12 years and counting

Anniversary Alert:  My blog is now 12 years old.

In November, 2005, I started this blog with a few test shots.  There was yarn:

There was Sally:

And I am so grateful that these two aspects of my writing life are still with me.  Sally and I are definitely a bit older and grayer in the muzzle.  Harry the dog (RIP) is no longer with us.  But the professor and I keep on keeping on, and while things have changed a great deal, that part is the same.  We now live in a different country (Canada) and have twins, but, well, I am grateful for all that's gone by.

It's been a challenging week...what with twins having the stomach bug.  They got better, while I had several strange work set backs, one after another.  Things felt a bit...umm...black.  I've definitely had a few missteps.  My books took a ride to a book fair--but did not sell a single copy.  My new pattern hasn't really taken off.  (at all.)  It was one downer after another.

I even was prompted to consider whether I should be writing patterns at all anymore...has my career shifted?  Am I doing other things now?  I've been writing about fiber arts and designing knitwear for about 15 years now, and this seemed like a bleak, big choice.

Then something funny happened.  I predominantly sell patterns these days on Ravelry.  I checked out another place where I sell designs...and it turns out things were selling just fine over there.  OK then.  That is good news...

And the Professor had a paper come out.  (I'm linking to an article about his paper...not all of us do genomics & evolution and development...)  So, things are improving.

I'm planning on taking some time to sit on the couch, drink tea, and knit this afternoon.  I've got a roast chicken and roasted root veggies ready to go for supper, and I'm making applesauce in the slow cooker.

Some anniversaries are quiet ones...but if you've been reading the blog for a while (or are brand new!)--I'd love to celebrate with you.  Please leave a comment and say hello and tell me how long you've been reading?

Gigadistal is live! and on sale!

Gigadistal is now live!  A new pattern!  Hurray!

And...it's on sale for 50% off. It's $2.50 US until June 28th at midnight.  There's no coupon needed--please take advantage of the sale.

This is a great stashbuster.  I used two yarns: a silk boucle and a dk weight Merino...and knit myself a great transitional piece for all that Manitoba weather we have here. :)  Here are some details about my project...but yours will likely look different, and that is great.

In June, we celebrate three family birthdays and our anniversary.  We've also had one abbreviated trip to the Rockies, one mom at home alone with twins and 2 dogs, 3 medical appointments and one ambulance/emergency room visit so far this month.

 (Everyone is ok now.  We're good...just medically active.  I promise.  It's a story for another time.)

So, I needed a little pick-me-up.  We had a photo shoot.  I had helpers.

Please come check it out! 

Snow time and stash

It's here!  Snow time!  On Wednesday night, my twins were up half the night...which is not all that unusual, actually (yes, we still don't have good sleep, I am one tired Mommy) but the main excitement was the SNOW.  Yep.  We now have snow on the ground, and barring weird melting events, it is likely to stay there until April or so.  

This correlated with another exciting moment.  I have finished the first twin sweater of the season.  Each boy gets a new handknit sweater (from me or from their Didi --grandma--) each year, at minimum, and luckily, we are still fitting into most of our sweaters from last year.  However, this one was absolutely knit to order.  I used Rowan Felted Tweed dk, which I am not in love with, but all the "best" colors were on sale at the yarn shop this summer, so there you have it.  75% natural fibers (wool and alpaca) AND much softer than last year's Lett Lopi Icelandic wool, which I love, but which was pronounced too fuzzy and furry.  (they still wear it willingly on cold days, just with a long sleeve shirt with a collar underneath.)  I used a variation on this pullover because I have the pattern book and I did not want to design a whole new sweater from scratch!

Here are two photos of the sweater.  Due to the gray, windy, snowy day, I had to adjust the light in the images, even when I took them outside on the porch.  True color replications are nowhere to be found on a day like that!

When I announced that sweater #1 was finished, the other twin burst into tears because his sweater isn't ready yet.  He has ordered a chocolate brown with blue edging sweater, and depending on the moment, it will be a lightweight, heavyweight, henley, cardigan, pullover, with or without stripes. :)  Anyway, based on the gauge swatch, it will likely end up being something fairly similar to the one I just knit.

There are some special touches worth noting.  I've been spinning some chocolate brown wool while the boys play in the basement, and it is a great color, but the yarn is a bit too bulky for what I think this twin might need.  (He already has his fair share of heavyweight sweaters, regardless of style.)

So, I dug into the stash, and found this.  It's a brown handspun Shetland 2-ply, roughly 600-700 yards, that I spun on my Canadian Production Wheel.  I kind of knew where it was in the stash, and I used my blog search function to find out the yardage...cause I wrote about it in 2009.  Bingo.   I got the gauge wrong back then, or at least, I am going to knit it at a looser gauge now, on a #5 (3.75mm) needle...but when I found it, I found the perfect blue yarn to go with it.

Yup, I wrote a post that featured the perfect blue merino/silk contrast color in 2005.  There is something to be said for a deep stash!  I have sold or given away loads of yarn in the last 10 years, but these handspun skeins were saved and moved to Canada because who knew?  One day I would have a twin four year old who asked for this...

He stopped crying when I gave him his very own gauge swatch to race with...around the house.  (At first there was confusion over whether this was a watch, which both boys clearly wanted more than a gauge swatch, but whatever...)

I don't list my yarn stash on Ravelry (hey now, this is big.  It is nobody's business!), but I do have this blog.  This ten year old blog, where I've been talking yarn, and wool, and knitting, and spinning, and stories---for a good long time.  That is worth celebrating this month, as the blog turns ten.

Meanwhile, while I cherish these things I tucked away, I am also getting ready to give away a lot of woollies for our newcomers.  Manitoba is hosting 2,000 refugees, and they are coming soon!  I feel lucky to live among people who are opening their hearts and communities to those in need.  This article says it best....or maybe we could just open with We were strangers once, in the land of Egypt...?

woolly weather and one 10 year anniversary

My article, Embrace Sweater Season with Local Wool, went live yesterday on the Manitoba's CBC online!  I am so pleased by this one, because it is a chance for my writing life and my fiber-arts one to merge.  Rare to have this overlap....when I started this blog, (ten years ago this month!)  I didn't realize how often my writing/storytelling exploits and my knitting/designing ones would diverge.
On to other news...this is a big month for the blog.  Ten years ago, at the end of November, I started this project.  I hope to do some celebrating towards the end of the month, but first, another big anniversary.

On November 1, 2005, we brought home Sally the dog from a rural shelter in Kentucky.  Yesterday, we celebrated Sally's 10th anniversary of her "coming home-forever" day.

Nothing much happened.  She got her usual walk, her normal number of cuddles, and it was peaceful and warm and safe in our house.   That is how it should be--a huge difference from when we first got her.  When the blog started, I wrote a lot of dog stories, particularly about Sally.  To read a whole mess of Sally stories, check out this search, which lists them in no particular order.  If you'd like to read how we got her, or the squirrel story, or Sally's special nurturing skills (two different posts!) or how Sally's foot got stuck--may this never happen to you-- well, it turns out I've written a lot about our girl.  In fact, there's a lot to say.  She has turned into a truly delightful and amazing family member.  Here's to many more years of celebrating our Pointer-mix, Sally, and her coming home-forever- day!

the stats

This week:
We saw and entertained house guests #4, 5 and 6. It was a joy to see them, but a highlight was having our small friend here for a little while. You may recognize her from the Shearing Day chapter in my book Fiber Gathering: Knit, Crochet, Spin, and Dye More than 25 Projects Inspired by America's Festivals. She is now seven and a half years old. We made her a "nest" in my office with pillows, bedding, and a comforter for her to sleep on and then she rearranged everything. This was so she could sit on my office chair and read aloud to her "class." (The class consisted of various pillows, Pinky the stuffed bear, some dog toys that Harry and Sally loaned her, and other inanimate objects.) Apparently everyone in the class enjoyed story hour!

I also managed to grade 19 academic papers turned in by my Engineering graduate students this week. I'm teaching a writing course for graduate students in Engineering. That meant I had to read their work and make comments. I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt so intellectually stretched and stimulated...I learned about Civil Engineering, Bio-Medical Engineering, Electrical Engineering...whew! Probably the last time I had to learn so fast was in graduate school -- and I graduated from UNC in 2001. It's been a while.

Today is also the 12th anniversary of the day the professor and I got married. We don't tend to do much for our anniversary, which is lucky.... I just brought him to the airport as he is off to an academic conference on butterflies in Alberta. His fancy camera is being serviced so I loaned him mine--hence, no pictures here.

Also today, the scaffolding went up to fix our fireplace chimney so we can put in gas fireplaces someday. We also had yet another person rush indoors to see the inside and work up gas fireplace estimates. Cause, you know, we didn't have anything else going on. (I'd laugh here, since if I didn't, I might cry over the chaos of all this!)

Finally, you may remember the purple sweater project. Last night I got ready to integrate in one ball of yarn that came all the way from Tokyo to help me finish the sweater. Sadly, when I started work again on sleeve #2, I discovered that I'd made the cuff too short. So, I ripped out almost an entire sleeve so I could knit it properly. This sweater may be done in time for fall. At least, I hope so. It's a moving target, this sweater project.

So, that's:
+3 houseguests and then -3 house guests
+19 Engineering papers
+one dozen years of being married
-one professor (just for the week)
+one scaffolding
+one more gas fireplace estimate
-one knitted sweater sleeve
----------------------------
one busy and tired Joanne