I have no idea why the clock says 12:41am and I’m still awake. My bedtime should have been hours ago.  I suspect it might have to do with the ginormous iced coffee McDonalds gave me despite me ordering a medium which meant me sipping on a caffeine high all day long.

My spinning wheel has been neglected over this hot summer. I’ve just not been in the spinning mood. But now that it’s officially September it means fall is quickly on its way and I’m ready to get back into it!  I have some merino/tencel on there now (pictured above) from Knitted to a T (picked up last year at Wool Gathering). When I originally bought this fiber I bought 4oz of plain merino and 4oz of the merino/tencel blend with the idea that I’d spin each individually into singles and then ply them together. But now… now I’m not so sure. I like the shine of this one and I’m worried it might get lost if I blend it with the plain merino or look weird.

On the other hand, if I do what I originally planned then I should end up with more than enough yardage to do quite a bit bigger project than my usual scarf.  And that’s really what I wanted when I bought the fibers: more yardage. Anyone have any thoughts?

Today we mourn the loss of a beloved knitting project… the Ephemera Cardigan.

Your short-lived life in the world began on May 20th, 2010 as I so confidently and excitedly cast on for you. It was love at first stitch – you were so easy to work with! So pretty! So lightweight! You became my go-to carry-along project, leaving my poor sock projects feeling bitterly rejected as they sat in the knitting basket along with all of the other discarded projects.

But then something went horribly amiss. Something just didn’t feel right as I knit your front left and right portions. But I persevered, determined that in the end I’d love you and you’d love me and we’d have that happily ever after I dreamed of, spending cool fall evenings together as we walked arm-in-arm through the neighborhood.

But you kept breaking my heart, Ephemera. We just didn’t fit. Your gauge was 20 sts and 30 rows over 4″, mine was 24 sts and 28 rows.  I blocked and blocked and blocked you, hoping that you might surprise me and actually change. But you refused. And still yet I persisted. I cast on for your sleeves anyway, still hoping and praying we’d be okay. I even convinced myself that, should it not work out, I’d gift you to someone who would appreciate a hand-knit cardigan. If I couldn’t have you, then I at least wanted someone for you that would enjoy and appreciate you.

I tried. I gave you my all. It wasn’t you, it was me. You gave me clear directions, and I failed at understanding them. And by the time I realized it, it was too late – you were already lost to me. I tried to undo the mistakes, but you made it very obvious that you didn’t want me anymore.  Every undone row just created more friction, and before long you were felting and resistant. I finally had to do the thing I wanted the least – I had to take the scissors and end our relationship.

So goodbye, dear friend. Perhaps in another world/life we’ll meet again.

I tried to find an old post for these but apparently one is not to be found – so I guess I just didn’t post this when I got it done a year ago?

This sock is Mystery Sock #14 Going Green from Temptations in Dublin, Ohio. I took this class back in April of 2009. Finished the first sock in May of 2009 but really struggled with it. It was really an ‘ugh’ kind of project at the time. I had modified the pattern to have the leaves going down the foot on the side, whereas the original just called for the leaves to go down the side of the ankle and stop when you do the heel flap and whatnot. What really killed me was the purl sole.  I’m not a fan of purling, to be honest, and I certainly didn’t enjoy doing it in the round for the foot of the sock. So this project got tucked away with one lone sock and one lone ball of yarn waiting to be knit into the 2nd one.

And then back in June or July or so I decided it was time to pick the needles up and finish it. I cast on and immediately got stuck: I had modified the sock for the leaves to go down one side of the foot and now I had to try to remember what I did and modify it for the leaves to go down the other side for the 2nd sock.  This, of course, led to me putting the sock down even longer as I lost patience with it on multiple occasions while I tried to work it out.

Which brings us to today. It’s a very special day, you see! Not just any ordinary day… for today is the day that I finished what will now be known as the 1.33 year socks. It took me staying up later than usual to finish – I was at the toe decreases and determined to have the sock finished before I went to bed. But now there done and I can go to bed a happy knitter! And they’re done just in time for some cooler weather in our area – it’s been a nice chilly 60 degrees or so in the mornings, which means I’m wearing my warm knit socks to bed again! Hooray!

That couch has been through a TON of moves. Seriously. It was an apartment-sized sofa that didn’t ever quite fit the room but it worked.

I’m happy to say, though, that I finally have new furniture!

Still waiting to get a new entertainment center to match, and there are matching end tables on either side of the couch that you can’t see and those will need to table lamps. But the new furniture fits the room SO much better and makes it feel pretty cozy. ♥

Proof that there is, in fact, knitting happening here: the beginnings of my Corrie Vest. To be honest I haven’t touched this in probably a week, but I’m hoping to get some quality knitting time in this week.  Everyone is going back to school and the heat of the summer is subsiding a bit, which means Fall is quickly coming! Maybe it’s just me, but I’m ready for summer to be over. I’m more than ready to be able to wear my cozy knit socks and sweaters!

This is the room I like to call our Library. At some point one of the previous owners thought it would be a good idea to put this ugly wood paneling. Now, I don’t love wood paneling but it’s tolerable in most cases. But this? This is classy – real wood (not the paperboard type of stuff), and mounted on the wall in a lovely diagonal – with each wall going the opposite direction. Nice.

The room is really dark, as you can tell, with the paneling and the brown trim. So my mission today/tomorrow/Tuesday is to prime and paint the whole thing and brighten it up with tan walls and white trim. And probably some new curtains once that’s done.

I chopped my hair last week. It’s a little hard to tell in this pic – tried to take advantage of the morning sunlight this morning but didn’t have a whole lot of time to do it properly before I had to rush off to work.

You know those ‘defining’ times in your life? Those times where it feels like the entire course of your life changes because of a single incident or moment? This whole summer feels like one giant ‘defining’ point in my life. I feel different. Not better or worse. Just… different.

I don’t know where I’m going, how I’ll get there, or how I’ll end up. It’s a bit scary. I’m feeling a little lost. I don’t do well when I’m feeling lost. I feel a bit like I’m losing my mind. Not in the “she’s on her way to a mental breakdown” kind of way. More in the “I can’t focus or think straight on any given day and my brain literally doesn’t seem to want to function” kind of way.

I’m told that this is a garden spider and that they’re fairly common around these parts. I was walking through the back part of my flower beds on the front of the house where nothing grows and walked right past this thing before I noticed it, and then once I did notice it I jumped right out of the flower bed while screaming “EW! EW! EW! EWWWWW!!!”  (I despise spiders, in case you couldn’t figure it out)

Then I showed Sean, who just kind of shrugged like it was no big deal. No big deal?! There’s an ugly yellow possibly poisonous spider in my flower beds – which I basically brushed right by- and all you can do is shrug your shoulders like its nothing???? But, as it turns out, it really isn’t a big deal. Several bug-lover friends confirmed that it is a perfectly fine spider to have in the garden. It took all of my courage to not kill it, but I’m kind of glad that I didn’t.

At least he’s a pretty spider… you know, as far as spiders go.

If my ultimate goal is to downsize to much smaller house and have a simpler life then I really needed to re-evaluate the things that I dedicate a good chunk of time to… in this case, yarn. How many hours of my life have I wasted away on projects that I hated, never finished, or never even wore/used? How much money have I wasted on this hobby when I buy yarn that I’ve never even used and probably never will use? If I’m truly trying to spend my time and money on things that are truly important to me then I really need to take a look at my stash of yarn and work-in-progress projects and re-evaluate whether everything I have is truly important to me.

Now, let me be honest here. I don’t have a huge yarn stash. In fact I’m pretty sure other knitters would scoff at what I consider yarn ‘stash.’ But I have more than enough yarn to keep myself busy for a good while.

This is probably about 70-75% of what I have stashed.

Robyn’s handbook had a lot of good tips for simplifying and letting go of yarn/projects/etc, and I implemented specifically the “You can either frog it or you can finish it” idea as I went through and found those poor projects that had been cast aside, never to be finished again. Can I tell you a secret? I actually threw away three four work-in-progress (WIP) projects! I was unhappy with all four and had zero intentions of finishing them. And they weren’t even projects that had yarn worth re-using for another project. So in the trash they went! I even went as far as to clear out some of my knitting notions that were buried in my knitting basket and project bags… having all of those ‘handy’ items only made it harder for me to find the things I actually needed so out they went!

I can’t even begin to explain the feeling of relief I felt by doing that. Those projects may not have been an in-my-face-24/7 kind of thing, but just knowing I had unfinished projects cast aside was weighing me down subconsciously. I had actually admitted to myself that I hated those projects and would never finish them, and the act of throwing them away in the trash was like a breath of fresh air! And now my knitting basket is nice and neat – I’m able to find my stitch markers and scissors and darning needles easy!

It’s just a little bit of progress, but its progress nonetheless! Next up: knitting down the yarn stash (98% of what I have is yarn that I will knit with, so its time to start knitting with it instead of holding onto it for one reason or another!)

I tried to dye my hair for basically the first time (I’ve done highlights before but those times I’ve had a friend do them for me, and the last time I accidentally went blond so I haven’t touched any hair dye since). You can only really tell a difference when I get into some sunlight, otherwise my hair looks my natural black.  Sean says that he can’t tell any color difference but I notice it. It’s subtle, though. Which is really what I wanted. I had a kit for overall color and highlights, but I didn’t leave the highlights in for very long… I was too scared after the last disaster!  But next time I’ll be more confident with it and leave the bleach in a bit longer.

I’m pretty happy with it. I needed a change, and with my stress level lately I’ve been getting more and more gray hair, so I figured I couldn’t go too wrong with something pretty close to my natural color. With the red tint I feel more… mischievous

This weekend has been busy, but hopefully tomorrow I can get Sean to take a picture of me wearing my Abalone cardigan that I finished. I wore it to work the other day and it was so cozy!