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.

Mystery Knit Along with a Bonus!

Okay.  I'm crawling out from under the heavy work load that I was talking about before.  I was easier for me to just post quick little things to Instagram / Twitter / Facebook and I dropped this blog for a while.  I'm back now and I hope to keep this up!  My blogs may be shorter but I will do my best to keep them consistent.

 

One of my very large time commitments went into a amazing new type of pattern.

A mystery where you participate by knitting the clues.

Yes, you read that right.  I had my friend, Donna Lutz, write a short story to flesh out the outline I had in my head.  Using textured stitches, lace, and cables, I designed 10 panel scenes depicting various stops around a hobby farm as the farmer was following a trail of yarn that had been stolen from her stash.  Following each clue, you get to read about half a page of the story. :)

Another friend pointed out that I should release it as a mystery knit along.  The more I thought of it, the more I realized that it is the ONLY logical way that it should be released. lol  The whole point of this pattern is to completely immerse the knitter in the fiber world for a while to escape the stresses of everyday life.  To that end, I am stretching the knit-along over 20 weeks (1 clue every two weeks) so that there is no stress of keeping up while the rest of life continues on.

The charts come in both color and  black & white so you can choose which suits your needs better as well as master keys to the charts for easy reference.  I also included a list of links to technique videos so you can research any techniques you are unsure of.  When the knit-along is complete you will be able to download the entire 63-page ebook! 

You can get your own copy of the pattern here: 
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/stitch--story-the-case-of-the-missing-yarn

Join the knit-along here:
www.ravelry.com/discuss/rachels-cozy-knits--designs/3331440/www.ravelry.com/discuss/rachels-cozy-knits--designs/3331440/

I'm hosting a trunk sale on my Facebook page!

My ferret has a nasty growth on her tail that is just getting worse.  She really needs surgery.  So to help her, I am discounting my old stock and introducing new stock.  Please visit my photo album or visit my Etsy page!

New Pattern! Red Alien Hat

Apparently I wasn't over booked enough, so I took on an effort to create a crochet pattern for someone who was looking for a crochet Pikmin hat pattern.

So it took me a while to get to it, but here I present you with the Red Alien Hat.

The pattern is available on Ravelry.

Throwback Thursday: Daughter's Dress

As I was doing laundry yesterday I got to talking with my oldest boy about his sister's dress.  He was trying to remember if it is supposed to be hung up or not.

I saw this dress in a shop (now closed) and I fell in love with it.  I wanted to make one for my one-year-old daughter.

They only had one hank of the bubblegum pink in Cascade Pima Cotton that I wanted to use, so I was forced to play with color combinations (poor me!)  So my friend and I played around with color and picked out two bright green and a hot pink. 

They also had the magazine the pattern came from: Debbie Bliss Knitting Magazine, Spring/Summer 2010 so I picked that up, too.

At the time, I had Cast on Bind off checked out from the library.  I was inspired by the picot cast on and wanted to use it on the dress.  As I red the pattern, I was frustrated with the fact that I was going to have to sew the pieces together.  I'd just knitted a raglan shirt and that made much more sense to just knit in the round, so I frogged the cast on and rewrote the pattern in my own notes so that it cold be worked in the round.  Then I really got going on it!

While the above picture isn't how it sits on her finished, it was where it would stay as she wiggled and I snapped a picture with my other hand.

Eventually everything was the length and size it needed to be.  I cast off in the appropriate places.  Here I'm about to start working on the straps.  That was done in the matter of about an hour!  I couldn't stop!  Of course I had to try it on her right away.  Since it wasn't blocked yet, the bottom edge was flipping up and the pocket wasn't on but I didn't care.  I loved it and so did my daughter!

So I got to the finishing.  I still felt like it was missing something.  The dress was adorable but it needed to be accessorized!

So, I knit up the sock yarn I had bought that same day, which I realized matched the dress!  I hadn't thought of it at the time.

I clipped a bow I found in her hair and with the socks it was SO cute!  I still quite a bit of yarn left over, however.  Was there something else I could add?

A shrug!  I took the pattern from the raglan shirt I had just done an altered it so that it didn't close.  And finally it was complete!

Shortly after, my friends were talking about entering their knitted things into the county fair.  I remembered my mom telling me about how fun it was to enter something into the fair and if I had an opportunity to just do it.  So off I went.  I filled out the form and took my daughter's dress and a shawl to the fair.

On the first day of the fair I got a call from my friend.  She asked if I'd been there yet, to which I replied no, I was going the next day.  She told me that I won a blue ribbon!  I was shocked and started crying.  I'm so glad that she called and told me that at home because I would have been so embarrassed to do that in public.  lol

Here we are now, two years later.  She still can wear this dress as I sized it loose on her.  It's a summer shirt now, but it still looks great!  I just had her model it for me so here is a picture from today!