Why I create

So about a week ago, I found a new to me blogger, and she wrote a post that got me thinking - why DO I create? She's hosting a link up thing, and I flipped through several of my recent posts, thinking that I have to have addressed this, but I really haven't! So here it is - get ready for a potentially disorganized pile of thoughts.

So why do I make things? A very short version is probably that I've always been a creative sort, and I like having meaningful things.

For the longer version, well here we go. I can't remember a time when I WASN'T making something. I have this memory of when I was probably about 6 years old, trying to make my Barbies clothes on a little knitting loom. If memory serves, I believe it was this one:

I don't remember if I ever finished that beautiful sparkly ball gown, but I remember enjoying the knitting. Though come to think of it, I'm not sure I even knew that it really WAS knitting, since it's not on needles like you imagine, but I thought it was pretty cool. I may have also had a sweatshirt like the one pictured on the box, so maybe my opinion of "cool" is somewhat suspect. What can I say, it was the 80's. We rented the lower apartment of a duplex for a few years when I was little, and our upstairs neighbor was an occupational therapist for kids, and I remember that she had an entire ROOM full of craft supplies. Even now, on the cusp of getting my own craft space, that seemed like such a luxury! I definitely remember making one of those puffy paint applique sweatshirts at her house!

While my neighbor was definitely a crafty influence in my life, of course the larger influence were my parents. My mom taught me to sew in high school, and tried teaching me to knit then as well. Knitting wasn't something she did frequently, so I'm not sure where I got the desire to learn. In any case, I think I sort of learned the basic stitches, but it didn't really stick. A few years later, I decided to take up yarn again, but decided to crochet, as one stick seemed easier to manage than two. I didn't know anyone who could teach me, so I taught myself from books, and everyone got an itchy acrylic scarf for Christmas that year! A few years after that I decided to try knitting again, and thankfully YouTube had come around by then. It was so much easier to watch a video than to decipher those drawings in books! While my dad isn't much for sewing (though he CAN patch all the clothes my mom would rather he toss!), he has done a lot of creating himself. My parents still have a dresser and a few other furniture pieces he's made - things I didn't even know were handmade until years later. I helped him a little with building a deck at one house, and he built a pool house himself at another. Truth be told, it was supposed to be a shed for the heater, but it ended up having a bathroom, bar and a loft. I'm not sure if this was an expression of creativity....or a good reason to get out of a house with three teenage girls.....

My mom always made our Halloween costumes herself. I'm not sure I can remember wearing anything storebought....well ever, actually. (I take that back - I did buy a Dorothy costume when I was working at a daycare in college because I didn't have a place for my sewing machine at the time.) While I do remember a few rather stressful fittings on October 29th or 30th, I always loved that she made our outfits. They were totally different than anything anyone else had, and we could be anything we wanted. I mean...one year (possibly several) I was a purple unicorn with a pink mane and tail. You just don't find that at Target. A lot of kids probably had similar experiences, as I'm not sure pre-made costumes were SUPER common 20-30 years ago, like they are now. But for me, it really resonated. When you take the time to make it yourself, you get something totally unique, just for you, and made with love (and maybe some swear words and tears, but it's all part of the process). I'm absolutely thrilled to carry on the tradition of handmade Halloween costumes.

I love that I can have things in my home that are totally unique and made with my own hands.  It makes me really proud when people ask where I got that, and I get to say, oh that? Yeah, I made that.

(The chair....not the dog....obviously)

While just buying something to suit my needs is OBVIOUSLY much faster and more convenient, I love the rhythm of the making. It's fun to remember the time in my life when I made that thing. For example, that chair came to be reupholstered over a full month in the winter time and I found myself indulging in many hours of the Kardashians. (Canceling out something productive with something decidedly not?) Or the years before we insulated our house, and my feet were cold, which resulted in these:

Or the polar vortex of last winter, which had me gravitating toward the warmest, fastest things I could think of!

Making things is so a part of my core identity that it's even what I do for a living. (While my Etsy shop is a lovely hobby, it's not my day to day!) As is probably somewhat obvious, I loved my art classes as a child. I never had an opportunity to tell her, and I suspect she's passed by now, but my decision to become an architect all goes back to my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Waldenberger. I believe it was part of a parent-teacher conference, and she commented to my parents that I was good at art, and something to the effect that you can't make much of a career as an artist, so I should be an architect. Done. Isn't it crazy, how something like that can shape your ENTIRE life? While it was never my path to be one, teachers really can make such an impact on young lives, and I was so lucky to have so many good ones. After that, I was the token girl (sometimes there were two....even three of us!) in the drafting classes in high school, and I went right on to a four year degree in architecture, followed up with a two year masters program, without even so much as a waver. It feels sort of destined. I shape space during the day, and I turn bits of string and cloth into useful, beautiful things at night. I write here, continuing a long history of hidden diaries as a child, and giving a bit of life to that fantasy of being Carrie Bradshaw, typing out stories at a coffee shop. I create because that's what I know. While I've sometimes envied the money that comes along with the finance or medical careers of some of my friends, I've never regretted my choice to land on the creative side of life. Yes, more money would always be nice, but I find that I'm pretty satisfied most days with how I've spent my time. And I suppose that's a pretty good reason to create.

Hooded Toddler Towel

You know those adorable hooded towels you get for a new baby? You wrap them up all snuggly out of the bath, and it keeps their little heads warm while you tend to the rest of the dressing and diapering done. They're great....for about 8 months. Then you've got suddenly super long legs sticking out the bottom and it won't quite close around the middle, and a grown up towel just isn't as cute. So to solve that problem, I made a super big hooded towel.

On a whim when I was mindlessly filling up a cart or two at Ikea, I saw cute towel and washcloth sets. I grabbed one washcloth, and one of those enormous bath sheets. Then a few months later, when I was finally nearing the bottom of that pile of Swedish goods, I took that towel, washcloth, and about 20 minutes to make a toddler towel.

First, I folded the washcloth on a diagonal and trimmed one edge so that it was symmetrical.

Then, I pinned the washcloth onto one side of the towel, patterned sides together, like so:

I did a couple of seams along the edges, and then flipped it right side out.

And ta-dah! Giant hooded towel.

The enormous bath sheet might seem like a mistake at first, but then you realize that you can swaddle a two year old with this thing, and it makes more sense. (I contemplated cutting off that center hanging loop that bath sheets have, but I'm glad I didn't. If you hang this up by the hood, it's likely to drag on the floor!)

It's hard to be a perfectionist when you are not perfect

So my very good friend is having her first baby this summer, and of course, I wanted to knit something for her. The only problem with knitting something intricate and complicated is that my friend is an overachiever, and she's having twins.

So while she missed out on getting, say, something like this:

http://sewuniquetreasuresandgifts.ecrater.com/p/12823933/5-vintage-baby-layette-sets-knitting

it was the perfect opportunity to try a pattern I'd been waiting to do for awhile that I knew I'd have time to make two of. (In a size big enough to fit this winter, in case the weather ever remembers that it's spring, nearly summer.)

So make them I did! I did inverse colors, so the body of one is the same color as the trim on the other. I got all the way to picking up the final trim on the second hat when I noticed something. Can you see it? How about now?

 

Now?

I must have purled where I was supposed to knit. It would have been a lot of fiddling to rip it out. My knitting group said I should just put a flower or something on it.....and maybe if it had been closer to the front....but no. No this could not stand. Not for myself, and definitely not for a gift. In the end, I decided it would be easier just to knit a whole new one, and the defective one could become a quite serviceable stuffed animal hat here.

I put the pair of pixie hoods together with some of the best blankets ever from the registry - I ALWAYS buy at least one thing off the registry. She picked it out for a reason, right? It also just so happened - seriously, by accident - that the colors matched the hats exactly. I also included a pair of books, as books were requested by the shower hostess. I chose one of our favorites and another by the same illustrator. All in all, I think it shaped up pretty cute, and now the world knows that exactly one single wrong stitch will keep me up at night.

Maybe I have a plan!

I initially opened my Etsy shop in November of 2012 because I had started making some knit hats for a few people, and it seemed like an easier way to transfer money on their end than to just go through straight paypal. I went ahead and made a few listings, both those hats that I'd made for them and one or two things that I'd made for myself and loved. My idea was that I enjoyed knitting, and this would be a fun way to support my hobby....by doing my hobby! My "business model" was not to kill myself by making a bunch of stock that I'd have to front money for and keep on hand, but that I could just knit a sample for photographing and listing, and then make subsequent items as people ordered them. I considered the fact that I had any sales at all before Christmas - and from outside that initial group of people! - to be a huge success.

Life happened a few months later, and I took an extended hiatus from the shop. At the end of last summer, I just had this urge to be creative again. I started small, by writing and doing some personal projects. It didn't take long, but I ended up re-opening my shop just a few weeks later. Same idea, no real stock, just make orders as they come. Surprising me again, some orders did come! Throughout the holidays last year, my busy season, I enjoyed what I was doing, but didn't really have a plan. I've never really had one for either the shop or this blog. But gradually, I felt like I could get a lot more done if I just thought a little ahead, put it down on paper.

I was listening to one of my new very favorite podcasts (Elise Gets Crafty) and they were talking about the importance of being consistent if you want people to tune in. Well, duh. You'll obviously get a lot more people reading if you both a) show up on some sort of reliable schedule and b) build up a backlog of posts that people might start finding you through search engines. I thought, well, that sounds like something I could do, blog more consistently. I'm definitely not going to set myself up for failure by making a grand declaration of blogging every.single.day, but maybe a routine might make sense.

Then, despite how fan-girly this is starting to sound, I read one of Elise's recent posts and she highlighted one of the ways she likes to stay organized. This reminded me of the sketchbooks I used to have during college, and the meticulously organized daily planners I'd toted around in high school and beyond. Despite how I love my iPhone and use technology daily to stay organized....there's just something about physically writing things down that makes them so much clearer for me, more memorable.

So, I started writing. And because sometimes the blank pages of a fresh notebook make me feel a bit uncertain, like I'm going to mess it up if I don't plan out what I want to say, I told myself to just start. It doesn't really matter, just start.

I've done a little blog organization. I thought about the things I've written about most, and went back through old posts to properly tag them. If you're on my home page, these links, along with the search box, are at the bottom of the page. I've even managed to finally write something in my "about me" page. I had a really hard time with that! I've chosen to be somewhat anonymous online, so I didn't want to go all out with my life story, but at the same time I wanted to give enough detail to describe the person behind the blog. I started about a dozen times, and fully rewrote it about half that many, so hopefully I've struck a decent balance.

I laid out a plan and a calendar to prepare for next year's (hopefully) busy season. This way I can track my efforts to pre-make some of my more popular items over the summer to take some of the pressure off of next holiday season. I've also started jotting down the to-do lists and ideas that keep my mind racing during wee morning hours. Top of the list, oh I can't wait to do that one! Since I do most of my shop work in the night time hours, I just don't have the lovely light that most Etsy-ers seem to have for their product listings. Once the basement is finished, I still won't have sunlight, but I'll have a space to set up some lights and hopefully take some halfway decent product photos! It's also highly probable that I simply don't have the skills that many other Etsy artisans do, but hopefully I can take what I've learned in the couple photography classes I've taken and not completely embarrass myself.

Finally, I've laid out a loose blogging schedule for myself. Yet again, in a rather timely, sort of getting weird kind of way, last week Elise blogged about, well, blogging. The gist of her post is that it's important to write things you feel passionate about. You really can't fake authenticity, and if you're writing just to get a post up, it's going to show. Just like it's boring to read something that feels forced, it's boring to write. Part of the reason I post somewhat infrequently is because I only want to write when I have something to say. I've found though, that just by outlining a schedule for myself, I think that I might have enough to say to check in twice a week. So tentatively, I think Tuesdays and Thursdays sound like decently achievable days to commit to. I hope that I can keep it interesting by varying topics by those categories I identified.

So I definitely don't have any sort of plan to quit my job and knit or blog for a living, but I feel good giving myself a bit of direction.

Basement Progress!

About a month ago, we were deep in the thick of basement demolition. Luckily, I've managed to do a bit of cleanup since then!

So we went from this

 

 to this

to this!

Super exciting, huh? Basically, we cleaned up the mess, and got to the super fun task of doing some of the "behind the walls" work. We're pretty lucky in that our basement stays pretty dry. The far right corner in the images above is one of two that makes me a bit nervous, so I was pleasantly surprised to see zero mold when we pulled up the carpet. I also knew we had one spot on the right wall that wasn't covered by drywall that had some efflorescence (the salt deposits left behind when water comes through the block) but was never wet, and one more was revealed when we removed the drywall. My husband pointed out that the location of those spots is a pretty good match to some large tree stumps we removed from the front yard several years ago, evidence of large trees planted far too close to the house. Those have been down for many years, and the stumps were pretty rotten when we pulled them out, so we think that any water that came through did so a long time ago, and we haven't seen any evidence since. Nevertheless, since we plan to cover all the walls again, we wanted a little insurance.

I washed down all the walls with soap and water, and then rinsed, and rinsed....and rinsed. Oh man it took so many passes to finally get clean walls, but the bottle of Drylok Etch I picked up from Home Depot said it needed to be applied on a clean substrate...so clean I did. After I put that onto all the walls, I filled any of the holes or cracks with Drylok Fast Plug. I planned from the beginning to paint the whole room with Drylok waterproofing paint, so I picked up 5 gallons for the three exterior walls of this roughly 500 square foot space....but then I read the directions and it said that it wasn't meant to be used on floors, even as an underlay coat - my plan was to put clear epoxy over the Drylok paint. So I ended up just painting the walls, and now I have 2 gallons to return. I did a little more research and found out that Drylock makes an epoxy as well, so I think that's what I'll go with for the floor. (I plan to use white. My husband thinks this is a mistake, but I'm going to go for it anyway. I don't want to go with gray, because that just looks like bare concrete or a garage, and I'm not so much into tan right now. He thinks it will show dirt or stains, I think it's epoxy and if it can stand up to tire burns, it should be ok for a craft/rec room.) I did end up painting a roller's width around the edges, since that will be covered by the sill plate for the walls and never walked on.

Speaking of wall framing....

The actual contractor with an actual truck was really surprised that we could fit 100 2x4's in our Prius wagon in the Home Depot pickup lane. We can't quite handle drywall sheets (we'll have to either rent a truck or arrange for delivery when we get to that stage), but the wagon has really served us well!

We dragged all our materials downstairs and got started! Immediately upon starting to snap our lines for the sill plates, we ran into a few roadblocks. Namely....water main and gas line. 

Yep, can't quite block those in easily. Or with a straight wall. We mulled it over for awhile, and like any architects....found that a picture was worth a thousand words. I grabbed the pencil and crudely scratched out my idea on that roller's width of white paint on the floor!

(I snapped a picture that was totally illegible when I uploaded it, so I added some darker lines) Basically, we need to maintain access to the water main on the floor, so we're going to build a bench that can be removed should we ever need to. Then, we'll bump out the wall a few inches to clear the gas line at the ceiling, and add some shelves in the resulting niche. Win-win, more storage, and it turns these problem spots into a "design element." Pro tip - any time you have to do something that might be weird....it's a "design element."

Another pro tip I've learned these past few weeks.....

 

keeping your bottle cap around keeps the sawdust out of your beer. Er, construction fuel.

Wing wall that will divide the bench and shelves for that "design element."

We got about this far on day one of framing, and got all but about 6 studs up on another day this past weekend. That gas line that necessitates the wall bump is also, conveniently, leaking. Yay! Our gas service was updated last year, so when the guy came out to replace the meter, he sealed off the leak with some kind of fancy tape. Technically this worked, so we're not in imminent danger or anything, but it should really get a permanent fix before we enclose it. We...well, the stronger of us....tried wrenching on the pipe leading to the leaking union, and it wouldn't budge. We're going to have our burly contractor neighbor come and take a look, but I think we'll end up calling in a pro for that, so that's one of the areas we haven't finished framing out yet. No need to make the job harder for the pipe fixers! We also didn't finish framing out the door until we actually purchased said door, because that made good sense. We've since picked one up, but it's nothing exciting. Just a plain, primed, flush door. It would be nice to get something paneled, but since the doors in the rest of the house are peeling hollow core doors....it didn't make sense to put the very nicest one in the basement! (Even as a plain flush door....given that it's not peeling up at the bottom....it's still the nicest one.)

But otherwise....we're almost fully framed! Next up, more very boring "in the walls" stuff like running new electrical, putting in air returns, redirecting the vents so that the heat comes in at floor level like it should (opposite of the rest of the house....), and insulation. Then comes drywall! That should be sort of a horrible job, but exciting in that it will then look like a room!

edit to add....I would be remiss if I didn't mention this ridiculous snafu. We just put up the last of the studs in front of this desk/work table. And I realized that because there is a large brick chimney to the left of this photo (you can see a peek of it at the bottom of the picture)....and a steel column touching the right side of the desk....that we had completely enclosed it. Whoops!

 

We decided that the path of least resistance would be just to unscrew the top from the base and shimmy it out that way....but man. Sometimes.

Changing my internet habits

Oh internet. You evil, wonderful, time suck, wealth of inspiration and knowledge, creative haven and mean girl. I want to change the way I interface with it, both with the content out there, and with the gadgets that get me there. I've lamented about this before. I started drafting this post back in December. So it's been on my mind for a while. I've made some strides, but I've still got a way to go. At work they describe this as "continuous improvement." I kind of like that - if you continuously improve, you're never really done. You never really fail, because you can always improve. You can always change your outlook, because you can continuously improve. So here I am again, pontificating.

image source

I want to change the way I internet. (Yes, I just verb-ed that.) I just waste too much time on stuff I skim past, which gets me in a skimming habit, which means I'm totally missing both beautiful inspiration as well as the interactive community of other bloggers. Back in January (I guess I wrote a version of this post already!) I told myself that I should be a little more mindful about the blogs I read, and actually take the time to savor them. I've done a somewhat decent job! I've actually followed up on some blogs I've read on my phone to leave a comment or a thought when I'm back at a computer. I've pinned things that I'd love to reference in the future. I just keep trying not to let all the cool stuff just slip through my fingers! I've just been using that little "save for later" flag in feedly, and then I can flip right past all the news headlines or coupon deals or whatever and only click on the ones I'm interested in. (One other thing that helps me is that I'll create calendar events for myself for time sensitive things like those coupon deals. I email them to myself from feedly, and then I use gmail to create an event. Is that as roundabout as it sounds? I guess I like it because it tracks back to the source that has all the info, rather than me re-typing it all.)

Facebook. Eh. I have a history of waffling there. I want to connect, I want to bury my head in the sand, I want more friends, I want to hide 2/3 of them from my newsfeed, I want to connect, I want to be anonymous, I want to be offline...I want to see what's going on. I guess my latest attitude toward it is that I DO want to connect with people, but I don't want to share too much. Same as on the blog, I suppose. I also think it may be a good business move to have a presence there (I have a business page, but I still haven't figured out how to use it!). Plus I find out about some pretty cool stuff there, like the Grateful Hearts Giving Network, and I was able to attend their kick-off event. So, for now, facebook stays. My current attitude toward it is that I should at least try to be funny or interesting if I post, and I can only flip through headlines after I post something. Because I'm not a huge poster, this automatically limits the time I spend there! I can stay somewhat in the loop, without losing my whole day. And....well, I'm likely to change this attitude at will. Have before, will again!

Mean girls....that's one I might be completely over. Now, I will say that, like with most discussion boards I've participated in, I'm not a huge contributor. I pipe up if I feel like I have something constructive to say, or a question to ask, but mostly I just read. There's a particular snarky website that I loooove. It's like celebrity gossip, but about bloggers. I don't know, I guess I think it's interesting to read a blog, and then read the commentary? I guess I need a life? ha. During a period of unemployment, I paid it a lot more attention. When I would run out of commentary to read about blogs I already read, I started reading the most frequented threads about blogs I didn't read....but you'd sort of have to read the source material to get the jokes. So that devolved into a pretty big time suck. I've quit reading those threads and blogs that were just....something to read. Now I pop in from time to time on a very limited number of threads just to see if anyone else thought the same thing I did, but I'm not wasting my time on 25 pages of pointless snarking. Nope. No time for that.

Finally. The phone. I've improved maybe.....20% in my zoning out to this, that and the other app when I should be doing something else. Better. Not great. I think I need to come up with a code word for "get the h*ll off your phone," but something that sounds nicer. Less likely for the other person to get mad if I say it, and less likely for me to be mean when it's directed at me. Maybe if I let my husband in on my thought process, we can just say "phone" to each other, and we'll get the message. It probably makes more sense than saying "octopus" or something, and it's faster than "if you don't put that thing down right now I'm going to scream!" Check the weather, sure, fine. But then....re-join the room, and the land of the living. (So after I discussed this post with my husband, he immediately latched onto "Bueller" as the official code word. Why? I have no idea. But he said it with enthusiasm! So! Bueller it is.)

Appreciation

My office does this annual thing called "Employee Appreciation Week." It's a pretty cool perk, with daily food or booze related events and social gatherings, and free chair massages, which are totally my favorite part. We also get forms to fill out to tell coworkers we appreciate them and what they do. It's one of those things that for whatever reason just makes me groan when I see them, because I always feel totally blocked about what to write. Doesn't help if you've had a particularly stressful day of work! However, when I DO get in the right headspace and take the time to think about things, it feels good to get it down. It helps bring me out of the day to day and think about the bigger picture, which is pretty darn good! I suppose that's the goal of having a week like this. Of course not every part of work, or life, or even hobbies is awesome and fun, but in a larger sense things are actually pretty good.

I purposefully don't talk about it much here, but I definitely do appreciate my job. My career really. While sometimes the day to day can be hard, and I definitely wish that I could somehow do it AND sleep all day, it's pretty good. I've been here almost 3 years after a brief period (relatively, especially considering how it could have been) of unemployment. I don't know if that makes me extra appreciative, but I really do think this is the best job I've had. I feel lucky that I found a niche in my field that comprises most of the things I really like, and few of the things I don't enjoy so much. I know there is drama and office politics out there, like everywhere, but I tend to just tune it out. If it's nothing that affects me directly, it's just not worth my energy, you know? It makes me happier anyway. Yes, I do have to travel and that's not always fun, but I don't see a way to keep doing what I'm doing without that face to face time, so it's necessary. I've been lucky recently with a manageable travel schedule that has me gone only about once a month. It helps that I've been with a pretty fun group of people though, and I feel like I'm developing good friendships. While so many of my coworkers are so nice, I hadn't really "clicked" with anyone the way I had at my last job, but I'm in a place now where the work friends are turning into real friends, and that's awesome.

My family has a lot to do with making that travel for work run smoothly. I also purposefully don't talk about that much here, but I have a wonderful partner who keeps things running when I'm away, and does so much when I'm home too. We've been married 7 years this year, and together nearly a decade, which is getting to be a pretty sizable fraction of our lives! The past few years have been ones of upheaval, easy and hard and wonderful. There have been immense joys and struggles and rough times but we're in it for the long haul, and I would say that we're in a solid, happy, honest place. I so appreciate him, and could definitely do more to show him! I should borrow some of those appreciation forms! I've also very sneakily managed to collect my immediate family members to within a 3ish mile radius of my little cozy cape cottage, which has been immeasurably awesome. I love getting to see them so frequently and share our lives and meals and time without the stress of long trips to make that happen. Yes, there is still far-flung extended family, and I've got one more sister to bring back home into the family compound, but I definitely appreciate the closeness we have.

I appreciate the friendships I have, old ones we've managed to maintain and ones more recently made. This is certainly a changeable stage of life, and it takes more effort to keep relationships going when you no longer see each other daily in school, and there are kids and jobs and boys that distract us. I've spoken for my love for my book club and my knitting group before, and I feel so lucky to have them on TOP of neighborhood play dates and one on one coffees, dinners, shopping, lounging get togethers. I'm introverted by nature, and definitely a homebody. I'm not a social butterfly, but I feel like I've got a pretty good balance of time alone and time with people I really enjoy. A long while ago, I just decided to stop concentrating on any relationships that stressed me out. I make conscious efforts not to get into frenemy territory any more, and the improvement in my life and relationships has been so great. Since then, it seems that friction in relationships doesn't even have much to do with other people. I'm not going to make sweeping judgements and cut people out of my life. It all seems to be a matter of MY attitude. If a relationship is stressing me out or I'm getting into comparison territory or jealousy or whatever, I've just been giving it distance and space. Sometimes we come back together, and that's wonderful. Sometimes we don't, and that's ok too. I think the ideal place to be is when you enjoy the people you see, and you can feel genuinely happy to bump into those who have fallen away from your day to day. Life is too short for grudges, you know?

I've certainly gone into a very zen place, huh? I guess it's fair to say that I appreciate my yoga class? Another pretty sweet perk of my job is an opportunity to attend a weekly class nearby, and I totally love it. I'm not the most motivated person when it comes to fitness, so the fact that this class is both relaxing AND hard core? Awesome. I'm learning to appreciate my body for the things it can do, and even the things it can't do (confession - I can't touch my toes without bending my knees! Expert yogi I am NOT!) I can see improving. It helps clear my mind, and really does relieve a good deal of stress. It frees up my head space for other endeavors. The past several years have been a slowly building wave of creativity for me, and I love it. I originally opened my Etsy shop in November 2012, and I've been pleasantly surprised at the response I've gotten. I admittedly haven't yet had the time to devote to developing and nurturing it the way I really want to, but I've had a fairly steady stream of people noticing it and what I'm doing, and it's just awesome to hear that they think good things. It's a really personal thing to make something with your own hands for someone else, and to put it out into the world. I don't get reviews for every sale, and that's ok, but I so value and appreciate when someone comes back and drops me a little note to let me know that they like (or even if they didn't, as that's a chance for me to revise) something I made for them. I feel that way about this blog too. It's just random nattering (that sometimes really does go ON AND ON, as illustrated by this very post), and it floors me when people tell me they actually read and maybe even liked something I wrote! Like the shop, I don't know if I have a specific goal here. But I appreciate the outlet and I'm happy to let things grow and develop organically for now.

The internet really does offer up a whole creative world. I'm putting this tiny bit out there myself, and I feel totally inspired by the things I find in return. Blogs, tutorials, podcasts....it's so cool to see (or hear I suppose!) people doing what they do. The "crafty" or "inspirational" sections of my feedly are positively bursting right now. New favorites include Cozy Things, Film in the Fridge, Stitched in Color, Attic24, crab+fish, enJOY it (I just discovered her podcast yesterday on Down Cellar Studio's recommendation and I LOVE it), Posie Gets Cozy, Knitmore Girls, Susan B Anderson, Ysolda....and that doesn't even touch favorites I've been reading a while. (Especially favorites there are DIYdiva, Newlywoodwards, Russet Street Reno, Yellow Brick Home, Manhattan Nest, and a few daily reads that may or may not be creatives, just blogs I enjoy, like My Life in Transition, Peanut Butter Sandwich, In Her Shoes and Through Her Lens, Living Well on the Cheap, it's a dog lick baby world, Young House Love, and the defunct but lovely Chez Larsson and Aurajoon.)

And to sum up this long and wondering stream of consciousness, I can't leave out the place I'm eternally making into home, and the furballs that help fill it up and send me off to work with hair on my pants. :)

 

 

Mattress seaming is magical

About a month ago, I started making this dress. I thought about trying to knit it in the round so that I wouldn't have to do any seaming. In hindsight I probably could have figured it out, but I haven't made a ton of garments, so it made me nervous and I just knit it in pieces as it had been written. When it came to putting together the front to the back, I tried a couple of different things (while at knitting group so I didn't take pictures because that would make me look ridiculous). 

First I tried crocheting the edges together. This was nice and sturdy, but I'd run out of the turquoise yarn, and I didn't like that you could see peeks of gray coming through on the right side. I tried a bunch of non-specific ways of sewing , but again, I could still see the gray coming through the turquoise, so I just put it in my bag and gave up.

The next day, I looked up tutorials for mattress seaming because they always say it's invisible. If you do it right. Which I'm usually too lazy to do, but I would just turn a blind eye to the imperfections of my made up mattress seaming because it's in the same solid color as the rest of the work. So if it popped through to the front, no big deal as it wasn't super noticeable. This time though, I turned to youtube. Nothing specific, I just did a search and watched the first couple that came up. I followed along with my gray cotton yarn, and it was working! It was magical! I'd pull it taught and it disappeared! And then it snapped!

 

Swear words. I had a vague memory of hearing about sock yarn being really strong on a podcast, which makes sense given it's intended home. I had some in my bag, so I thought, well, if this is REALLY invisible, it shouldn't matter what color I use, right? And it was! Magical! Here it is from the wrong side:

 

And the right side.

 

Give it a tug to tighten it up.....

 

And it's gone! Ta dah!

 

Oh you old basics. I don't know why I bother trying to reinvent the wheel when we already have a perfectly good one.

I'm all finished now, but I haven't gotten around to taking a fully assembled picture. I've been mostly busy working on the basement - it will be SO nice someday to think, ok, I've got a finished object I'd like to document, and a nicely set up space to do that! Right now if I want anything more than an iPhone snap, it would involve clearing off a space, trying to do it in daylight, hanging it up or something. Surely it's much easier to build an entire room than clear off a surface....

Crazy bag lady

So on Fridays, I go to yoga at lunch. I love the class, but there really isn't a great place to change before and after, so the goal for my outfit on Fridays is to somehow dress both for yoga and for casual Friday. This was easy in the winter, because it was so cold I would just wear leggings under my jeans, and I was both warm and ready for class. Yay!

Now that it's warming up eeeever so slightly, I have to get more creative. Today I decided that I would wear leggings under a maxi dress, theorizing that might be a good combo of layers and breeziness for a spring day. I paired the short sleeved maxi dress with a long sweater that could skew either boho or granny, but maybe works ok, and flats. Only to get fully dressed and downstairs and see....it's raining. I hate when the bottom of my pants, or in this case dress, get wet. There was no time to change, so I tossed my shoes in my purse and opted for rainboots. They were adorable a few years ago, black with white polka dots. Over the years, these target boots have aged to black with....I don't know, tan? polka dots and are slightly less adorable, but still serve the purpose. I haphazardly tucked my dress into the top of the boots, which I'm sure looked quite fetching.

As for jacket, I grabbed my raincoat because, duh, raining. It's navy blue, a trench style, quite cute actually. There was a green scarf on its hanger, so without thinking about how it didn't match, I put that on. It's still a little chilly, so I grabbed this headband earwarmer thing.

I got outside. Long black dress tucked into somewhat discolored rainboots. Long multicolored striped (let's face it) granny sweater peeking out from too lazy to button up blue raincoat. Green scarf. Oatmeal earwarmer.

And then I realized that I must look completely insane.

Making and unmaking

We had some free time this weekend, so we were able to start the basement remodel in earnest! I'd taken down the drop ceiling tiles a few weeks back, but this was way more fun!

It took me a while to switch gears from gentle touches to tearing a wall down with my bare (gloved) hands, but I got there! I took this one down with a few kicks! I won for biggest single chunk of drywall. :) 

This is the dividing wall that is now gone!

This one ended up gone as well. Sigh. This is NOT how you build a wall! Studs so far apart, wires going every which way. Oh well. We'll put them back up right. 

I don't know when we'll get to the reconstruction phase, though I've got a material list going on the Home Depot app. It's pretty handy! I ran a rough calc for drywall quantity, and it saved to my account. Even gave me screw and tape quantity!

Until then, there will be crochet. I'll keep dreaming of the future home of all the yarn! 

Knit your way through?

A few weeks ago I started listening to the Knitmore Girls podcast. (And actually as I wrote that I legitimately thought that it was only a few weeks, only to look back to find that it was at the beginning of the year. My brain is a sieve.) I listened to a few of their recent episodes, and was enjoying it so much that I decided to go back and listen to the archives. All 270+ archive episodes....

Basically the show is a mother and daughter who knit and talk about it. When you say it out loud it sounds a little ridiculous to be so into listening to that, but they are really engaging and knowledgeable, and I've been really happy with a lot of their book or pattern recommendations. I'm sure I've learned a few things as well, but again, brain is a sieve. The mother of the pair, Gigi, has a little bit of a reputation now for knitting her way through entire books or pattern collections. So far she's gone through Rosemary Hill's 7 Small Shawls collections (you'll need a ravelry sign-in for some of these links, which is totally worth having by the way) and the Little Box of Socks. In the latest episodes on my tear through the back catalog, she's starting on all the socks in the Knitter's Curiosity Cabinet, and I just have to say that there is something about working your way through a collection that totally appeals to the more obsessive parts of my nature. There is evidence of this aspect of my personality right in the very act of wanting to listen to the show right from the beginning. Netflix has been a wonderful enabler as well, because I just love tearing through old TV shows, one episode after the other. My preference is actually for shows that have been cancelled, because then I know I can go through right from start to finish! I've been known also to read books I'm not even enjoying that much because I just have to know how the series turns out.

All this to say....I feel like I would love to do that someday. Take a collection of work, and knit my way all the way through. My problem with that, apart from absolutely not having time to dedicate to such a project right now, is that I haven't found that soulmate designer or collection just yet. It seems to work out for Gigi because she knits a ton of socks. Personally, I don't really see the appeal of some of the more complicated socks. If it's warm enough for lacy socks, I'm more likely to just not wear any at all. I could maybe see a shawl collection....now that I've been knitting awhile, I'm being brainwashed into thinking of shawls less like something Magda (Miranda's housekeeper/nanny from Sex and the City? Anyone?) would wear and more like a large scarf. Maybe that's just what "they" want me to think? Shawl knitting seems to be an inevitability of knitters! A sweater book would be cool, because it would be cool to have that many handknit sweaters, but #1, whoa expensive. #2, whoa, that would take a lifetime. and #3, my tastes tend to run to the simplistic and classic in my own wardrobe. I'd love to be one of those people who just has those classic pieces that never go out of style, and I feel like many of the pattern books out there tend toward the fussy or the trendy. Does anyone have any suggestions for pattern collections to knit through?

In the meantime, I had to put a halt to all the projects I wrote about in the last post to get 2 pairs of mittens out to a customer. My hope is that she's planning ahead for next winter, but I think we all know that this winter just isn't going to actually end. Yes, I know it's the first day of spring, but to that I say....prove it.

Once those went out, I went back to the Solar Sweetie dress I've been working on. I'm making good progress I think! I'm almost done with one of the sides. I'm all the way down to the last 5 rows. The pattern calls for a garter stitch edging. I can't decide if I should just do that, or if I'd rather do some sort of pretty lace edge. I'm going to mull it over this morning and maybe figure it out over my lunch break. I'd love to bind that half off, and then finish up the first of my pair of socks.