Archive for the 'just chit chat' Category
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Post-Burnout Bombardment?
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
I’m sort of bombarding you lately, with product reviews, books, my own new stuff…The last thing I want this to be is a “Selling Stuff Blog.”
I was thinking about this today, and it’s the result of coming out of this mental block I’ve been having.
I was able to find the root of the problem, I think…or at least one major part. Eliminating that has helped me so much! I’ve been feeling creative, energized, and just back to normal. It’s amazing how much one seemingly little thing can affect so many ares of one’s life.
So, now that that’s over…I’ve got the energy to process through all these ideas that have been percolating for so long.
I’ll get back to “daily life” posting, don’t worry…but for now I’m in Revved Up mode.
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My risky behavior gets you a Soak promo code!
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Well, in the spirit of Summer knitting, FOs, and making things that I really LOVE (instead of doing a bunch of stuff because I HAVE to) I overdyed my Clapotis.
What does that have to do with Summer knitting? It’s a silk – blend yarn, and perfect to take to the movies or wherever the A/C might be blasting this summer!
What does that have to do with FOs? It’s something that is currently an FO, and will be even MORE F once I get it to a color that I can actually wear.
What does that have to do with making things that I really LOVE (instead of doing a bunch of stuff because I HAVE to?) I’ve been fighting this burnout, trying to rid myself of toxic people, situations that make me feel uncomfortable, tasks that I don’t enjoy or that are just not fulfilling…and somehow turning this scarf that took SOoooooOOOooo long to knit into something that I will actually use and love is a part of that.
It started out as a pretty Salmon color. I love this color. But I don’t like it next to my face. It’s just one of those colors that looks great on the mannequin, but not next to my skin. It’s a little too pink and not orange enough for my hair color. I would see it and think that I *should* like it…I *should* wear it. But I don’t. I don’t wear this color.
In this picture, I’ve folded it in half lengthwise, rolled it up, and put it in a bowl. I poured Rust Orange dye in the center, and Jet Black around the edges.
When I took it out of the dye bath, I could tell that (because this is a blend and I used a dye for cotton…so the silk will dye well but the wool won’t) it was going to be much lighter than a pure black. It’s risky, just pouring on dye and hoping that I like it in the end…but what the heck.
After the dye bath, it went into the protective mesh undie-washing bag and into the washer with a couple squirts of Soak Wash.
Here it is fresh out of the washer and off the clothesline (I use the gentlest cycle, cold water wash and rinse, with a fast spin. Spinning it really helps to get the extra water out so that it drys fast on the line.)
(I’m not sure what’s going on with my camera today…Mazie prints on the lens? It’s acting very Moonlighting.)
The Soak did a great job of washing out all the dye and mordant…and it smells great!
Because Jacqueline (the owner of the Soak company) is so generous, if you decide to order soak ANY TIME FOR THE NEXT MONTH, enter the discount code Soak09 and you’ll save 15%.
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Still fighting the burnout beast!
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Well, here it is Wednesday already!
On Monday, Mazie, Mom, and I did a little photoshoot for an upcoming Stitch CoOp project. It was really fun to put Mazie in all of the pretty knits from my friends and colleagues and run around the beautiful Young Park here in Las Cruces.
Here’s a little preview!
Yesterday, I finished up my Lion Notebook Blog post for the week! We’re working on the SLEEVES section of the Textured Circle Shrug. I had to make my two sleeves look very different because a lot of the KALers are modifying their sleeves, and I want to have one example “by the book” and another one that will (hopefully) help out those adventurous souls who are off on their own a little more. Check the Notebook Blog tomorrow to see what I mean. This two different sleeves thing goes against my sense of symmetry and order…but! It’s for the Greater Good! (lol!)
Man, I’m still feeling a little stressed / burned out, but I’m loving my bamboo project:
It’s just what I needed for a relaxing little knitt. I’m actually pleased to report that I like working with my own yarn, too. (I’ve got about 40 hanks to post on Esty when I get back from my trip this weekend.) I’ve made a few scarves with it, both my Reclamation pattern (click the shop link above if you are curious) and the patterns that come in the Etsy Kit, but man, it’s nice to see that it works up well in stockinette as a garment, too.
My little project so far:
You can tell that I haven’t found that much time to work on it!
Here’s an article that Shannon Tweeted about Creative Burnout.
This really made me think: “The days of the 9-to-5 job are gone and the boundaries between work and home are blurred to the point of non-existence. We’re expected to be available nearly all the time, and the problem is often exacerbated for freelancers or anyone who works primarily from a home office where the only divide between being “at home” and being “at work” is a single door or a flight of stairs.
It’s not a badge of honor to work 80 hours a week or to answer e-mail or to Twitter at all hours of the night. Ask yourself: Have you set sufficient boundaries between your job and your life outside of work? Are you guarding those boundaries?”
If it makes you stop and think, too, I suggest that you read the article. I really need to find the balance, and consciously separate work time from family time. The last few years, I just sat around in the evenings with my laptop on my lap, doing my stuff, checking my email, etc. Now, though, I can’t do that. I have a toddler who needs me and who I want to spend time with. I’ll figure it out, I’m just glad that I was able to recognize it (burnout) for what it is!
My mom also just handed me an article on Toxic Personality Types to Avoid…those people in life that just make you feel BAD. I seem to end up with a lot of these around, and I’m not sure why. Something else to look into!
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Am I burned out or not?
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Well, I had a phonecall with the editorial director at my publisher today to talk about the book I’m writing. I’m being kind of slow this time, because I’m just having problems sitting down and writing. As you can see, I’m totally procrastinating with all this sewing, and I’m just not very far on it.
So she asked me if I’m burned out. I don’t really think that I’m totally burned out of ideas, but I’m definitely rolling the question around in my head. You know (if you’ve been reading) that I’m having kind of a hard spring. But am I really done knitting?
I decided to do some yarny stuff to see if I really just don’t like to knit any more, or if I’m just in a distractable state.
A couple of weeks ago, I ordered an electric skeinwinder from ordered from crazy monkey. It came today and I started to put it together, but I’m missing a couple of parts. Emailed them to let them know, so hopefully in a few days I’ll be able to skein up all that yarn from a few posts ago.
So, since I couldn’t do that, I decided to use some of the bamboo I dyed to make something for me to wear. I’ve been wanting something like this for a while…here’s a simple sketch:
It’s basically just going to have big flowy arms and not be fitted anywhere. The yoke is knit in the round in stockinette (at least to start out) and the body…we’ll see.
I hope I’m not fully burned out…that would really suck.
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Weekend in Review!
Monday, May 4th, 2009
This was a spectacular weekend!
We’ve started something new called “Studio Saturday” where Nathan gets to be ALONE in his STUDIO (he’s a painter) on Saturdays from 10 -6, and then Sunday is family day. It might sound contrived and forced, and how can we force artistic whatever into such a regimented, timed space?
WELL. He’s been Jonesing for studio time since Mazie was born, and trying to steal minutes away and it just wasn’t working. I thought that if we just said, “Ok, we won’t bug you from X time to X time on Saturday, but them Sunday is Family time” it might both help him to get some work done and help us to have a more pleasant time when we’re together (he won’t keep sneaking off.)
AND IT WORKED!!
Saturday, Mazie and I got up and went to the Farmer’s Market, to the quilt shop and to the yarn shop.
Then, we went over to Cindy’s friend Mano’s house and knit / sat around / played with the dog. Then, we did some errands and came home. We got home a little before 6, but by the time we had the grill going and the kebabs on…it was 6!
It wasn’t even that hard! I just organized all of our errands / visiting into that block of time and we were able to give Daddy some ME time. lol.
Sunday, we just had a great day spending time together. We did some stuff in the yard, went out for breakfast, just had a very nice, easygoing day.
During nap times, I worked on a few tumbling blocks:
I made them gigantic. I love how they look. These fabrics just make my heart race, especially the black with metallic gold splatter paint on it. I just LOVE that one! I made the blocks so big because my prints are big, and I want to show them off. I got all of these fabrics at Unravel here in town. (They’re 25% off!)
I’m not using a pattern exactly, I just cut out a bunch of 60-degree diamonds and am putting them together. I’ve been looking at tumbling blocks quilts online, and it seems like almost all of them have the black or darkest diamond on the left, and I’ve got mine on the right. Oh well. It still does the optical illusion for me, so I’m leaving it. I’ve got about 32 blocks left to place, and am still trying to decide how long / wide to make it. I’m definitely keeping the edges wavy (not squaring it up.)
Don’t worry, knitters, I haven’t abandoned you! I’ll be talking to you over on the Lion Notebook for the next few weeks.
Posted in just chit chat, sewing | 2 Comments »
Monday
Monday, April 20th, 2009
Well, it’s back to (knitting) work for me! …here’s my “work bag” (actually a totebag that I need to give back to Kristi at some point.)
In that bag are so many unfinished patterns, sketches, swatches…all screaming for attention! I’ve already even crossed a few things off my to do list.
This is the first day in quite a few weeks that I’ve woken up feeling like working. Mazie woke up at 6:30, and we all just got on up! It was nice to be up with the birds in the cool of the morning.
My daughter is not an early riser, usually. She some days wakes up as late as 10:00. It all depends on when she’s finally able to settle down and go to sleep. I was the same way as a kid. My parents had to put me to bed several times every night before it stuck. Mazie hates to miss any of the action.
Someone commented after my last post asking why we’re teaching Mazie to sign. It wasn’t something that I had decided all along to do. I think we started it because we got the Baby Einstein DVD and she enjoyed it, and started actually doing the signs herself. Then Nathan and I had to quick try to learn from the DVD, too. (And now my mom and dad are also signing with Mazie.)
At this point, we have pretty much outgrown the first DVD and gone on to using other books and references. There’s a lot of information available on the internet (both pro and con) about baby signing. We haven’t taken any classes, just tend to look up signs for words that we need as we need them.
A lot of the tantrums that happen at Mazie’s age (approaching two years) are because babies can understand most of what we say, but don’t have the physical capability to make words in a way that we can understand them. So they become frustrated at not having their wants understood…and the only way they can communicate that is to have a little tantrum.
SO. Signing gives babies who haven’t yet learned how to speak a way to communicate. For example, she can tell me when she’s hungry, thirsty, wet, and even what specific things she wants to eat or drink. She has a sign for “all done” so that instead of crying to get down from her high chair, she just tells me she’s ready.
Just so far, I think we’re seeing a lot fewer tantrums than we would without the signs. (Because we do see some, and mostly when we can’t figure out what she wants, or what specifically she wants to do.)
In other news! Nathan and I actually took off a couple of weekends ago! We went to the Inn of the Mountain Gods in Mescalero. It’s a beautiful spot. I recommend it if you’re in the area. It was a gorgeous drive, and the Inn itself is nice, too. It must be gorgeous in the winter with skiing! We talked about going up with Mazie next winter.
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What I’ve been doing while I’ve been off the internet.
Friday, April 17th, 2009
A lot of my time has been spent just trying not to be sick! This spring has been awful for flu / colds / allergies. We (me, Nate, Mom, Dad, Mazie) all have had this awful flu thing for weeks and weeks. And we hear from everyone that there’s something really yucky going around. It seems like one of us is over it, then another one will get it again and we all have another round of whatever this junk is.
AND…it’s windy season. We’ve been having 30+ mph winds almost every day. With winds like that, you start to feel battered around the head after a while. Since we’re in the desert, they also carry fine dust, pollen, smoke, whatever is in the air…so allergies are just awful.
I’ve also just been needing a knitting break. I had a major deadline on a project and it really sucked the life right out of me. I had hired a knitter to help and she went M.I.A and I missed my own deadline (I was in charge of coordinating the project) and because she disappeared I was totally screwed. My patterns still aren’t done because I had to spend the extra time chasing her around and eventually knitting her project again.
I think that behind my need to go into a little hibernation there were several factors. One major one was just that every interaction seemed to be really strained. The tutorial I posted started that ball rolling, and then this thing with this knitter (who lives here in town, so it has totally snowballed into a bigger deal than I even want to go into here.) It just really wore me out and made me feel like I needed to take a step back and not think about work for a while.
Want to know one thing that really sucks about trying to freelance in this economy? Trying to get PAID. You do all the work, send your invoice, and then wait-wait-wait. It’s terrible. I just this week was reimbursed by hmm-hmm-hmm (not naming names) for travel that I did waaaaay back in January! (Well over $1000.) It makes it hard to work on their projects when I’m not even paid back for that kind of thing. As much as I try to rationalize that the money is coming from another pot, it’s still really difficult to motivate.
All this goes back to things I’ve written before. I know that I need to step back, focus on my OWN business, and not give so much energy to OPP (Other Peoples’ Projects.) Believe it or not, everything that I’m working on is old stuff. Everything was proposed and decided on months ago. SO, I haven’t been taking on new projects, just still finishing up old commitments.
Any day now, I’ll snap out of this funk and get back to knitting content. I’m still working through it, so bear with me.
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The Blahs
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009
Well! It’s been a while. I’m just coming out of a serious case of the blahs. I’m sitting here trying to figure out a way to write about what the cause was without sounding like a big complainer…and I can’t. It was a number of things all adding up to me feeling really overworked, tired and cranky.
So. I’ll just skip that part of it and post a cute Mazie picture:
This is in the back yard at my parents’ house. It’s warm enough to play outside, but most afternoons have been too windy. Yesterday was so nice that we actually got to spend about an hour out playing. Mazie loves to pick up rocks. Mom and Dad have a desert-style of landscaping (which basically means no grass and lots of gravel all over) so she is able to find some pretty interesting rocks. Her current favorites are two almost matching smooth yellow marble pebbles. They really glow in the sun like alabaster and fit perfectly in her fists.
The roses and iris are blooming, so we’ve been enjoying smelling the flowers and talking about them. She picked an iris bud yesterday and pulled it all apart to see what it was like on the inside. It’s so interesting to watch her study things. She’s very curious and thoughtful.
Mazie’s sign language is really picking up. She’s able to not only repeat words that we say in sign language, but is able to converse. She sees the cat sleeping and signs “kitty asleep” or hears him in the morning and signs “kitty eat” because we always get up and feed him first thing. It’s amazing to see her learning process. I’m so lucky to be able to be working from home so that I can experience this with her.
And that’s the kind of stuff I need to think about when other stuff goes south. Somebody remind me next time!
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Knitting last night and Mazie and Mommy…on our own today!
Thursday, March 5th, 2009
Last night I got together with a couple of girlfriends and knit.
And here’s the start of Cindy’s Reclamation scarf. She strung semiprecious stones onto beading floss and is adding them into her scarf as part of her Project Spectrum project. It’s going to be really neat. She’s knitting it with sock yarn on 3s.
Here Kathryn and I are modelling our Lemongrasses (this was actually the week before last week):
Today my mom seems to have Mazie’s cold. We usually get up and have breakfast, then go over to Grandma’s and hang out, but today…we are on our own.
My mystery quilt is over there, so we’re finding other stuff to keep us busy.
So far, we have:
Had breakfast, had lunch with Daddy, done a load of laundry, made our beds, started to sort the folded laundry so we can put it away…all while listening to the kids’ XM radio station.
This station is so cute. If you have XM radio (we get this station through the satellite TV) and kids, you should give it a try. Mazie is a real music person, and she loves to listen to the silly songs and sing and dance.
I’d still like to make it to the PO and maybe the health food store. We’ll see.
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Last of the Bamboo is posted!
Friday, February 20th, 2009
I’m posting the last batch of my inauguration day dyeing, “Color of Hope” bamboo on Etsy today…
And that’s the last you’ll hear about bamboo yarn from me for a while (whew!)
In case you’re not on her mailing list, I have a new Stitch Diva pattern out:
So far, it’s just a preview, and should be available soon.
In other news, things are really busy right now! I’ve got a book deadline on Sunday, and am working away on my Fall 09 Mission Falls stuff. Also lots of things percolating, of course.
In Mazie news, she has so many new teeth! She’s worked hard for them. We are all very, very tired.