Helping Out

A fellow Raveler is struggling with a pattern so I've annotated her picture with what I think it's asking for.  I need somewhere to post it, so we're going with... right here.

On that note, hey public service announcement!  When you write a pattern, make sure it makes sense.  If you're skipping stitches, maybe go ahead and write that in so I don't have to decipher what you really meant.  Okay?  Okay.

Normalcy, TdF, And 3 Good Things

Happy Monday everyone!  How has your day been?  Mine has been less productive than yesterday, but enjoyable nonetheless.

I didn't actually get up until noon, but when I did I fixed my bed and took a shower and made a large quantity of food because I was very hungry.  While I was eating I sat down to catch up some on the 2014 Winter Olympics that are still on the DVR from February.  All I'm watching is the figure skating, and all I had left of it was the women's skating (plus the post-competition gala, which is essentially "Hey, have some fun!").  Once I finished breakfast I grabbed Róisín and my green-and-blue fiber bundle and returned to watching.  I spent most of the day spinning and watching Olympics, except for when I took a break to tackle my closet again.  Two more shelves and another drawer down (leaving only the two drawers of shirts plus all the hanging clothes on the other side), and I also figured out how to handle all the bags hanging on the back wall.  I've determined I cannot have more projects on the go than hooks to hang the project bags.  We'll see how that works.  The "one project per hook/needle set" rule seems to have helped greatly, so maybe this one will too.

I finished both my singles for today with time to spare, and spent a while knitting on Wibbley Wobbley Timey Wimey as well.  I have one more row to finish the TARDISes (TARDI?  What's the plural of TARDIS?) and then it's on to the boring stitch patterns (reverse stockinette and ribbing).  I was hoping to have two balls of the yarn leftover, but it looks like I may actually have to break into the third ball to finish the ribbing.  I'm okay with that.

Here's my Tour de Fleece collage for today:

Productivity!

Today has been an incredibly productive day on several fronts.

In addition to getting "school" pictures taken and wandering the mall, I got the following things done:

• Dusted my room and the gameroom (and offered to dust my brothers' room but it didn't need doing)
• Vacuumed the entire upstairs except my room because the floor isn't quite clean yet
• Washed, dried, and sorted three loads of laundry for the family, folded and put away my part
• Washed, dried, folded, and put away a load of my own clothes
• Cleaned the kitchen, including washing all the dishes
• Emptied all the trash cans I'm responsible for emptying

And I got my Tour de Fleece spinning done too.

Read on for bigger pictures and some stories.  Remember to click on images to get a closer look.

And We're Off!

Today starts the 2014 Tour de France and its little sister, the Tour de Fleece.  That means 21 days of spinning (both the bicycle- and spindle-shaped varieties) over 23 days of July.  We the fiber spinners are going to spin miles of yarn.  Miles of it, I tell you.  Many miles.

I'm not though.  I will be happy to get around 350 yards (~320 meters) of yarn out of this project.  That's not much, considering some people will be producing that much in a matter of days, but I'll excuse myself by saying I'm spinning lace and working on other projects as well!

I was deliriously excited to get started on this project, so there are about a million pictures and none of them are very interesting, and I'm putting them up anyway because they're all lovely pictures.  I'll try to make them more interesting as the Tour continues.  For now, would you like to see what I did today?

Only one picture is allowed in the daily threads, so I've learned to make a photo collage!  Here's Day 1 in one picture:

If that was enough for you, feel free to stop there.  If you'd like to see many more pictures and a bit of a ramble, read on!

Summer Fun Bingo, Part Two (Resolutions For July)

(Stay tuned to the end of the post for Tour de Fleece Day -1!)

I've still got five squares left of my first round of Summer Fun Bingo, but Mom suggested I start a new sheet for the rest of the summer so I have more things to do.  Since I have two months left and nothing really pressing to accomplish, I figure I might actually get a third sheet in.  But let's not be hasty.  My 24 squares for Summer Fun Bingo, Part Two also double as my Resolutions for July, since there's really no point in adding more things to my list.  Here's the sheet:

Click to zoom

And here's the breakdown.

Resolution Wrap-Up Plus 3 Good Things

Today you get a twofer, because I'm going to try to add some positivity to my Mondays and it's also the last day of the month.  So, we have the Monthly Resolution Wrap-Up and the first dose of 3 Good Things in the same post!  So here we go.

Resolution Wrap-Up
I did pretty well if you consider them 24 separate goals, but I failed if you consider it one goal.  Also, hilariously, my randomized square position was perfect so I've only gotten two bingos.  It's terrible.  See?

Pathetic, isn't it?  Well, here's the breakdown.

Today Has Been A Day

Yeah, I think that's about all I can say about it.

Ian woke me up at quarter to ten with a bunch of text messages, which hasn't happened in a while.  We had some plans change and he wanted to let me know, so that was nice.  (And that reminds me, I need to pay my phone bill.  Hang on.  ...Okay I'm back, having discovered that I have my credit card number memorized, so that's fun.)  I decided to hang it all and get up, and actually fixed my bed and showered and had breakfast (all of these things are unusual; the shower thing because I tend to do it at night).

Mom took me out to lunch at P.F. Chang's, and we forgot to take pictures, so here is me in the car with the leftovers.

Cherry Field

Once upon a time I was a new crafter who had no yarn.  So I asked if anyone had some yarn they wanted to get rid of, and ended up with a box from my grandmother's attic and a box from a friend's mom, and I still have a lot of those yarns.

One of them was a huge ball of cherry-red aran-weight acrylic.  It was soft, so that was a plus.  It was brighter than a lightbulb, and nothing else seemed to go with it, so those were minuses.  I fooled around with it for a while and could never find anything that it wanted to be, so I gave up on it and shoved it back into my Stash Tower.

Two days ago I was watching some of the Olympics from February that are still on our DVR, and needed something mindless to work on.  I pulled out this yarn on a whim and asked if it wanted to be a small blanket.  It said...

Flash Your Stash 2014

Every year on Ravelry we have a thread called "Flash Your Stash", for which we crazy yarn people drag all our yarn out of its nooks and crannies, spread it out over our couches/tables/king-size-beds/floors, and take pictures of it.  It can be very amusing to see how the stashes change over the years, so a lot of us do it annually.  (Besides, it's a good incentive to reorganize the stash as we put it all away!)

I did take part in Flash Your Stash 2013, as you can see if you follow the link.  Also as you can see, my stash was pretty meager and mostly consisted of inherited scraps.

Unfortunately, this year is quite different.  This year, it covers the gameroom table on which I assembled three-foot afghan blocks.  Yeah.  This is going to be scary.

Ready?  Here we go.

Card-Making Endeavors

As I mentioned earlier, my grandfather died this April.  Now that life has settled somewhat, my grandmother decided it was time to start writing thank-you cards for the dozens of people who came out of the woodwork to help and support her.

Something you have to understand about my grandmother:  She took up card-making as a craft several years ago.

The way I am about yarn, she is about cards.  She has diecutters, various types of ink, the hugest collection of stamps I've ever seen (yeah, the rubber ones like kids play with), embossing powder, ribbons, glitter.  She makes these work-of-art cards for every birthday and holiday and we just marvel.  When my aunt moved out, Grandma took her room and converted it into something like a study/craft room.  The closet is like a tiny card workshop.  It's fabulous.

But she has 50 to 100 thank-you cards to send out, so she reluctantly decided she'd save herself the work and just buy them.  So off she went to every store she could think of, looking for simple elegant thank-you cards that suited her taste.  Unfortunately, she couldn't find anything that wasn't tacky or too plain.  She could always find something to improve, and she wasn't willing to send out any less than the best.  Eventually she gave up the hunt and resigned herself to making them.  Still not quite ready to make them all from scratch, however, she found a box of 50 black-and-white patterned plain cards she could embellish, and enlisted my help.

So Thursday afternoon we planned and had a few mild arguments over the designs. (Mostly I just sat around while she tried things, and occasionally gave input on ribbons.)  Friday afternoon we really set to work, and I was smart enough to pull out my camera and take a bunch of pictures of the process to share with you.

Early Morning, A Quilt, And Incoherency

I was still awake at five-thirty this morning.  My brain wouldn't shut up, and I wasn't physically tired enough to use my body's inclination toward sleep to calm my mind down.  So I got up, made myself a cuppa (TJ's Mango Black Tea with plenty of cream and sugar), and ventured outside with a blanket thinking I would watch the sunrise.  Instead, I ended up watching a lot of clouds.

But that wasn't bad.  I could actually watch different layers of clouds blowing across the sky at different rates, which was fascinating.  I also caught glimpses of a gibbous moon when empty patches in all the layers lined up just right.  And of course there were the birds.  I heard plenty of chirping from seven or eight small birds that looked like they were setting up some sort of aerial football (soccer) game which eventually dissolved into flirting, a few annoying crowing noises from the ubiquitous grackles, and at least one mourning dove said good morning.  The mourning dove in particular made me smile, since one of my brothers taught himself to imitate that call on an ocarina, so perfectly that I could never tell whether I was listening to an actual bird or a plastic potato.

--

So the crocheted thing from my last post.  The one that kicked my ass with embarrassing ease?  It's a blanket.

What, you already figured that out?  Okay okay fine, let me give you some more detail.

At least a year and a half ago, probably closer to two years, I promised Ian that I'd send him to college with a blanket if we were still together.  In August, he moves approximately 200 miles south to start his junior year, and when he does... his blanket will absolutely not be finished.  But I should have it done for his second semester.  I think the wait will be worth it, considering how much symbolism I managed to cram into one blanket.  Here's what it should look like when finished:

Knitting While Drunk

Or crocheting while tired, or any variety of the form [craft] + [mental impairment].

I often think of crafting as having certain milestones, immutable laws that every crafter is going to slam into at some point regardless of whether or not they've been warned the wall -- I mean law -- is there.  (Case in point:  I taught a friend to knit and she recently messaged me to ask, rhetorically and with much frustration, why everyone seems to think she's crocheting.)  So it stands to reason that even though I know that crocheting late at night is always agreed to be a bad idea, and definitely because I assured myself that being a Night Owl excused me from the inevitable... I slammed into a wall.

As far as I can tell, this is what happened last night.

A Gentle Jab

Tomorrow is Ian's graduation party, the next day marks four and a half years of us "being together" or "dating" or whatever you'd like to call it.  This is kind of a big weekend for me.

Because my mom sells kitchen supplies for The Pampered Chef, pretty much every viable occasion is met with some sort of kitchen gift.  There's already a stash in the garage of boxes for me.  This means that Ian is moving out with a small dorm kitchen package from my family (mostly Mom), which is somewhat colorful. Off the top of my head I only remember that the color-coated knife is green and the mini cutting board has pink edges (I insisted; Mom consented on the condition that it clearly be my fault), but I'm pretty sure there are a few other colors too.

And now there's going to be one more.  Why?  That requires a few stories:

Summer Fun Bingo, Or, Resolutions For June

Sometime before the end of last semester, Ian asked me if I'd like to go to France with him in July.  He has family there and occasionally flies out to see them (and practice his French) for a few weeks.  I said yes, of course, even though I don't speak a word of French and I'd had half-formed summer plans already.  Pretty much nothing takes precedence over Europe.

I'm still not sure if we're going -- planning this has turned into an adventure for him -- but I operate under the assumption that I'll be out of the country for three weeks in July because if I don't I probably won't be able to go.  That means I can't go job-hunting (no one will give me three weeks off when I started working like two weeks ago), and I can't take a summer class (the last week or so overlaps when we're potentially leaving).  Essentially, it means I have to cram my entire summer into June, and hope I won't be here in July.  Enter the Summer Fun Bingo, Year Two.

Click to zoom

This is something we did last year.  I honestly don't remember if I did all 24 things or not, but I at least gave it a shot.  Last year there were categories, and really hard things as well as really easy things.  This year I just threw together a list of 24 things I want to get done, and think I can possibly accomplish in June.

So for this month I have either 1 resolution or 24, depending on how you look at it.  If you think of it as one, my resolution is Complete Summer Fun Bingo Card.  If you think of it as twenty-four, here's the rundown:

Rising From The Ashes

As you may have noticed, I failed at juggling.  In fact, I catastrophically crashed and pretty much everything but school fell to pieces.  I still made straight As.  I have no idea how.

--

My grandfather died in April, a few days after his 70th birthday.  I hadn't seen him in some time because I didn't want to remember him like that, so I'd already said my goodbyes.  Twelve hours later I listened to the announcement in church and just felt numb.  One week later I went to his funeral in a black-and-white dress (mostly white) and bright teal shawl because I couldn't bear to just wear black.  My aunt looked at me and said "I think all Grandpa would have said is 'nice hat'.  Non-issue."  Apparently he didn't look too good dead, so the casket was never opened.  I'm okay with this.  (The funeral arrangements included those tiny Hershey's candy bars wrapped in little blue papers that had a picture of Grandpa and had his birth/death dates on it.  We were very disturbed by what we dubbed the face chocolates.)

--

A couple weeks before this, on the 8th, I finished this blanket for a baby cousin so new he wasn't even born yet.  He was born exactly one month later, on May 8th.

It's a very happy blanket.  I have a picture of him lying next to it, but I'm not going to put it up here out of respect for the kid's privacy.  Suffice to say, he's an adorable little bugger and I can't wait to meet him.

--

I got my wisdom teeth out about a week and a half ago, and my jaw is still sore.  Plus food keeps getting caught in the empty sockets and bothering me.  I'm not really sure what the point of that was, but it's over now.  Although I did lose some weight while on a soft-foods-only diet, which could be problematic.  Essentially all I did for three days was watch episodes of Arrow on Netflix and work on this:

How To Juggle

In like a lion, out like a lamb.

I'm pretty sure this saying is supposed to apply to the month of February.  This year, in this part of the world. February pounced on us with its giant lion paws, and then laughed gleefully.  This year, it was more like In like a lion, out like an enormous grizzly bear.  Oy vey.

I'm well aware how pathetic it is to complain about temperatures in the 30s and 40s (-1° to 10° Celsius), but this is Texas and frankly no one else is aware of that fact.  So while I'm trying to grit my teeth and remind myself that 30°F (-1° Celsius) is really good for this time of year, it's all too easy to start whining.  But at least we're getting that lovely grey winter weather.  Precipitation and all that good stuff.

In the midst of all this winter, I'm on spring break.  Oh, the pink fluffy irony.  While washing dishes on Friday I started mumbling to myself about juggling, and this happened:

How To Juggle (In Just Two Steps)

Ravellenic Games Day Seven

Wow.  It's the end of the first week already.  How did that happen?

The crazy Texas weather decided to actually allow me to go to my Astronomy class tonight.  It would have been better if I'd remembered to wear my winter boots, because Converse have absolutely no insulation whatsoever.  I was physically in pain from the waist down when we went back inside, from not having enough layers.  I'll try to remember next time.

I'm thinking my medal count is off at this point, because surely we've finished more projects.  I'll check tomorrow, but I'll put up the old count tonight anyway:

Cable Cross-Country (1)
Cross Cowling (1)
Mitten Moguls (1)
Single Skein Speed Skate (2)
Stash Skeleton (1)
WIPs Dancing (2)

I'm actually extremely pleased with my progress for today.  I hit two major milestones today, which makes me think maybe I can actually get this stuff done with time to spare.

Ravellenic Games Day Six

Why did no one inform me it was Stupid Drivers Only Day?  That would have been nice to know before I went out on the road today!  Driving Tip Of The Day:  When you signal to turn left, move into the left-turn-only lane, don't just block up the straight lane!

In other news, I've discovered that people with weird or unusual hobbies and passions are more likely to listen to each other talk about their passions even if they don't share them.  Case in point: My English teacher has a great love for pens and pencils.  He spends a great deal of money on really nice vintage pens that have a rich history, fancy quick-dry ink from Liverpool (because he's left-handed), and "the most perfect pencil in the world" according to somebody.  And we spent half of English class today talking about the pens he uses to grade our papers (a Parker 51)and how using a favorite pen or pencil actually makes the writing process more pleasing.  Some students were laughing, but I was really interested.  It's always wonderful to listen to people talk about subjects they really care about.

My knitting circle was tonight, as I think I mentioned yesterday.  My best friend ended up having to do something for his world history class, so I knew he wouldn't be coming.  But no one else came either!  I did not expect to be the only one there tonight, but I was able to make significant progress on my socks (more on that in a minute).

The medal count seems to be stalled.  Are we just not finishing quick projects anymore?  Just a a reminder, we have 8 medals total, from the following categories:

Cable Cross-Country (1)
Cross Cowling (1)
Mitten Moguls (1)
Single Skein Speed Skate (2)
Stash Skeleton (1)
WIPs Dancing (2)

My spinning sort of... crashed.

Ravellenic Games Day Five

Today has been the weirdest day.

I woke up when my alarm went off at eight, checked my computer to be sure classes were definitely still canceled, and pulled the covers back over my head.  I love my Octuple Rainbow because if I pull it over my head and tuck the rest of the blankets around my neck, it's still warm and reasonably dark but the holes in the granny squares allow me to breathe.  My mother came in at nine-something to let me know that while our street is totally clear, a friend a few miles away had reported that her driveway is completely iced over.  Weirdest weather ever.

I've now watched all but the last five minutes of The Square, which is a fascinating documentary released on Netflix about the ongoing Egyptian protests against the government. (Did you know those were still going on this past summer?  Apparently America lost interest, because I didn't know that.)  I'll try to finish the last five minutes tomorrow, which is frustrating because it's probably two minutes of movie and three of credits.  If that.

And because of the evil school-chomping weather that did not exist, I went to hang out/study with my best friend and Astronomy classmate, talked about grocery shopping and the horrors of kids who won't clean up after themselves with his mother, and listened to more of my frightening audiobook on the way (more on this later).

Medal count stands just as it was yesterday, so I'll simply remind you:

Ravellenic Games Day Four

Really, it's only Day Four?  Wow.  Time is crawling.  I thought it was later than that.

School does not seem to be cramping my speed much, but maybe that's more of a reflection on how much time I actually spend doing homework.  I think the most time-consuming part of school is actually the driving, but that's probably because it feels like wasted time.  (Except I listen to audiobooks, and that makes it not a waste of time.)

Anyway.  You all are here to see the medal count, aren't you?  Then let's get to it!  New medal categories and additions in current categories will be listed in blue to make them easier to recognize.  Oh, and I'm going to start alphabetizing them.  This random order thing is starting to kill me.

Cable Cross-Country (1)
Cross Cowling (1)
Mitten Moguls (1)
Single Skein Speed Skate (2)
Stash Skeleton (1)
WIPs Dancing (2)

Both our new medals today were earned by a wonderfully soft-looking bulky cowl knit by one of my teammates in an astonishing 2.75 hours!  (Seriously, she knit a thing you can actually wear.  In under three hours.  She deserves those prizes.)

On to my progress for the day:

Ravellenic Games Day Three

No one is slowing down yet!

I'm only hearing sporadically from my teammates, so I assume they're all knitting like the wind.  (Can the wind knit?)

The medal count stands now at:

WIPs Dancing (2)
Mitten Moguls (1)
Cable Cross-Country (1)
Single Skein Speed Skate (1)
Stash Skeleton (1)

Which is only one more medal than we previously had, but that medal is mine!  A WIPs Dancing medal earned for me by this lovely little fella...

Ravellenic Games Day Two

This year's Ravellenics are off to a good start.  Two of my teammates have already finished their first projects.  I'd like to keep track of how many medals my team earns as a whole, just for the fun of it. So far, we have medals in...

WIPs Dancing (1)
Mitten Moguls (1)
Cable Cross-Country (1)
Single Skein Speed Skate (1)
Stash Skeleton (1)

That's five events my team has medaled in, and it's only the second day!  I'm so proud.

My own projects are coming along nicely as well.  Ready to see some major improvement?

Ravellenic Games Day One

Greetings from... virtualSochi, Russia!  I'm not actually in Sochi, but my brain kind of is.  At 10am this morning I joined knitters, crocheters, spinners, and weavers around the globe in beginning the challenge of working an entire project between the 7th and the 23rd, the run of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

I was not expecting to start at 10 since I have Speech class beginning at that time.  Because my professor ran out of copies on an important handout, though, class didn't start until a few minutes after ten, and I used those minutes to cast on for my first project.  Lucky coincidence!

I'm going to try to do daily updates on my progress, so you can keep up with the fun.  Ready?  Here we go.

Contrary To Appearances

I have now seen "Meet the Colors" four times.  I am consoled by the knowledge that tomorrow, we will be watching "Meet the Letters".  At least there will be 26 of those rather than eight.  We also went out to the lake behind their house to feed the ducks, but the ducks kept running away so we went to the park instead.  I don't think anyone wins points for that.

Where is January going?  New Year's Day was two weeks ago already.  School will start Tuesday.  And I need more tea.

I promised you a progress assessment on my Resolutions, and I'm waiting for the base coat on my nails to dry, so here goes:

Still Swimming

I made quite a pretty penny babysitting Little Kid last week, and I'll be making more this week by not missing a day.  On Thursday I managed to get her out of the house and to the park about a five minute walk away.  +1 to Lissa for accomplishing this amidst protests of "I don't wanna go outside!" because of course, she was quite happy once she got out there.

Thursday and Friday she wanted to "watch colors", which I found out is a preschool preparation video designed to teach toddlers their colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and white) while simultaneously driving anyone over the age of eight out of their freaking minds.  Click here to view a two-minute segment, and then realize that this is repeated eight times (and there are other, equally mind-numbing segments following).  I've seen it three times within a two-day span.  +1 to Little Kid for making me crazy.

You Actually Wanted To Do Stuff?

Lissa is still horizontal.

I went to bed at 9:30 last night and (except for getting up to grab the phone to inform my client that I would not be coming to her house today) did not get out of bed until 2:30 in the afternoon.  I woke up at least four times during the night (drink water, pull Octuple Rainbow over head, return to sleep), and probably could have slept a lot later into the afternoon... but the phone I'd picked up was still beside my bed, and someone called my house.  Booooo.

I've gotten nothing done today.  If I feel up to it, I'll work on the angora swatch after posting this.  Or maybe I'll just go back to sleep.  The only problem with me at this point is the headache, and I think I'm still dehydrated.

So in order to feel like I'm actually accomplishing things, I'll take a quick run through my resolutions for the month.  Ready?  Here we go.

Lissa V. Little Kid

Lissa: 0
Little Kid: 0

Note that I don't actually consider adult/kid, parent/child, or sitter/sittee relationships to be confrontational by nature.  I'm just having fun.

Right now I have a two-week babysitting job.  To get there, I drive through a bunch of farmland (singing loudly and drinking tea because the scenery is really boring and zoning out at 65 miles per hour [~104 kilometers per hour] is a bad plan) until I get to this adorable little village.  Little Kid is two years old, and I am charged with keeping her busy and happy for four to six and a half hours, depending on the day.

One of the things I'm supposed to do is put her down for a nap after lunch.  Yesterday, even though we could tell that Little Kid needed some sleep, she refused to nap because she "wasn't tired".  By the end of the afternoon she was so zonked she would just stand around because she couldn't remember what she was doing and didn't have the energy to do anything.  Adorable, yes.  But it meant that if she couldn't pull her shoes off on the first try she was bordering on tears.  Not so cute.  +1 to Little Kid for successfully avoiding naptime in a funny way.

Lissa: 0
Little Kid: 1

Today, she admitted to being tired, at about ten o'clock.  She still didn't go down for a nap though, because she wanted to "sleep with Mommy" and her mother understandably refused.  She was working, after all.  She was pretty much zonked the whole time I was there, to the point where when we were laying on the floor reading giant board books, she kept putting her head down on the book like she was just going to fall asleep there.  I didn't blame her.  I've done that myself. +1 to Little Kid for successfully avoiding naptime in a cute way.

Lissa: 0
Little Kid: 2

Please Let Me Squeak By

I can already tell that C25K is going to kill me.

It was 30°F (-1°C) outside today when I went for my first run of what is, sadly, Round Three of Lissa v. C25K (I've lost the other two, of course).  A long-sleeved shirt and a jacket kept my upper body warm, fingerless gloves on top of regular gloves kept my fingers kind of warm-ish, a fleece hat (seriously, fleece?  I need to knit myself a hat) and my hair kept parts of my head warm while my cheeks and earlobes froze, and my knee-high socks and jeans kept my calves warm.  Notice the only part of my body besides my face to not have a double layer?  My thighs went numb less than halfway through.  Please let it not be that cold on Wednesday.

And I already know I'm going to be sore tomorrow.  Why?  Because I'm sore now.  Yay, exercise.

On to the real material here:

Resolutions, Part Two: January

While everyone is setting well-intentioned resolutions of Things To Do This Year (and you may recall that I'm one of them), some of us are quietly going about setting goals for the month of January only.  Some things don't take a year, or are too trivial to be added to Resolutions For 2014.

Be A Better Human Being This Year!

A new year means another guilt-tripped effort to become A Better Human Being, whatever that means to you.  Last year I didn't bother setting resolutions, knowing  I would simply gleefully break them all as I forgot about them.  Then Resolutions Monthly turned up in my life, and I've been accomplishing goals since May (with a break in November for Life to interfere).  For 2014, I'll be continuing on with Resolutions Monthly, but setting some bigger, year-long goals as well in the hope that I can incorporate them into my monthly lists as well.

Octuple Rainbow: Reminiscing

Disclaimer:  I've been reading Yarn Harlot the past several days, so this might sound a bit like her!

I can't believe we made it this far.

It seems like only a few short weeks ago you began as a little plan, an idea sprouting in my head while your sister was still growing in my hands.  Silly now to think that I originally wanted you to look like this, isn't it?

(While I'm thinking about it, Double Rainbow, I'm ever so sorry I've never gotten around to finishing you properly.  I promise I'll get back to you.)

You were never a patient one, and while you resided only in my head you kicked and prodded, urging me on while I swatched, compared colors, sketched out ideas, wondered what you would look like in the end.  Wasn't it only a few weeks ago that the plan was finalized, this picture completed?