I Forgot about the Prom Dresses

March 12, 2024March 19, 2024Leave a comment

I was so proud of myself last week for how well I had cleared my schedule so things could be manageable, and then over the course of one day so many projects came to rest on my plate. At least they’re all projects I’m excited about!

Happy Daylight Savings Time to those of you who are mandated to go through it. I’m feeling it! Hopefully the sluggishness wears off quickly.

Cooking:

This week’s meal plan:

Monday: Orange Chicken, Stir Fry veggies, Rice
Tuesday: CP Soup
Wednesday: Taco Pasta
Thursday: CP something, pie for Pi Day
Friday: Michael’s birthday dinner, which he has not decided upon yet. I’m going to guess it’ll be steak, baked potatoes, Caesar salad and herbed rye rolls.
Saturday: Pasta/Emily’s choice
Sunday: CP Corned Beef, boiled potatoes, cabbage, maybe some Irish soda bread

Clothing:

Maybe this will be the week that I finally conquer the folding pile.
Keep thinking about and making plans for Easter, spring and Rachel’s travel outfits.
Materials and supplies are going to begin arriving for making prom dresses for Renaissance and Rachel.

Cleaning:

I don’t have a definitive plan set, which I would like to create. Basic upkeep for the next few weeks.

Caring:

I’m really struggling to remember what I’d like to do here. I blame the sleep deprivation from Daylight Savings Time. Um, I need to care for my poor sleep-deprived brain by adjusting my sleeping ASAP. I’ve learned over the decades that sleep is #1. You mess with the sleep, you mess with everything.

Creativity:

At Home:
- Prom dress prep—Dates were announced last week and I realized I had no plan whatsoever for making their dresses. We strategized over the weekend, and I think it’s doable. Ohhhh, the girls have picked some lovely designs and fabric. I’m really excited about these dresses!! Hopefully my “adventurous beginner/beginning intermediate” garment construction skills are up for the task…eek!
- Sewing on the Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt—Sneak peek this Friday!
Van Crafting Sessions™: Planning out personalized wedding shawls because I’m a person who gets things done years ahead of time

Gardening:

Peas, trellises, etc.
Seed check
Rhubarb watching
Plant delphinium
Use up the herb jungle
Direct sow alyssum, cabbage, pansies, poppies, viola

Celebrating:

Michael’s birthday is this week! I hounded the kids to get him gifts, so that’s an improvement over last year. Problem is, I gave them all my ideas for gifts and now I don’t have any other ideas and no gift to him from myself. Sigh.
After a quick text conversation with my people last week, I don’t think we’re going to be doing anything for Easter, but I’ll follow-up this week just to make sure.
The potentially brewing project I mentioned at the end of last week is dying a slow death. I thought it was dead for sure, but a spark of life was breathed into at the last second. I will follow-up today to find out what is going on.

Community:

I am nagging Renaissance about the WREF scholarship that’s due on March 17th. I do not get the feeling that it’s accomplishing anything.
Band Parent meeting this week—Many of my concerns from last week are resolving.
I was sustained in a new calling for church on Sunday: Ward Music Coordinator. It basically just means I make sure we have music during sacrament meeting. I pick the hymns, make sure the music makers know what the hymns are, and I set up and support the special musical numbers. We have Stake Conference this week, so no pressure for me this week. If I went ahead and taskified this calling, it would make my life a whole lot easier over the next few months as I settle into it. I should also resurrect my own music practice times since I know that I will inevitably have to pinch hit some musical numbers on the fly when scheduled performers cancel at the last minute.

Top priorities this week, aside from sleep health:

Michael’s birthday
Garden
WREF Scholarship application
Prom dresses
Resurrecting music practice time

Much Music and Considerable Clothing Commissions

March 10, 2024March 19, 2024Leave a comment

It was a week of excess; a week that seemed overwhelming in the beginning and then ended with a smorgasbord of new opportunities on top of an overfilled plate.

Community

All the music went well. The All-District Choir Concert was really, really good; it was the first time they’ve done that concert since 2016 and it really is a special event to see every single choir student in the district performing together in one space.

Wind Ensemble (High School Band) performed at the PLU Invitational on Friday and I went along as a chaperone. They did so good! It was a really enjoyable day hanging out with some of my favorite people.

Jazz Bands (both middle and high school) performed at a swing dance last night. I wasn’t feeling well, so I didn’t go. Michael took good videos and everyone sounded really good.

Clothing

There was a lot of laundry folding, but I’m still not caught up.

I thought a lot about spring, Easter and choir trip wardrobes.

But then Prom was announced and I remembered that it really is a big deal to me to make the girls’ dresses for the high school dances, so everything else has kind of gone out of the window. I almost get my wish of making 1950s spring formal dresses—Rachel is eyeing a vintage Vogue pattern from the 1940s, so close enough. Renaissance’s pattern choice is a gamble that I think is going to work out. I am really excited about both dresses. Since it’s Ren’s senior year, I’ll be making hers from really nice fabrics, and Rachel will have to make do with Casa Collection satin from JoAnn Fabric. I cannot wait for the patterns to arrive in the mail so I can start cranking out the muslins.

Creativity

The Baking Doodle Cowl pattern was finally released on Friday, and there were many nice comments about my particular test knit. Always feels good to receive a compliment.

My knitting queue has been a whirlwind of indecision this week! I spent a lot of time narrowing down a new project and decided to go with finally using a gorgeous skein of spring green laceweight yarn to make a pretty spring shawl. Then I decided it’d look great if I carried a strand of self-striping green mohair with it. I was so excited, and then, after knitting the set-up chart, decided it did not look great.

Which is fine because then I realized that we are in the years where my girls can start getting married, which was brought on by receiving an invitation to the wedding of one of Emily’s friends, which led to some deep discussions about weddings, heirlooms, and traditions, and now I feel like I need to get working on wedding shawls so I can have them already made because LDS engagements are really, really short and I know that I will not have enough time to make their wedding shawls when the time comes.

So I sat down to figure out what patterns I want to use for their shawls and inevitably came to the conclusion that I really just want to design an individual shawl for each girl that weaves together meaningful stitch patterns and symbolism that will carry special meaning for them. SO…I’m going to spend the next few Van Crafting Sessions™ researching and drafting shawl patterns. Which is pretty cool.

Gardening

I accomplished nothing, NOTHING in the garden this last week. Michael and I have started watching the series “Homegrown,” which is about transforming people’s backyards into sustainable gardening spaces, so I’m technically doing research. I learned about mushroom logs! I could grow something in the shady parts of the yard! Except that my family despises mushrooms!

Celebrating

There’s potentially a new project brewing. I won’t say more because I honestly do not know if it’s going to materialize. It would be amazing if it does, but also a ton of work. So I won’t be heartbroken if it doesn’t happen. I would regret the missed opportunity, though. More on that if it gets the green light.

Caring

After months of discussing the possibility, we finally have officially started playing a weekly campaign of Dungeons & Dragons on Monday nights. Michael and I are NOT D&Ders, but somehow all four of our kids love the game. We’ve been struggling to have Family Home Evenings for years, but suddenly it’s not difficult to gather everyone. Hopefully the trend continues.

I was subbing one day last week and one of the teachers actually asked me how our family’s new game night was going. Apparently my kids are really talking about it to anyone who will listen. Whatever works, right? Turns out it’s figuring out how to battle fantasy monsters in Steampunk Victorian England. Feel free to tell your friends.

The Beginning of the Craziness that is MARCH

March 5, 2024March 25, 2024Leave a comment

It’s just one month, it’s just one month, it’s just one month…

OK, it is MARCH. Michael’s birthday is coming up, the sun is finally coming out and garden and lawn stuff is starting to happen, AND it’s Music in Our Schools Month, which means so many choir and band events. *whispers* So. Many. Concerts. This week has three huge events: An all-day all-district choir thing, finishing off with a concert that evening; an all-day band festival that won’t have us getting back to campus until 7pm or so, and a big jazz band thing that both Nathaniel’s and Renaissance’s jazz bands will be performing at that will probably not have us getting home until 10pm or so. That’s just one week. There’s so many more weeks like this.

My tendency is to get ~~a little~~ a lot wound up about logistics and time away from home and all that stuff, but at the beginning of this school year I had an epiphany that I could choose to worry about the stuff coming up or I could decide that I was just going to enjoy it. It’s a subtle shift, but it makes a big difference. When I find myself dreading some upcoming event, I try to remember that I’m smack dab in the middle of the years that I was really looking forward to as a parent—I looked forward to the music getting better when they were in high school, and how much easier it would be to be out in public with them because I wouldn’t have to worry about them running into traffic—and I force myself to just simmer down and enjoy this chapter. No extra worrying needed. This is the good stuff.

As far as plans go for the week…

Cooking

This Week’s Meal Plan:

Saturday: Meatloaf
Sunday: Chicken Drumsticks
Monday: Leftovers
Tuesday: Crock Pot: Pineapple Bacon Sausage Soup
Wednesday: Quesadillas
Thursday: Crock Pot: Spaghetti
Friday: Michael’s Choice

As always, it’d be good to bake some bread and/or desserts to throw in there, but with how busy this week is, I don’t think it will happen YET AGAIN.

Clothing

Laundry catch-up after last week’s full stop.
I need to start thinking about spring wardrobe rotations.
Need to start thinking about Easter outfits.
Start planning for Rachel’s choir trip to California in April.
I so badly want to sew up a closet full of 1950s spring formal dresses. There’s no reason for this, other than I want to be making pretty things.

Cleaning

Trying to reset the house after the full stop/basic cleanliness because it’s a busy week

Caring

There’s a handful of doctor appointments that need to be scheduled for various family members. It’s quite the production to make appointments with our local medical facilities, so time needs to be set aside for that sort of thing.
I had a nice visit with a friend last week when she drove me to the ER. (That’s a weird sentence to write.) We debriefed when I was feeling better and decided we should hang out more. So I’m going to follow up on that this week.

Creativity

I need to figure out my new portable project now that I’ve finished the Baking Doodle Cowl test knit. (Post coming soon!)
I don’t think I’ll get time to work on creative projects beyond “In the Van Crafting” this week
I’m thinking about abandoning the Chatsworth BOM quilt. I am just really not enjoying how the pattern designer writes his instructions and I don’t want to extend the mental effort to manipulate his instructions into techniques that work better for me.
I need to decide if I’m going to do a special musical performance near Easter. I kind of set a goal at the beginning of the year that I’d try to do a musical number every six weeks, and I did one in January, so the next one’s deadline is coming up. I have not been good at practicing music at all lately, so I need to tighten that up ASAP.

Gardening

This will be a Year of Resurrection for the garden. It’s been largely ignored for the past two years while I worked on my master’s degree. I have a grand vision of an English Cottage/Potager Garden that takes up my entire backyard someday, but this year we’ll just work with what we’ve got back there and really talk about and start fleshing out extension plans on paper.
I’m still working on taskifying all the various reminders and due dates of stuff for the garden, so I need to be ok with having to purchase some of my plants this year because I’ll remember that I like them and then realize I should have started them six weeks ago—like petunias. Whoops.
I need to inventory my trellises and poles and order more if they’re needed. It’s my hope to get them set up this coming weekend.
I need to do a second round of pea planting.
I need to check and see what seeds I need for April planting and order more if needed. (This is a great list idea that I came up with and very handy!)
Keep an eye on the rhubarb and start working it into our meals as soon as it start producing stalks.
Start more delphinium because there’s only two growing right now.
Use more of the countertop herb garden because it only takes two days for it to become a countertop JUNGLE.

Celebrating

Michael’s birthday is next week, so preparations for that
Easter is at the end of the month, so I’ll need to find out if I’m hosting anything and prep for that.

Community

Our community has a scholarship they give out and the application is due on March 17th, so I need to nag Renaissance about that.
Setup signup questions or something like that for the Band Booster Facebook group because I’m tired of dealing with the spam
Setup an embarrassingly overdue thank you note writing session for Evening of Jazz
Make significant progress on the Trivia Night fundraiser so I don’t look like a lazy loaf at next week’s meeting
Same re: Popcorn fundraiser
Because we have our monthly meeting next week, I need to do a lot of prep work over the weekend for that—agenda, send out reminders, etc.

It’s good to sit down and figure out priorities for the upcoming week. When I first sat down to write this post, I was overwhelmed by what I saw on the calendar, but once I sit and think about what really needs to be done, it feels much more manageable. Bonus: It also helps me realize how important it is right now to SAY NO to requests. Remember, this is an enjoyable time in parenting, so ENJOY IT. All the beautiful, all the fun, all the exciting stuff—All of that only happens if you’re willing to put in the behind-the-scenes work. I thought about this really hard last spring and came up with a great motto that I use when the work starts feeling like a little too much: I welcome the work that makes my life beautiful.

Because, darn it, I want a gloriously beautiful life for me and my family. So I’ll show up and I’ll do the work.

Have a great week!

Flare-ups Happen, It’s OK

March 1, 2024March 2, 2024Leave a comment

There’s not a lot to report for this week because I had to deal with a pain flare-up that required a visit to the emergency room early in the week and had me focused on pain management for a couple of days beyond that. The good news is that I started feeling better yesterday and even managed to tough it out and go to Renaissance and Nathaniel’s band concert, and I was even able to go into work today. Sigh. Take care of your backs, people. So many difficulties start to stem from an injury to your back.

Creativity

I always think I’m going to be able to make great strides in crafting when I’m down and out with a flare-up, but when I have to add pain meds to the mix I can’t craft at all, as crafting + pain meds never ends well. Seeing that I’m pattern testing for other people, I didn’t want to touch those projects and potentially derail them beyond repair. It’s something else when it’s only my time and materials on the line; I won’t risk others’ resources.

So I’m behind on my test knit for the Baking Doodle Cowl. It’s about 50% done. I’m planning to spend a chunk of time working on it some more over the weekend.

I haven’t touched anything else in the craft room, which is a major sad. I did receive some packages of new materials for some projects, but haven’t even opened them. Frustrating week!

Gardening

My little herb garden is now a jungle that will need some pruning over the weekend. I can’t believe how fast these plants are growing! Friendly note: Don’t be afraid to use dill. I cut the dill plant back to almost nothing last Sunday, it had replaced all that growth by Tuesday, and now on Friday it looks to be about three times larger than it was a week ago. I’ve always been so afraid to use my herb plants, but this little countertop experiment is teaching me a lot about the hardiness of these plants! The kids have been given total access to the herbs and are encouraged to decimate the plants for cooking. I’m almost to the point of wondering if we even could kill these plants through culinary usage? Could be a weird goal to set…ha ha ha.

The rhubarb is starting to unfurl legitimate leaves, so I believe I can start using it in a few weeks. I’ll make rhubarb crumbles, make some rhubarb marmalade, freeze some rhubarb for making Blubarb Jam during the summer, and I also saw a recipe on Pinterest for a vanilla rhubarb jelly that looks enticing. Which reminds me that I desperately need to clean out the pantry if I want to have any sort of room for canned goods this year. The pantry is a complete disaster. Oooh, I think I also have some sort of recipe for rhubarb-glazed pork medallions in a cookbook somewhere. I like cooking with rhubarb because it has the added bonus of deep cleaning any pot it’s cooked in. (Did you know it’s the secret ingredient in Bar Keeper’s Friend?) I started a Pinterest board for rhubarb recipes a couple of years ago if you’re looking for some rhubarb options in the coming months!

No sprouting from the sweet peas or peas that I’ve planted. I was supposed to plant another section of peas this week, so hopefully I’ll get to it over the weekend. I’m doing a big experiment with planting times and starting seeds this year, so we’re going to just keep our minds open and remain curious about how things work out with these seeds. I’d really like to establish a planting calendar that works specifically for our property, and the only way to do that is to start and experiment.

The started pansies and delphinium are doing…OK. I need to thin them out and they’re going through water really fast, which is tough to stay on top of. I had five delphinium sprouts two weeks ago, and now I only have two. I struggle to get this type of plant started. I’m going to start some more seeds over the weekend because I adore delphinium plants for their beautiful blue color and their unmatched ability to lend an “English cottage” vibe to the garden. I think I spend about $15-20 for each plant when I buy them from the nursery, so starting my own will save me a lot of money. AND they’re a perennial, so they come back every year! The last ones I had were back in Utah; I haven’t wanted to spend a chunk of cash on them here in Washington. They make me happy, so I’m reestablishing them in the garden this year.

Celebrating

I had to drop one of the parties the kids and I were thinking about doing because I really needed this last week to make progress on it, and that didn’t happen. I’ve made note of everything we were thinking of doing, and I’ll revisit it in the future. The girls still want to throw a spring tea party sometime in April or May, and that is still doable with our remaining time frame, so maybe I’ll just shift focus to that. Plans also need to be made regarding Renaissance’s graduation party, which will take place in June or July. I still have time to get going on that; I just need to remember that it’s out there so I don’t commit to anything that will conflict.

And that’s what happened this week. Some weeks don’t see a lot of forward progress, and that’s ok. The nice thing about a flare-up is that they tend to occur many weeks apart from each other, so I’m looking forward to a handful of really productive weeks!

And congratulations! We made it to March! It only gets better from here! More and more sunlight, we’ll just ignore Daylight Savings Time coming up in a bit, and more and more opportunities to be outside and enjoy the shift from cold to only slightly chilly! I hope you have a great weekend and wish you all the best as you embark upon a new, hopefully sunshine-filled month.

New Week, Same Me, New Project(s)

February 20, 2024February 20, 2024Leave a comment

I like starting my Mondays off with a to-do list for the week and I like checking in on Fridays to see how well I did in accomplishing the things I said I’d do. I especially like Fridays where I get to post a finished project, so the Baa-ble Hat made me pretty happy.

The last two weeks have seen a lot of illness in our home, so I’ve been hard pressed to find writing time. Thankfully, it looks like everyone is healthy enough to attend school this week, so I can come back to a more regular schedule—hopefully!

I received confirmation last week that I was accepted into the knitting pool for the upcoming release of Pacific Knit Co.’s “Baking Doodle Cowl” pattern.

When I threw my hat into the ring to become a test knitter, I didn’t think I’d get it. But, you miss all the shots you don’t take, so I’m taking the shots when they come my way. And, hey, they did decide to take a chance on me and I now need to complete a knitted colorwork cowl by early March, which means I need to tweak my projects list.

While we were sick, the kids and I started waxing eloquent over the parties we used to throw, and there may be some shimmery, slowly gelling into reality, kind of maybe plans to throw a party or two in the next few months as well. We’re obsessed. Don’t hate on us because we’re fun.

Two weeks ago’s list:

Finish the Baa-ble Hat
~~Start or pick up another knitting project for on-the-go crafting~~
Make a dent in the quilting of the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt
Put some time in on the Chatsworth Block of the Month
Start prepping fabric for Nathaniel’s birthday quilt
~~Start working on a new pattern from Fat Quarter Shop~~

This week’s list:

Working on the Baking Doodle Cowl pattern. I’d like to be done with the knitting by March 1 so I can have decent time to block and photograph without rushing in order to have everything ready to go for the social media post on March 5. That’s given me fifteen days to knit it up. So the schedule is:
- 25% done: Sunday, Feb 18 (Haven’t hit that yet, but close)
- 50% done: Thursday, Feb, 22
- 75% done: Monday, Feb 26
- 100% done: Friday, Mar 1
New FQS pattern: I had hoped to be done with the assembly of all the blocks by this point, but illness took its toll. The goal is to be done with them by the end of this week and possibly assembling the quilt top.
Start figuring stuff out on the parties front.
I need to taskify my current projects. “Taskify” is the word I use to describe the process of breaking down a project into its individual tasks and assigning due dates to each of those steps. It takes a lot of thought, but once you get it figured out and input it into your reminder/to-do list system, it makes it way easier to stay on top of everything and actually get stuff done. I’ve got a lot of the individual tasks and due dates figured out, but still need to input them into my to-do list app. I’m behind on a couple projects because I don’t have any reminders coming through about due dates.
Start spending some time in the garden when the weather is conducive. Time to start putting the gardening routine into place! I’ve planted the sweet peas and the peas, so I need to at least keep those areas weed-free. I’ve also started quite a few of my early spring seeds, and I’m looking forward to transplanting them at the end of March/beginning of April.

I hope you’ve got some projects on your radar for this week that make you excited! I’m so happy that we’re seeing signs of spring everywhere! I spent an hour in the garden yesterday with the kids and it was so nice to feel the (mild) sun on our skin and to move our bodies and smell the dirt. Winter’s almost over! Good luck this week!

Fresh Start Monday/Tuesday

February 6, 2024Leave a comment

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Happy Monday/Tuesday, friend! I had planned to post this yesterday, but my Monday turned into a very long day with no time for blogging, so a Tuesday post it is!

What are your plans for this week? How are you faring with the weather and the season? I’m seeing a lot of evidence of the February blahs all around me here, so I hope you’re doing what you need to do in order to feel as well as you can during this time of year.

We were blessed with an unusual bout of mild weather last week and I made a point of going out into my garden and getting some sunshine. I didn’t accomplish much out there; I mostly just looked at what sort of work was in store for me in a few weeks, but it felt good to connect with that space and allow myself to do some dreaming about what spring and summer holds in store. The rhubarb is starting to grow, and I was excited to create my first recurring garden reminder of 2024 to check the garden for some homegrown produce in the weeks ahead. I normally just make rhubarb crisp—do you have any great ideas or recipes for rhubarb? This plant is prolific and I do not use as much of it as I could, which I’d like to improve upon this year.

We celebrated Emily’s 20^th birthday over the weekend with too much food and, at her request, a big bunch of Dungeons & Dragons, so I didn’t make much progress on crafty things, which is totally fine: People are what matter more! She created a quick-play campaign based on Greek mythology, and it was the first time I’d play the game since I was in elementary school, so I was agonizingly slow at understanding what was going on, but we were having a grand ol’ time by the finish. My character is Penelope O’Paca, a Tyrian purple llama centaur cleric who is a member of the weaving guild. I had a blast healing everyone, using my downtime to collect plants for dyes, and weaving magical garments for my party of warriors.

The Baa-ble Hat is coming along quickly. It’s become my watching-TV knit, and it’s February, so there’s many moments to work on it, even with the unexpected milder weather. I’ve mostly just been making socks in recent years, so it’s nice to zip ahead with such a small project.

I’m a little leery about whether or not it’s going to actually fit me, because 1) The circumference of my head is 2 inches larger than the average 21 inches that most adult hat patterns strive to fit, and 2) It’s stranded color work, which, even though it’s my favorite thing to knit, is usually less stretchy because of the carried strands. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever made myself a stranded colorwork hat that ever fit. I’m trying to keep the floats loose, but…you know, it usually isn’t enough. This is such an easy knit, however, that I would be willing to re-knit it on bigger needles if it doesn’t turn out the size I need it to be.

I’m not sure if I love how the white and blue yarn are creating a wispy cloud effect, or if I don’t like the lack of contrast between the sky and the clouds.

Looking at the week ahead, I’m hoping to:

Finish the Baa-ble Hat
Start or pick up another knitting project for on-the-go crafting—there’s a lot of dental check-ups this week, which means a lot of sitting around in waiting rooms. Knit Picks has a sale on their Swish yarn this month over at crochet.com, so I’m thinking about starting a project with that yarn because it’s machine washable and easy to care for.
Make a dent in the quilting of the Rainbow Coin Strip quilt, and maybe even finish the quilting—I think I only have the borders left to do, which is quite possibly my least favorite part of quilting a quilt, and I’m really stuck as to what I should quilt in the borders.
Put some time in on the Chatsworth Block of the Month. The fabric is almost prepped, so it should be easy to pick up and start.
Start prepping fabric for Nathaniel’s birthday quilt.
Start working on a new pattern from Fat Quarter Shop.

There’s so much more I’d like to be able to say I’m going to do, but that list alone feels like too much, so I’ll stop there.

I hope you’re able to find time this week to pursue some creativity and restore your spirits! We’re beyond the halfway point between the darkest day of the year and the Spring Equinox (when the days become longer than the nights), so we’re almost back into Sunshine Time. You can do it! February isn’t forever!

Welcome Back

January 21, 20241 Comment

I promised that I’d check back in by the end of January, so here I am! I apologize for the long absence—I was finishing up my last two classes for my master’s degree, and with the start of the school year and all the craziness that accompanies getting three non-driving teenagers to their practices, rehearsals, lessons, and games I knew I wasn’t going to have any time for much else. I hope your autumns were lovely, and I hope this winter isn’t treating any of you too shabbily.

So, yeah…master’s degree officially completed, and I even have the physical diploma to prove it! I am not teaching full-time; in fact, I’m just subbing a couple times a week at my kids’ schools because the process of pursuing my master’s degree really opened my eyes to the enormity of what I do in our home each day, and how important that work is. I’ve always been a huge champion for full-time homemaking, but somewhere along the way I lost sight of my enthusiasm for the endeavor and thought my family would be better served by extra funds. Unfortunately, to have me working full-time outside the home meant a whole lot more unexpected expenses that I hadn’t thought to include in my budget workings, while at the same time cutting down on my time to provide a lot of the domestic labor and relationship-building that is the key to our family being able to survive on one income and have our children feel loved and supported. It was a very eye-opening experience and it has me scrutinizing the thought process that led me to believe that we’d be better off with me working. I’m trying to be more intentional regarding the media I consume because I was heavily influenced by various discontent voices throughout the pandemic, and I regret many of the decisions I made as a result of listening to them. It just goes to show that being an adult doesn’t mean you’ve figured everything out, eh?

So, I’m home again and trying to figure out how to go forward from here. I’d like to pivot with my master’s degree into some sort of creative education sphere, but I’m stumped as to how to make that happen. I am also eyeballs deep in parenting at the moment, so all of those aspirations might just wait until my empty nest phase, which is slated to begin in just four and a half years. Such a bittersweet milestone on the horizon! My life has been kids, kids, kids for almost twenty years now—I foresee considerable difficulties with adjusting to an empty nest existence! Goodness am I glad to have found Michael early on and dedicated everything to building our family. It’s been such a great journey.

I want to blog more because I enjoy it, it doubly serves as a record of what we’re up to throughout the years, and it’s been AMAZING to spend time in the craft room again! However, I’m incredibly without direction at the moment—my back injury improved immensely over the course of my master’s degree program due to the adoption of a yoga routine—so resuming my pre-pandemic levels of craftiness might not be feasible, as I was crafting so much back then largely because I was literally incapable of doing much else around the house due my severe muscle atrophy. Please have patience with me as I figure out healthy levels of housekeeping versus creativity! (The age-old dilemma, yes?) I wholeheartedly believe in the importance of consistently including creative endeavors in one’s schedule to maintain sanity and an enthusiasm for life, but too much of a good thing can create other problems if you’re irresponsible about it!

Happy January, and I hope you’re finding time for some creativity every day during these cold months ahead. I’m looking forward to writing more and hope to give you more posts soon!

A Case of the Februaries Demands More Knitting

February 11, 2022February 10, 20221 Comment

I do have a finished project post to show you, but I also keep procrastinating driving to the post office and actually mailing it off to its intended recipient, so…I could spin it to sound like the USPS is sucking at its job, but it would be an absolute lie because it’s really just me.

Although, the USPS is taking its sweet time getting a package of yarny goodness to me that was supposed to be delivered last Monday, but then it disappeared from their radar for a couple of days, and magically popped up at a regional distribution center yesterday. Hmph.

As predicted, February has cast a grayish pallor on everything in sight, and I’m feeling it, hard. I keep telling myself that it is a temporary feeling, that life really isn’t just cold and dreariness, and that spring will be here soon with sunshine and birds twittering and flowers, but then you have to stop thinking about spring and re-focus on what’s in front of you and…it’s February. Usually there’s some crazy weather going on to distract me, but not this year. Just cold and drizzly rain, and a lot of fog, which is just unsettling. There’s not supposed to be fog when you’re driving to the school to pick up your kids in the afternoon. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

We are having a couple of nice days right now, but I absolutely do not trust them at all and I refuse to allow them to get my optimism engaged, only to have it crushed and ground into the asphalt next week. No. This is fake spring. I’ll try to get outside and soak up some desperately needed sun, but I’m not going to let my heart get carried away. It would be a great time to do some clean-up in the garden, though…

I think the fabric and yarn companies have figured out this February sloggy feeling, because geez, the sales and deals coming out of ’em right now are incessant. It’s been bad, people. But oh so good. But I may need to set up a temporary email filter on any incoming messages from the crafty stores because this past week has shown that I have no known defenses against their February sales. Dear goodness. Cara, it doesn’t count for much if you’re trying to reduce your stash and UFOs, only to then gorge yourself and bring in more stash.

The Yarn Harlot wrote up a blog post in recent days that echoes my sentiments about February, and she admitted that she’s just giving in to every “start a new project” impulse that rises in her heart. And I kinda sorta love that idea, because I am in desperate need of dopamine hits at the moment and indulging in some Startitis to achieve the effect is far friendlier to my bank account than retail therapy.

So I’ve started making wild promises to my kids about knitting them things and I will probably regret it in a month’s time, but whatevs. Michael’s socks are finished, and I was looking through my Ravelry project page to figure out which family member has gone the longest without receiving a handknit from me, and it turns out I’ve not knit a thing for my boy since he was in the first grade. (That’s five years for those of you who are also experiencing the Februaries and don’t want to do the math.) I called him over and we perused the Ravelry pattern database, and he finally decided that what he wanted his dear ol’ mum to knit him was a pig hat. Because he’s sad that his monkey hat doesn’t fit anymore.

Guys, I knit that monkey hat for his first winter of his life. He’s worn it ever since, and would probably still be wearing it except that I outlawed it because it’s simply too small. I don’t care that he can technically stretch it over his noggin…it’s too small. The boy is knitworthy, to say the least…but only if it’s an animal hat, apparently, because I made him a fair isle hat in the first grade, and he dutifully wore it that year, but then reverted back to the monkey hat in the second grade and I don’t think I’ve seen the fair isle hat on his head ever since.

The pink yarn listed in the pattern for the pig hat? I ALREADY OWNED IT. Can the Universe be any more clear on what a great idea this project was?!?!

Except, when I went to go unearth it from the stash, I couldn’t find it. I scoured the stash from top to bottom three times, went through the knitting UFO bin twice, and then looked around in every other UFO bin just in case it randomly got put in them when we moved, but alas, none of the perfect pink yarn could be found. I think I got rid of it when we moved? It’d been sitting in a partially-knitted state for years because I bought it to make a vest for Nathaniel when he was little, but it turns out that he gets heat rashes from wearing vests, so I never finished it, and I was trying to cull crafty supplies and it wasn’t a shade of pink I particularly liked to begin with…so, I think I got rid of it. There’s no notes in my stash listing on Ravelry, but I can’t find the stuff, so I’ve now marked it as “given away.” But I honestly have no idea what I did with it.

Undaunted, I hunted down various shades of pink bulky-weight yarn, screenshotted them all and cropped them into a grid, then texted the image to Nathaniel and asked him to pick one, and he picked one of the most brightest shades of bubble gum pink and he is thrilled that it will be adorning his head in a few weeks’ time. I love it that he loves pink, it’s adorable.

Since I was paying for shipping anyways, I figured I’d throw in some more yarn to my order and looked up which family member was next due for a handknit, and it turned out it was Renaissance, who I last crafted for three years ago. She wasn’t terribly interested in anything, but then I had a bold flash of inspiration and reminded her that football season will be back all-too-soon, and wouldn’t a pair of fingerless gloves with fold-over tops just be amazing during the outdoors flute-playing season? She immediately agreed, and I added in some maroon superwash merino to my order. I did also add two more projects’ worth of yarn for things for myself, but then got rid of them because knitting season will inevitably wind down come spring and gardening and English paper piecing time, and most of my stash is comprised of these kinds of orders–the extra skeins I buy because I was paying for shipping anyway. If I’m still interested in the projects for myself come autumn, I’ll buy the yarn for them then.

Sooo…not exactly “knitting from the stash,” but I am excited about two new projects. And while I was rifling through the stash, trying to find the perfect pink yarn, I noticed that I had a lot of blue & green sock yarn leftovers in the yarn scrap bin, and I thought they’d probably go together fabulously in a linen stitch scarf. And since my yarny goodness package fell off the radar for half a week and I finished Michael’s socks and I think I may have knit them on the wrong size needles but won’t know until he finally tries them on but it’s a busy week and we’ve really only seen each other as we turn off the light to go to sleep, that hasn’t happened yet…and I don’t want to start another pair of socks for him from the stash because I don’t know what size needle to use anymore, but it’s February and darn it I need a project, so I cast on for a linen stitch scarf with those sock yarn scraps:

I think the scraps go together a little too well, actually, so it will lack that fun contrast that I like in this pattern when you use colorways that don’t match perfectly, but it’ll still be a pretty, analogous scarf. It took me a year to knit the last linen stitch scarf I made, so I’m not expecting a quick finish with this. I think it will be my couch knitting project.

And, just for fun, I’ll finish with another picture of the Monkey Hat of Yore:

Hopefully he’ll love his pig hat just as much, minus the yarn-chewing. Good luck surviving the rest of February, however you choose to do it.

December Morning in the Garden: Thoughts on Resting

December 9, 2021December 5, 2021Leave a comment

I should have cleaned out my garden back in October, but I was still healing from foot surgery. Now that my foot is technically well enough to handle yard work it’s been raining or super cold. But all that leftover foliage mixed with a cold and misty morning sure makes for some lovely photos.

I love noticing the flow of nature, and for the last few years I’ve tried to emulate its rhythms in my own life. Winter is such an interesting idea–time to rest. In a society where we’re all working and recreating non-stop and trying to launch a side hustle at the same time, rest can be an elusive concept.

I’ve always appreciated the concept of the Sabbath Day and its insistence on slowing down once a week, but I’ve always had music callings at church, which meant Sunday was one of my most busy and dreaded days of the week. Yes, I love music; but that doesn’t downplay the stress and anxiety that comes with organizing and performing said music. I stepped away from and declined all the holiday music commitments this year, and I’m so glad I did. No rehearsals, no dealing with sore throats, no pounding heartbeat before a performance…just calm appreciation of the season.

I was sick last week with some little thing that is now creeping through the entire family. As much as I resent the missed opportunities to get ahead on the Christmas crafting, it sure was nice to Netflix and Nap during daylight hours. I’m reminded of the 12 Week Year insistence of including free time in your schedule (Breakout Blocks), and I’m realizing that I’ve forgotten to do that since my foot surgery. (Sitting around for six weeks straight will make you feel like you’ve had ENOUGH free time, thankyouverymuch.) I suppose I should make a note to include a block of free time in my week. It’d be nice to do some Christmas baking.

But, ugh, the guilt that comes with resting and doing something just for the enjoyment of it. There’s always more I think I should be doing! Unfortunately, I’ve learned over and over again that if you don’t make time to rest and heal, your body will force you into it with sickness or injury. I’m finally accepting this universal truth and making room for it in my own life. The earth rests every winter and the moon wanes every month–why do I think I need less rest than them?

I like the idea of taking a break in the winter to rest and nurture myself and my family. Christmas festivities infringe on that a bit, but the weeks after Christmas are beautifully quiet. The new year invites reflection and planning while wearing snuggly socks and sweaters. We dream up our vision for the coming year while nurturing our bodies with hearty soups, like we’re infusing ourselves for the work ahead. I love the winter months when they’re spent in quiet activities. Taking a break in the winter is such a lovely ritual.

Because March and April will roll around soon enough and next year’s garden will need planting. It’s a lot easier to do when you’re excited about it because you’ve had a break.

(It’s also a lot easier to do if you’ve cleaned up the last year’s garden before your break…my fingers are still crossed that I can get to it…wish me luck!)