Rebecca posted: " The fall flew by. December is always so busy. Even January had enough deadline and events to buzz past. But this month, February, finally ground to a crawl. Every December, I look forward to the deep winter. January, February, and March are just less dem"
The fall flew by. December is always so busy. Even January had enough deadline and events to buzz past. But this month, February, finally ground to a crawl. Every December, I look forward to the deep winter. January, February, and March are just less demanding. I did the math, and on a very good week in deep winter, I spend 93% of my time in my house. If the weather is too cold for walks, and Jared does all the errands, that creeps up to 96%. If church is canceled because the heat isn't working, or craft night is canceled because the library is closed... well, you get the idea. I'm at home a lot.
This doesn't bother me - I grew up at home a lot, and for the most part I like it this way. But you can always get too much of a good thing, and February is where that tends to set in. I'm very productive at my crafts, but it gets harder to get out of my own head. I'm in my house all the time, but it gets harder to connect with the people who live with me.
In the middle of the month, I was hit with a nasty head cold, and it might have been the best thing that could have happened to me. I don't know if you're like this, but when I'm sick, my body stops working, but my mind starts working overtime. I think about all the things I could be doing. This leads to a burst of creative energy - a lot of my book came out of times like this! Sometimes this means I plan a lot of projects - and a lot of purchases, if I'm not careful. Other times, it means I come out of a cold really productive. This time, I got an idea for how to use one of my to-do-list apps a little better, and I came out of bed swinging.
Homemaking
I first heard about Flylady back in high school, from a youth leader (shout out to Monica G!), back when it was primarily an overwhelming email list. In the years since it has evolved into a really useful app. Flylady is less a to-do list than it is a lifestyle - Marla Cilley was helping ADHD homemakers since before we were all getting diagnosed with it. She has this whole thing about shining your sink, which I've done a few times. But the truth is, she's writing for women of a certain age and status, and with homemaking standards that I do not share. I liked the ideas and organization so much that I tried those standards - at one point I even learned how to wax my floors, only to learn that the type of tile in my house does not need waxing. I don't think I will ever polish my furniture.
What I really like about the app is that it's cyclical. There are daily, weekly, and monthly chores. The house is divided into zones, and each zone has a task list, and the zones rotate through each month. It's totally customizable, and I'd massaged these lists a bit, but after my cold, I really whipped them into shape. I got the list of tasks down to a manageable amount that I could actually complete in a few hours a week. I'm not shining my sink, but I am keeping my pretty new bathroom clean, and heaven knows we all spend a lot of time in there. So I'm FLYing now, as Marla puts it, but in my own way!
When I got that post-cold burst of energy, it was just in time for Stringbean's Birthday party. It was just the best day. This is the third year that she's pretty much planned the whole thing herself. I micromanaged her baking her cake and assembling it, but lucky for her, my sickest day was when the cake needed to be decorated. I made the fondant, but she got to decorate the cake unsupervised. And didn't she do a great job?
We worked together to clean, kept our snacks and decorations simple, and Stringbean made all the prizes and stuff herself. A blizzard had been threatening, but as often happens, it was pushed back to the evening and didn't get in the way. Lots of classmates and friends came, and we had a blast.
The every day has its ups and downs. Tempers run short, and one of my children is really struggling to keep an even keel. We are all pulled towards our screens much more than we'd like. But one day at a time, we're more thriving than surviving. My diet is in a good routine, and I'm steadily losing 1 lb/week still. We have an early vacation to look forward to this year as well - this month we got our sabbatical approval and received news of a grant, so our plane tickets are booked. It really helps to have another adventure to look forward to.
The days are already longer, and soon it won't be too cold for Dooner and I to take a sled-walk with the dogs, we'll get the heater at the cabin fixed, and we won't be at home quite so much.
But enough family news and existential musings. What did I make this month?
Knitting
As I wrote about recently, I finished the Solaris sweater, as a vest.
It's a great Sunday wear. I've worn it a couple times now, and with my comfy black shirt I don't feel too dressed up.
I knit a whole other sweater this month too.
Here's a cool shot from when I blocked the yoke to check for fit. This is (nominally) the "Puffin" sweater from Colours of Shetland by Kate Davies, but I made so many drastic changes to it that I barely used the pattern itself. When it's dry I'll do a photo shoot and give you a full description. It's 100% handspun!
There's one more sweater happening. Dooner announced one day that she wanted to crochet herself a sweater. I started her off by teaching her the chain stitch, and we both thought she had it figured out. Two days later she had been struggling with it valiantly, and only made a couple stitches. She gave up and asked me to crochet her a sweater. I am complying.
I bought this yarn from a fellow crafter who moved out of town for retirement; it's Paton's Classic Wool Worsted. I bought like 15 balls - enough for sweaters for all three of my girls - and have tried casting it on a couple of ways. Somehow it seems happier in crochet. I like the way the colour repeats are working up - just about the right amount of crazy. And I learned a new stitch! The half-double herringbone. Crochet stitch names are hilarious. (Says the spinner, who hangs her niddy-noddy off her mother-of-all, by her oriface hook.)
Spinning
I've been working away at my Capstone / Track 2 project, which I explained here. I actually finished the yarn last week, just beavering away for 15-30 minutes a day! I'll write more about it when the time comes to share about it on The Wool Circle. But here's a little sneaky preview of the yarn before it was washed.
If you scroll back up to the picture of the grey sweater blocking, you can spy some swatches blocking too. I'm trying to get this cast on as quickly as possible, but I'm second-guessing my pattern choices. I want to make this into a sweater, but my existing plan might just look too crazy. Besides, I only have like 800 yards. I need to add some white or grey yarn to give the eye somewhere to rest, and maybe pull it all together. Maybe some sketching is in order.
I'm fulfilling my 15-a-day spinning a few little samples for teaching content, but I have to decide what to spin next! Jump right into a big singles project for summer teaching content? Keep spinning some yak/silk lace I sampled for last week? Spin the last two batts of qiviut blend that I have prepped? I don't know! Decision paralysis!
Sewing
So, like, I made a quilt top this month?
Back in November, Stringbean and I designed and made a quilt top together inspired by Hogwarts house colours. I bought one little set of themed fat quarters, and all the rest of it was scraps. Dooner wanted a Paw Patrol quilt. I put a yard of girly paw-patrol themed fabric on her Christmas wish list, and Jared's parents kindly bought it for her. I figured I would choose motifs and set them in log cabins, as you see above. I'd never done log cabins before and wanted to have a go. But Dooner herself picked all the other fabrics, and picked the window-frame log cabin style. I wanted to do a day-and-night style with blues on one side and pinks on the other, but her choice looks nice too!
MiniMighty now needs a quilt top too. She's been agitating for years for a BB-8 themed blanket, inspired entirely by this pattern. But, working with scraps, we decided on one Star Wars themed fabric, and are using scraps for the rest. Looking at Craftsy classes, we decided on a life savers design with a very interesting construction technique. This week I've been going through the scrap collection I was donated last week, making scrappy squares where I didn't have whole pieces, and turning them into pinwheel blocks.
Can you guess how these pinwheels will turn into lifesavers? It's pretty funky. I'll show you when it's done. Right now I'm waiting on the rest of the fabric to come in.
Once I've got these three quilt tops done, I have to think about backing. I've got lots of ideas; we'll see if anything comes of them.
...Other
The first half of the month saw our kitchen turned into a Valentine factory.
As you may have gathered above, part of dealing with being sick was watching Craftsy classes. My subscription runs out this month, so I wanted to watch a few of my favourite quilting classes again, but things spiraled out of control a bit.
We had been donated a whole sack of embroidery thread, and the kids would use it for things here and there, so it was getting a bit messy. Thinking (erroneously) that the thread might be useful for church, the girls and I turned the floss into a tidy collection, sorted by type and colour, in an old Lego organizer box.
The plan to make friendship bracelets at church went nowhere, but then I took a peek at embroidery classes on Craftsy. When I was sick, doing a few patterns from an older "Intro to Embroidery" class was just the thing to get me through a long day.
This cheeky motto is so silly. Of course it's a pun from a rather infamous song, but frankly I did it because "Daisy me rollin'" is the punchline to Dooner's favourite knock-knock joke. But mercifully, my haters are few and far between.
This one just makes me laugh. It captures my workaholism in one flourished shout that, I hope, helps me remember a bit of perspective.
I'm not sure how I'm going to display these. They're just fun for a little shot of dopamine, getting something done quickly when so many of my projects are long term.
We're getting into a good routine over at Wool n' Spinning. In February we dug through the "extreme" drafts, true woolen and true worsted, and this month we'll do the "semi" drafts, continuous backward and over the fold. You can get all the links on Rachel's blog: February here, and March is available to newsletter subscribers. I'm enjoying having more of a teaching role in the Staplers group. We're deep in the thick of this module, and of the plates I juggle, this is still one of my favourites.
I am deeply suspicious of March. My expectations for it are very low. I feel like the tide has turned on February doldrums, but I will not be fooled! This too shall pass, just not yet!
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