Hello darling. Well, we hit another making dry spell. I made exactly one thing in July. Just one. I knit it very fast and it was a big one. But once she was done, so was I. It was an incredibly exciting month, with a lot going on. Some of it wonderful, and some of it painful. But we will get into all of that in a bit.

• Finished Objects:

Paris Toujours by Isabell Kraemer. This was knit in Stranded Dyeworks in Anti-Valentine. There is a separate post for this project.

• New Cast-ons

Ram’s Horn

• Works in Progress:

2470 Women’s Lace Border Tank Top

June 2022 vanilla socks

White denim skirt

10 pairs of pajama pants/ shorts

• Goals for next month

Finish all the pajama pants

Sew a new Lawley skirt

Sew a toile for Saltwater slip

Try a macrame project

So, that is what I did. For the whole month. Even though I have yet to sew a single thing in the last month, I have my eye on a few new sewing projects. I would like to make a Kielo wrap dress, by Named Clothing. I would like to make another True Bias Ogden Cami dress hack, this time an unlined one. I would like to cast on my Shatar Vest. So, I have plans. I have wants and making dreams. Unfortunately, I have had no making drive. I have also been a temporary (I hope) resident of the frog pond. I have cast on a few things lately, and have not been feeling it. Most recently I ripped out a Lace & Fade Boxy. I haven’t even cast on a charity knit. I seem to have lost my urge to hand make. Feebs has officially requested a new Abb t-shirt, since the first one I made was a Hot Mess and is already falling apart. Hopefully I will get to that this weekend. I already have some really cute space print jersey knit. I will cut it out this week. I will!

July was super busy and a lot of fun. We kept the first weekend very easy. We ended up watching fireworks from Feebs’s bedroom window. The following weekend was Feebs’s 8th birthday. And guess what… We did it. After years of planning and stress, we were finally able to surprise the girl with a trip to Disneyland. We were originally supposed to take her for her 6th birthday, but that happened in July 2020, and we all know where we were at that point. So we had to postpone the trip until things were open and safe. We completely surprised her and she had the best time. It was made even better because her bestie was there too. The O’s surprised Meems with a trip as well. The girls had a ton of fun. Feebs realized that she is a big fan of rollercoasters and other rides, oh joy. Mama isn’t a big fan of rollercoasters, but I sucked it up and went on everything that she wanted to go on (aside for Splash Mountain, that was a HARD NO). During our trip I was not injured. I didn’t trip and fall or cough weird and hurt myself. Why, then, did my back start hurting two days after we got back? My back still hurts, a month later. That hurt has stopped me from sewing, it has completely disrupted my workout routine, and made me start to question the needs of my aging body. I also developed some dizziness crazy, and have an MRI with contrast scheduled for mid-August. I am not excited. Contrast means Prednisone, and Prednisone means very manic me. I feel like hot garbage when I am taking it and I am so very unpleasant to be around. Oh well, needs- musts and all. After the Disney trip weekend, The Father came to take Feebs out for birthday dinner and shopping. It was so good to see him and get to spend some time. The following weekend The Husband and I went to a Star Wars themed burlesque show called The Empire Strips back, in SF. It was so funny and an incredibly fun night out. The mother came and stayed with Feebs. The rest of the month was taken up with work and regular day to day activities.

My goal for next month is to work through why I seem to have a block on making. It is okay, and I am not self-shaming, but I can’t quite figure out why I am not feeling any kind of making. Once I can figure it out, I am hoping to find a project that makes my heart smile and get going with it. I start school at the end of August, so I need to get on with my making while I can. What will probably happen is I will start school, get completely swamped, and then find my making mojo. That always happens… We will see how it works out.

Loves,

M

Hello darling,

I am feeling very Austin Powers “I’ve lost my mojo!” this month. I have finished nothing, and I have started a few things that have either stalled or that weren’t working out, so I frogged them. I have somewhere around 10 pairs of pajama pants/ shorts for my family that have been cut out and are in all different stages of completion, but not a single pair completed. I used the wrong weight of yarn on Joji Locatelli’s Lace and Fade Boxy (thinking I could fudge it), and it simply isn’t working out. I went to start my Shatar Vest and realized that I don’t have the correct size needles (I can’t even fathom how I would be missing a needle size, I could practically own a knitting needle shop). I keep making progress on a pair of socks, then get bored and put them to the side.

So, it’s time to figure out my life and kick my creativity in the butt. I am going to do some dream making in hopes of igniting a creative spark. I don’t intend to go crazy with my plans and pairing, but I want a couple of things to ponder and plan for.

I want to sew another Lawley skirt. I know I had some struggle with the last one but that was mostly due to my fabric choice. I am hoping that I learned enough from my mistakes on the last one to make this one more successful. It is a regular quilting cotton, and I have absolutely no intention of trying to pattern match the gingham. It may be a hot mess, but I think it can still be cute. For as hostile as I was about the last one I made, I wear it all the time. I think I will wear the heck out of this new one too.

And that is all she wrote, for now. I did order the correct size needles for Shatar, and they should be here tomorrow. Tomorrow is already the last day of July, and this is my first post of the month. I still have to officially frog the Boxy sweater and put everything away. I think I may still peruse Ravelry and see if I can get inspired by something. I just bought a couple of summer top knitting patterns, but true to form, I can’t motivate myself to work on them. This is why I only ever get one summer garment per year. I just don’t enjoy knitting them as much as cold weather garments… Oh well, onward!

Loves,
M

Hello darling. She is done, and she is spectacular. Who is she? The Paris Toujours shawl, by Isabell Kraemer. I knit her in 4 days using Stranded Dyeworks Superwash Merino DK in the Anti-Valentine colorway. This shawl knit up so fast. It was a beautiful project, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The yarn was squishy and stayed fairly even through all three skeins. I did not alternate skeins, and the color variegation still stayed consistent. I used all but 13 inches of the yarn. I played yarn chicken, and I won! The finished shawl was fairly large. I then wet-blocked it using wires. This caused the shawl to get even bigger and really open up the lace. She has a wing span of 8 feet, 4 inches! I am loving everything about her.

Of course, I messed up, and of course, I am going to point it out. I got to the 10th lace row on the 2nd to last lace repeat, and I dropped a stitch. The dropped stitch was quick to unravel down 3 rows. Since it was a series of yarn-overs and knit 2 together, I wasn’t able to cleanly fix it. The error is very noticeable. Part of me wanted to rip back the rows and fix it, but the part of me that was really enjoying the project just wanted to carry on. Hopefully, it won’t be horribly noticeable to people looking. And really, if people can see it, they are too close.

I really enjoyed working with this yarn. I had tried to get the Anti-Valentine yarn for years and was able to grab it this year, for my birthday. I will say, I am not as thrilled with the color as I had been in previous years. I always saw the colorway as sort of a black-pink combo. This yarn is much more purple-pink. Mind you, it is still gorgeous. I highly recommend both this yarn and this pattern. It is unfortunate that I am not generally a big shawl person, because I could see knitting this again in many other colors. Honestly, I give this pattern a 10 out of 10!

Loves,
M

My lovely Jameson is finally done. I have nerve to have taken so long to complete this sweater. It really should have been done much faster. It is a lovely knit flat, seamed together sweater. It is knit from the bottom up- not my favorite, but a good “out of my comfort zone” project. I enjoyed the knitting and found the pattern fairly straight forward. It was easy to get into a flow with it and to read the knitting to know where you were, and what was coming. I knit it using Lion Brand LB Collection Merino, Yak, Alpaca yarn in Navy.

Of course I modified it. The sweater calls for 3/4 length sleeves and a cowl. I didn’t want that length of sleeve, so knit mine full length. I also omitted the cowl. I think cowls are gorgeous, especially on this, but I know myself and I know that I won’t wear it. Why put in all that work for something I won’t reach for very often? The neckband seems a little loose and wonky, but it was 1,000 degrees the day I finished it and I was NOT putting an alpaca sweater on my body for more than 10 seconds. When we have a less hellish day, I will put it back on and see how the fit actually is. I think the body length is a touch longer than I expected, too. I can’t tell yet if that is a good thing or not.

I knit the two body pieces at the same time on long cabled needle. I like doing this with pairs, i.e. sleeves, sock feet, etc. I like for my tension and mistakes to be uniform. I messed up on cable cross over, but I did it on both front and back so it is a feature instead of a mistake. I knit the two together until after the underarm shaping was completed and it was time to start working on neck decreases.

Loves,

M

So, how is your health?  By health I mean physical, mental, spiritual, craftual, and all the other health’s.  Over the last year, I have made a bigger commitment to my health.  The two Covid years were fraught with lockdowns, fear fatigue, anxiety, and fractured relationships.  I found that I needed to make a lot of changes in my life and body in order to live a more healthful life.

Physically I made some large changes.  I have always lived a very sedentary life between my desk job and my sit-down type hobbies.  I have never been one to get up and move for movement’s sake.  If I did, it was sporadic and goal oriented.  Once I met my goal, I would let it go.  It has been a little over a year now, and I am planning to continue my exercise routine as a new part of my daily life.  That is really my goal, creating my new normal and sticking with it.  I started walking 3 nights a week, last February.  I would walk a mile or two.  I slowly bumped it up to 4-5 days a week, walking 4-5 miles.  Once the weather started to change and the days got shorter, I didn’t feel as comfortable walking alone in the dark.  The darling Husband did some research and found an amazing gadget that transformed my regular road bicycle into a stationary bike.  This has allowed me to do my workouts at any time, in our garage.  It is also a very portable stand that doesn’t take up a huge amount of space.  Once I am done with my workout, my bike gets hung up and the stand folds up and is put on a shelf.  We then have our garage back and don’t need a designated workout area.  I am currently riding 4-5 days per week, and I ride 35 minutes or 7 miles, whichever comes first.  I have also incorporated standard push ups and sit-ups or supine bicycles into my workout.  I started with 1 standard pushup, and 10 sit-ups (Feebs loved this because she would stand on my feet while I did them).  Each week I would increase 1 pushup.  I am now up to 20 standard pushups.  That was my goal and now I am just maintaining it.  I do a rep of 10 standard pushups, 15 supine bicycles, 10 standard pushups, 15 supine bicycles.  In total, I would say that my total workout equipment investment was less than $130.  I also own a yoga ball and mat and am a subscriber of SarahBeth Yoga on YouTube.  She is amazing and has such an all-inclusive channel that covers so many goals, challenges, abilities, and accommodations.

I have also made some mental changes over the last year.  I am a very put your head down and push through issues kind of person.  I don’t ask for help because I always figure that I will find a way to work through it.  Anxiety has always been a part of my life, as has insomnia.  They are things that I just dealt with.  Last June I was averaging 2 hours of sleep per night, and I had to sleep alone in another room.  I finally decided to ask for help.  I saw my doctor and she decided to put me on medication that not only helps with my sleep, but also alleviates some of my anxiety.  For the first time in my life, I am getting regular sleep.  I also started talk therapy, to help unpackage the anxiety itself.  Currently, I am working on the relationships that I have in my life and “cleaning house” on some of them.  I want to really nurture and grow the healthy relationships in my life.  I want to be a better friend and be more accessible to the people that I love.  At the same time, I am giving to relationships that give back.  I am putting less of myself into the relationships that are one sided.  I am getting better at both putting up and taking down barriers.  I am working on opening communication and verbalizing my needs to the people around me and trying to better at meeting needs.  I am changing the dialogue so that we all feel like we are getting something positive from our interactions. 

I have also been pushing myself to suck it up more with some things that I don’t enjoy doing.  For example, I am not a fan of camping.  It simply isn’t my jam.  I loved it as a kid but having “camped” in the Army kind of killed my love of sleeping outside.  Once you routinely share a tent shelter with herds of tarantulas, the shine of camping dulls (and I am not even afraid of/ dislike spiders).  The Husband loves camping.  He loves it!  Feebs wants to camp.  She thinks it sounds like an amazing adventure.  So, we went camping.  We went to the coast and camped at Dillon Beach.  It was chilly, sandy, rainy, and our air mattress died on us, and we had to sleep on the ground one night.  I am too old to sleep on the ground.  I flat out refuse to sleep on the ground.  The Husband was sure that I was going to pull the plug and demand that we go home a day early.  He was mentally preparing himself for me having a shit-hemorrhage and turn the trip into a whine-fest.  This was a valid concern.  Historically, I would have done that.  Or I would have suffered very un-silently and made the situation tense.  Instead, I decided to suck it up and make it work.  We had to take an hour out of our day, but we drove into town and found a Big 5.  I went in, purchased cots, and all was well in the sleeping world.  We stayed out the rest of our trip, the packed up our campsite in the pouring rain.  All in all, it was a fun trip.  Feebs lived her best beach life with her little BFF and came home with her first batch of camping memories.  She is ready to go again!  By making myself be a little uncomfortable I was able to give my family an enjoyable trip with fun memories that we will always have.  And I ended up being less uncomfortable than I thought I would be.  Note to self- the world does in fact NOT revolve around you.  (Bonus: we saved a beached starfish!)

From a making and lifestyle point of view, I have been making changes too.  I have started eliminating unreachable goals.  I am not going to be a size 4 by summer, but I am going to start eliminating some of the crap I eat and get more movement through my day.  I am not going to save $20,000 by the end of the year, but we are going to cut back on eating out and start putting more money away each month.  I am not going to sew every single piece of fabric in my stash by then end of summer, but I am going to finish the skirt that I have cut out so that I can wear it while the weather is warm.  I am also going to stop setting repetitive and unreachable goals.  I am going to approach the things that I want to accomplish in a healthy and sustainable way.  Compassionate deadlines and “bringing joy” are a big part of that.  I am a goal setter, to the extreme.  I like to make grand plans and gather all the supplies and figure out the logistics of accomplishing it.  I love the plotting and planning of a project.  Once I have collected all the necessary information/ supplies I often lose interest or hit a snag that I don’t have the courage to work through (I am looking at you, white denim skirt).  Honestly, I love getting organized, but suck at staying organized.  #MeMadeMay just ended, and me Did Not make much.  I completed 3 makes.  For. The. Whole. Month.  That’s all!  That is very un-me of me.  I didn’t complete 3 hats for charity.  I didn’t complete a single sewn garment.  I didn’t even fix some of the stuff that is on my “fix it” list.  Life was busy in May, but life is busy every month.  When I sat down to write my All the Makes for May, I started to get very discouraged at my lack of finished objects.  I didn’t even have a significant number of new starts or WIPs.  I just didn’t do much making last month.  When I started to give myself crap for this, I decided to take a step back and acknowledge that 1. I know that I generally have to take a minute after completing a large and complex project (Betty Cardigan) before I really dive into something new.  2.  I generally shift away from thick heavy knitting once the weather starts to warm up.  3. I haven’t had a dedicated sewing space for a long time.  Taking stock of this, I have lightened up on myself.  I do think that goals are good and necessary for me.  One of the three FOs from May was a baby sweater, for a baby that is going to make their arrival very soon.  I knew I had to get this done so that I could get it to the mother-to- be before she left for maternity leave.  I set the goal and met it.  I delivered the sweater today.  The charity knitting will get done in spurts.  One month I knit 9, another I knit 1.  Big deal.  At the end of the year, I will have a big bin of knitted garments to donate.  I will keep my eye on the prize and try not to be so rigid about the bottom line.  And…  If something isn’t “bringing me joy”, I am giving myself permission to either set it to the side or let it go.  This may mean ripping out a 99% finished sweater or packing a certain white denim skirt into a basket and putting it in time out.  It’s okay to do this.  It will not affect the rotation of the earth, and sometimes taking a break or a new approach will yield a better result.  Somehow this even has worked its way into my possessions.  I have started going through my closet and making myself wear everything in it.  I am getting rid of the things that I don’t like, that don’t fit, or that I am not comfortable in.  Why have a closet full of clothes when I only wear the same 7 outfits?  Same thing with my fabrics and yarns.  Will I ever make something with it?  No?  Okay, then send it to someone that will love it.  I have even done this recently with knitting projects.  I loved working on the Shik’is cowl, but I knew even before I started it that it wasn’t something that I would wear.  So, I went ahead and made it with the plan to put it in the gift bin.  As it turns out, the Female O needed something around her neck while were camping, so I literally bound it off, wove in the ends and handed it over to her.  It worked out great!

So, this is where I stand right now.  I will continue to make goals and plot and plan out my life, because #TypeA4Life.  Some goals I will reach, some I will not.  I commit to being kinder to myself.  I hope to keep doing touch-bases like this, as time progresses.  I want to check in and make sure that I am still in a healthy place.  Health matters, and we all need to take ownership of our healthfulness.

Loves,

M

How much #MeMadeMay ass did I kick, you ask?  None.  I kicked absolutely no making ass in May.  This should be an incredibly short post.  I am feeling like a bit of a slacker, but it is what it is.

• Finished Objects:

Flax Sweater, by Tin Can Knits.  This was made for the administrator’s new baby, using stash Swish DK.

Vanilla socks for me.  I used Patons Kroy.  This is only the 2^nd pair of socks that I have knit for me this year…

1 Charity headband.  I used Headband with a Twist, by Mirella Moments

Father’s Day tie-dye.  We made the shirts for The Father and The Father-In-Law.  We also did another Trader Joe’s bag.  I tried using Rit Color Fixative after the dye process was completed to avoid fading.  I followed the directions to the letter, but the shirts still completely faded in the wash.  It also seemed to soften the fabric, which I am not sure is a good thing. 

• New Cast ons

2470 Women’s Lace Border Tank Top

• Works in Progress

Shik’is Cowl

Jameson Sweater

Knitting my memories blanket

Lawley skirt

White denim skirt

• Goals for next month

Finish the Lawely skirt

Finish Shik’is cowl

Sew matching jammie shorts set

Make Feebs’s 8th birthday charm

Work on mending projects:

1. Feebs’s pants with holes into shorts
2. D&B handbag repair
3. Re-melt the tunneled candles into another, bigger vessel

Yep, that’s all folks.  I finished 3 things in May.  I didn’t sew until the last weekend in the month, then had technical difficulties and had to stop before I could finish Lawley.  I found myself frantically knitting on the night of the 31^st, trying to finish the Shik’is cowl, so that I could list that as an FO.  I’d slept like hot garbage the night before and I just wanted to go to sleep but felt this ridiculous need to finish the cowl.  It took me a minute, but I did snap out of it and went to bed early.  This blog is for me, and all in all it is a really great thing.  The one downside that I have started to notice is that I was aggressively pushing myself to get more done.  Why is that?  I have no idea.  Whether I have one reader or one million, this blog is MY happy space. I will still set goals and plans, but not be aggressive about them.  Making is my joy, even when I am mad at it, and I want to keep it as my joy.  There is going to be a separate post about where I am health wise.  It will touch on things like unrealistic expectations and compassionate deadlines.  It’s something that I have thought about for a while and want to get those thoughts on paper. 

I think June will have more making, and more diversity in activity.  I have a bench that I am going to refinish.  We were out in Oakland one day and decided to curb-gnome a Free bench.  I think it will be really nice when it is done.  I also want to work on pile of mending-ish stuff.  The weather is warming up and I want to turn all of Feebs’s pants with holes into shorts for the summer.  We give her hand-me-downs to a family member.  I don’t think that child has ever received a pair of long pants from us.  They all end up as shorts once Feebs wears the knees out.  I need to start watching YouTube videos about how to sew leather with cord.  I got a good match of yellow cord for the D&B handbag, now I need to know how to match the stitching.  Luckily, it is a small area that needs mending.  Our houseguest has ended her stay with us, which will now allow me to have a more permanent sewing space.  This will hopefully allow me to work on sewing a little at a time, and get more done.  I also purchased a really cool cross-stitch pattern.  I need to go this weekend and buy the cloth and floss.  I think it is going to take me a hot minute to complete, but I should get it started.

May was busy and full of a lot of really great things.  Sister #2 and I finally got together, just the two us.  This hasn’t happened in at least 4 years.  There is no good reason for this, other than “life happens”.  We met for lunch and did a tiny bit of thrift shopping at a new Savers.  I was unpleasantly surprised by the prices.  They were very high.  I will stick with my Salvation Army and Eco-Thrift.  We had the best visit and have vowed to do it again in a couple of months.  Mother’s Day happened, and that was a nice weekend.  It was very mellow and relaxing.  This isn’t something that I will generally say about Mother’s Day, so I was really happy with how it turned out.  The following weekend, Feebs and I went to see Ms. H’s new house.  We went cherry picking and had a fantastic sleep over with two of our favorite ladies.  The weekend after that was the Celebration of Life for my Grammy.  We had a barbeque at Sister #1’s house.  It was a really nice day, and I think Grammy would have been thrilled that we gathered to celebrate her.  There isn’t much that makes me as happy as seeing Feebs play with her cousins.  It brings back such good memories of my childhood with my sibs and cousins.  The following week was both The Husband’s dreaded test and the last week of Ms. H staying with us.  The week had a lot of potential for change in it.  Thank goodness we had a three-day weekend at the end of it.  Poor Feebs was sick starting on Wednesday and had to stay home all week.  She still wasn’t 100% through the weekend, so we keep it really low key.  I think we all needed that down time.  The Husband was really wrung out from his test.  And guess what…  He PASSED!!!!  We found out this morning that he passed that bastard of a test!  After 11 years, we are done talking about this test.  He can stop worrying about it.  He can start unwinding from 15+ years of stressing about it and questioning if he will ever pass it.  I am so INCREDIBLY PROUD of him!  I know technically that is a sneak-peak into June, but Oh Well!  Feebs and I have continued on with her Yummy Crate adventures.  Some of the recipes have been hits, some misses.  I think we can skip the tie-dye noodles and the blueberry muffins.  The bibimbap, Naan pizzas, and salmon skewers are keepers.  We are saving the meatloaf cake recipe (ick) for Father’s Day weekend.  I hope The Husband either loves it or can fake it well. 

I think that wraps up this month.  I have high hopes for June.  I think there is potential for a lot of making to happen, but no pressure!

Loves,

M