished another table runner for Christmas: * We've also been spending a lot...

Almost a month ago now, Andy and I set our for a walk bright and early on a Sunday morning, only to find a frightened little kitten hiding behind a garbage can on the greenbelt.  It was amazing that we even found her as there is a hawk family right in that area, and they'd eat a kitten in a flash.  We caught her and started knocking doors along the houses closest to where she was, but while we met some really great people--including one lovely woman who let us borrow her cat carrier to save on being scratched--NO one was missing a kitten.  We finally brought her home and took some pictures for posters for the neighborhood, but she had other ideaS-- like staying .  "BUT WE ALREADY HAVE 3 CATS," we told her.  She responded with even more cuteness: Not to be deterred, we put up posters, posted on Facebook, and took her to a vet to check for a microchip (and receive her first shots).  Nothing.  She continued her campaign to stay, taking up an inte...