It's "September" at last!

My last commitment from July/August 3015 is done!  It was mailed out a few weeks ago, she received it and loved it!  I can look up from my workload and focus on the here an now again.  August 2015 is finally over and now I can look at the next page...

Ahh.  Now I can breathe again.

Recap:
I committed to a intense-yet-fun workload of spinning work, swapping, and pattern writing,knowing that my time would be full but okay as long as I stuck to it every evening during my "me" time after the kids went to bed.  Then my husband's work moved him to swing shift "though the month of August."  Well, that made me pretty much a single parent over night, but it'll be just a few weeks, right?  Wrong.  It is February 2016 and he is still on swing shift, often with overtime having him work Saturdays.

His work schedule made it impossible for me to have any breaks, any solo trip to the store, any girl's night outs.  My two oldest kids have special-needs and my youngest, well, being a preschooler is its own special set of special-needs.  As my mom said, "I'm too pooped to poop."  I would completely zone out during my "me" time and fall asleep early, or accidentally stay up too late subconsciously waiting for my husband to get home from work (at 1:30 a.m.)  I was a walking zombie.

So those intense-yet-fun projects became an overwhelming smothering burden.  I did find many moments of joy in my work, but they were all caffeine-laden. :)

How about I show you what I've been working on?

Tour de Fleece I blogged about heavily here.  It was the last just-for-fun spinning that I'd done until this week.  Here's what I spun:



The white yarn above was part of a SAPGAP (Spin a Pound Get a Pound) order.  It's a heavenly merino/cormo cross wool... and my share is actually what I'm currently spinning this week!  I spun these mostly in July 2015, with the last one being finished off at the beginning of August.






During this time I also did a wool spinning demo at the county fair.  Since I still had this yarn I took it with me for a display of the yarn in stages.




Next, I did another SAPGAP trade, this time with a woman in Canada.  This one is a pretty black & brown alpaca with blue/purple silk. :)  They were rovings so it was pretty quick to spin.  It was so quick that I spun my share at the same time and sent her the most consistent ones to sell in her shop.  They were mailed by the end of August 2015.  When I was spinning this is when I started my daily photo journal on Facebook / Instagram / Twitter.




Next I worked on a pattern that my husband requested.  His very first thing he let me knit him.  This led me to my first official test knit using the Ravelry group Free Pattern Testers.



Meanwhile , I was also hand processing my next SAPGAP trade with hand combs.  This was a lovely California Red wool from a sheep named Violet.  The grower specifically wanted to have fingering weight yarn so I did some test spinning to make sure I got the exact gauge and texture I was going for.

By the time this was all combed out it was nearing the end of August so I thought swing shift was coming to an end.  So I didn't resist too hard when a tempting chance of spinning an art yarn from a Tunis fleece landed in my lap.  Pretty soon that wool was on it's way to me.

I haven't even mentioned my travel projects.  These big spinning projects aren't on-the-go after all.  So I grabbed a hank of pretty wool my friend gave me and starting knitting some socks for myself.  I deserved to be pampered just a little for doing all of this work, right?  I was also reading a book for my book club with my mom and sister.  None of us liked this particular one so I won't recommend it.   It was a weak point in an otherwise classic series.

Also, the Knit 1 Geek 2 podcast started the crafting swap that I'd been waiting on pins and needles to start.  My spoilee was *tons* of fun to spoil (and my spoiler did a *fantastic* job!).  However, my mad-artist muse and OCD demanded that I had to write up this extremely detailed pattern-including-a-story.  I started swatching for the consistent element throughout the scarf.





It's coming to the end of August 2015 ...and then I got buried under the pile of constant, overwhelming work.


My goodness!   I'm already tiring myself out by remembering all the layers I had juggling in the air all at once.  I didn't even mention that I had all 3 kids at home and  trying to keep them entertained and out of trouble!  Whew.  I'm going to take a break and will continue writing about the saga tomorrow!

TTFN.