Redefined and starting fresh

I can't really decide on a good title for this blog entry. I'm not really starting over and I'm not deleting anything. I am who I am and that's about it.

I really did not want to lose all my entries over the last two-plus years so I researched and discovered I can change the blog address. Perfect. Then I gave the blog a bit of a face lift and updated some of my links.

Tonite I took a picture of my knitting bag. As of ten minutes ago it was empty. I have now filled it with two more knitting projects and I'm pretty excited. One is a pair of fingerless mitts, the other is a pair of worsted weight socks.

I got two finished projects this weekend which I will post in separate entries. I have new ideas for my knitting life and I have gotten interested in more things over the summer that I'm sure will be brought into the blog. In short, I'm quite excited about starting a new chapter.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself ~ Emerson

In the grand scheme of things does it really matter?

Okay, so that title may not make a whole lot of sense. But let me explain a bit.

About a year ago my heart went out of blogging. I thought "I don't care, I'm not embarrassed, I'm gonna keep on keeping on. I did nothing wrong.

And I think I did a good job of that in the beginning. The time spans between posts are getting longer and longer. I had seen other people abandon their blogs and I was determined that I wasn't going to do that.

However as life as gotten more complicated and I wasn't knitting much over the summer I fell away from blogging.

Well, part of it *is* because I haven't been knitting a lot, but another part of it is because in a way I feel like I'm wearing a scarlet letter -- choose any letter -- because of something out of my control I've been labeled. Do I deserve it? No, none of us do. And no matter how nice I am on other places on the web I feel people are going to make assumptions about me right off the bat.

Now I would be a fool to think that I'm *so important* that everyone in the knitting community knows what this even about or who I am. In reality I'm sure I'm a very tiny blip on the radar of the knitting community.

But then it's hard to believe that when I see how people are coming onto my blog. Sometimes in waves I get hits.

When I first started knitting I scoured the blogosphere. I was constantly on the search for patterns, how-to's, and all kind of ideas to help me on this adventure I was on. I wanted to still leave my mark on the knitting community and in a way I have.

Until the last couple years I never knew how nasty the online community can be. It doesn't matter what online group you are a part of either. But I have also learned that it blows over and then the next month there is some sort of other drama that is taking up people's time.

I could remove certain blog entries from here. Other people's links would be dead, but I would still be out there and I want people to know other people's side of the story.

So what do I do now? Do I just end the blog or do I start a new blog. Fresh start and all that.

I'm gonna have to stew on it for a little bit but I think I know my answer.

FO ~ Splendid shawl

I made this during the month of August. It's the second one I made. I forgot to take a photo of the first one. The first one was a gift to a dear friend who is in need of some comfort right now. This is a Lion Brand pattern and pretty easy. It's also a quick knit and is good for working on while watching tv.

The only thing I did different from the pattern was that I didn't make the crocheted edging. I don't have a proper size crochet hook.

A gift to my bishop

Today my work place had a party to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our bishop's ordination. As soon as I heard about this significant milestone I immediately knew which pattern I wanted to knit for him. The Irish Hiking Scarf.


I made it green to honor his Irish heritage.

The knitting doldrums

So the last several weeks I haven't had it in my to knit or spin. I did both but my heart was not in it. For a long time my two projects was the Adamas shawl and the vanilla sock. The vanilla sock is hardly anything to get excited about and when I made the mistakes on the Adamas shawl and had to frog I felt all my enthusiasm deflate.

Combined with the other stuff that is going on my life I decided to just set everything aside and decompress.

Well, it worked, I think. I've been enjoying all the stuff that we have been doing at our land. The garden is doing great. I took photos but they came out all blurry. But I have actual veggies growing. We've got peas, beans, little baby cukes and one tiny little tomato so far. DH and DS have been out hunting raspberries the last week or so. We thought we'd have to bring raspberry canes in and to our happy surprise there are raspberry canes all over the place. So the plan is to get some blueberry bushes and strawberry plants for next year.

So after decompressing I've felt pretty great the last few weeks. I gradually moved back into spinning and it's been great. Tour de Fleece has really helped with this.


The fiber is Gillyweed from theforbiddenwoolery on etsy. So far I've split it into thirds and I'm still working on the first third of the braid. I've been spinning at least 20 minutes most nights. It's been pretty great.

And I've started working on a shawl out of some acryllic yarn. The Simple, Yet Effective shawl.


This pattern has been exactly what I needed to give my knitting mojo a boost. It's mindless but not too mindless. I've been working on it since middle of last week.

When this shawl is done I think it may be an office shawl. ... Not completely decided yet. After this I suppose I should start thinking about any Christmas knitting that I may do this year.

Tour de Fleece and a mini update

A week ago or so I seen scuttlebutt about the Tour de Fleece coming up. I thought this was perfect since I want to get back to my spinning. So I got my spinning wheel back out and it is in my bedroom right now. I did some quick spinning Sunday night and oh it was heaven. I felt tension leave my body and there is something so soothing about the sounds of the wheel spinning and the foot treadles going.

A few of us over on the BB are going to do a spinalong together. Since we aren't competing against each other we are just setting some goals. Right now I'm trying to decide on personal goals. I have a braid of fiber that I bought a few years ago and I may just spin that OR try my hand at dyeing up some fiber and spin that.

In the knitting world I did start up Adamas but just frogged it again. I managed to make a boo boo on the first repeat and I don't know what I did. This past weekend I started up a vanilla sock again. I am going to keep that project in the background and work on it during the weekends we are out and about.

I have started jogging and I'm learning a ton about my breathing. Last night I went out jogging and I didn't feel like I was dying. I take that as a positive.

My son started summer school this week. So far he is loving it and I think it's a wonderful intro to the school that he will be going to for kindergarten.

Has it really been over a month?

Yikes! :-(

No knitting. That's right. I've done no knitting in almost a month. Cannot recall the last time I did any spinning.

The reason? DH and I bought 10 acres of woodsy goodness. Just about all our spare time is spent out there doing projects.

My Adamas shawl has an error in it. I decided I'm going to just frog it rather than try to stick a lifeline in after the fact.

The sock I'm working on will probably get frogged as well. I'm not real happy with how the ribbing came out when I did the heel gusset.

To be honest I have not been much in the mood for knitting. I have been having some pretty stressful times this last little bit. A lot of it has been work-related. When you work in the newspaper business this is perilous times. And while I probably need the relaxation that knitting gives you, I've been too tense to do any and my guage would probably be way off. I really should be spinning. I am contemplating setting my spinning wheel up in my room and after a certain time in the evening just go in there and start spinning. I've tried setting aside time for myself in the past but it hasn't worked out. I should just say to heck with it and make the time my own.

On the health front, I'm getting close to my peak weight. The work stress of early 2009 had turned me into a stress eater and I gained more than 10 pounds. So I'm now trying to manage my weight and lose it again. So far I think I'm doing all right but it's certainly not coming off as quickly as it did when I was on the Atkins program.

My son is all done with Headstart/Pre-K. The school year went by so fast. I marvel at how far he has come in the last school year. I tell people what he is capable of doing and they are quite impressed. It makes me nervous that he will be more advanced in the other kids in his class, so he will be come bored with school.