I am clearing out my stash this week. Finding many wonderful things but also the occasional yarn barf of a skein that unwound itself while I wasn’t looking. Most of the time I just patiently untangle it while I watch TV, but sometimes there’s just no way. If it’s lace weight, for example. But I’m getting it sorted into weights so I know where everything is, and I’ve got a big bag of yarn to hand off to Krissie next time she comes, and I have many many projects planned, so I’m working. Also there’s that book I have to finish that I have been obsessing over. Finally decided that I needed a white board on my one big plain living room wall more than I need a TV so I can see the damn thing (book not wall) all at once. My plan for December: FINISH STUFF.
What are you up to?
Yikes! tangled lace weight!
I finished the bulky weight afghan that I had previously started, decided was too small, frogged all the way back to nothing, ordered more yarn, and restarted. It’s got a bit of heft to it, so it will be really snuggly when you want to keep warm (and now is larger than just my lap.) I’m pretty sure I’ll be gifting to my BIL. With his Parkinson’s diagnosis, he spends a lot of time sitting and watching TV, so this should make him feel good there.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5ppTsvh5s8/
In other news, I’ve gotten back to work at the office. So, work work is being accomplished. It’s nice to have the interaction with other people again and doubly nice not to have to have “work work” in my home – so when I get back I’m on my own time. (Working from home was convenient, but interfering with my psyche.) Getting in and out of the house is still pretty much a pain (I crawl both ways), so I try to only do that one time a day.
So hooray for finishing things. I have another crochet project I might start tonight, just to see if I can get it done before Christmas.
That’s really beautiful yarn, Nancy! I’m sure your BIL will appreciate it.
I finished Mussolini (yes!), so am now chasing for another job. Meanwhile I’m trying to decide where to hang my pictures. They’ve been stacked in the living room since I moved in, and I realized I’d have to move them somewhere else to make room for the Christmas tree, and it’d be better to put them on the walls. It’s going to take me a while.
Next is getting Christmas cards printed, brainstorming presents; and first trying to organize a small solstice feast, since the friend who’s coming to stay for a night or two then is really keen to meet more people.
Do you take any non-corporate jobs? I might be looking for a copy editor after the new year. I have one lined up, but she seems to have disappeared on me.
I do – but don’t forget I’m British. American’s not my first language, although I have occasionally edited books in American English.
PS. Do contact me via my website if you want.
Will do if my editor doesn’t reappear!
Hahahaha. For me it’s 5mm ribbon.
I posted Working Wednesday yesterday because I thought it was Wednesday. https://www.instagram.com/p/B5nmyajgBDI/?igshid=19bvya64tyua6
Today in about an hour I did a craft thing for a gift. I can’t post it because the algorithms are using location to show people to follow and I don’t want anyone to see it before tomorrow.
Once it’s given, I’ll post tomorrow on Instagram with the story of why I’m being ever so slightly passive aggressive over a gift. Stay tuned. I think it’s a doozy. 🤷🏻♀️
Having finally opened the art supplies I ordered, I am working on beginning to use them. Right now they’re just piled on my dining room table, staring at me reproachfully, because I paid for a workshop and supplies, and Christmas is coming, but I’m not getting anything done! Argh!
Cleaning the kitchen. And I am accoplishing it early in the day than usual. Other than that, I need to motivate myself to start writng out my holiday cards. If I just get started, it won’t take too long.
I would love to be finishing things! Hopefully some of ya’all’s “finishing energies” will rub off on me. Meantime, our in-studio show starts tomorrow, and my boss’s desk (in the main room – where we have the show) looks like a bomb went off. I am at lunch, and we have yet to do any of the things I was told were priorities for the morning. At least these failure to finish things are not my fault, unlike the home based ones.
I am working on preparing everything to pass on to the young man who is replacing me at the paying job in the new year. Have ordered the photo Christmas cards and they’re ready to pick up, so hopefully next week’s post will be that I finished sending those out. Also still have to put the photos from Middle Child’s wedding this summer in the album.
So, I, too, am in “finishing” mode!
I’m not doing much of anything except a daily blogging project this month and attempting a complicated knitting pattern with cables and different colors in the cables. Hoooo boy….well, I got about 10 rows done so far, so that’s pretty dang good.
I’m working through my To-Do list. About 40 items on it, so I’ve prioritized the top 10, and hope to finish those today. Gah, can you tell I used to be a Project Manager (Engineering, no less) in the paying world?? At least I get to try a new scone recipe. I’ve started making mini-scones; they are the perfect size snack for me, with a cup of coffee. (Regular-sized scones are just too big for me.) But I REALLY need to figure out my Medicare re-enrollment today, I’ve only got a few days left!
Stepping in here to say that I’ve been without power for three days (at McDonald’s now for hot food and WiFi) and I may be out tomorrow and Friday, too, so I won’t be in the comments or moderating until the lights come back on. Argh.
I was wondering how the early December snowstorm was treating you. Looked like you might have had a foot or more of the white stuff.
Jenny, have you thought again about getting a generator?
Yes. It’s $5000. Don’t have that right now. The neighborhood is full of those little generators you have to keep pouring gas into (imagine how I could screw that up) and they make an awful racket and evidently don’t work if it gets too cold. My daughter has a permanent generator that powers her whole house, and it was $5000 several years ago (they had three little kids so it was a no-brainer just to keep the kids alive), and that’s the way I’d go. It’s on the list.
That’s exactly what I thought about after I made that comment if I had to operate a generator myself. I can not see me dragging that generator out of the shed, setting it up, filling it with gas and hoping for the best.
An entire wall of whiteboard? That’s remarkable! (…2, 3, har.)
It isn’t my project, but the dotter has these figurines of Caribou (‘mericun/Canadian for reindeer) that are supposedly imported. I asked, “Finnish working?” She said, “No. Made in China.”
There really was sun out this morning only to change back to the gloom and doom of the last three days. I decided to bake and made a cranberry and orange bread from a mix. Added a few blueberries and orange zest. Things were going fine until I realized, again, that I should have double checked the temperature. So it’s a little dark. A slather of cream cheese will make it better.
Yesterday we watched our president and the president of France in a back and forth discussion. I don’t know what happened to our news networks but only one channel had an interpreter and he must have cherry picked words from French into English.
In the spring and summer I hike and take pictures of wildflowers and post them to Instagram and FB with the names (if I can figure them out). That pretty much came to a halt in October when the last of the flowers died. Today I made an arrangement with a local florist to take pictures in their backroom through the winter in exchange for tagging them.
Happy sigh.
With me it is being forced to knit with fashion fur yarn, I barely survived last time and only because Jenny told me the secret, use another yarn with it!
I have to finish stuff too, elephant first, sew up patchwork quilt (part of my new year’s resolution) I am running out of year
Book release party for my second book, complete with DJ and afterparty. ❤️
Adding borders and basting the layers for my red and white star quilt. Proof here (before basting, but on the table where theb asting happened): https://www.instagram.com/p/B5lBdG0A0Wa/
Also reading galleys for the first of the Garlic Farm Mysteries and reminding myself not to compare the quality of the just-finished really rough first draft of the third book to the final, much-edited version of the first book.
Made an appointment with my manager for a one-on-one this Friday.
Don’t know if he will make it or not as his calendar so full I can’t see what he has going on. It won’t be a good day for a one-on-one as we have and issues with supporting major systems this week and have another one going live this weekend.
But there will NEVER by a good day for this one-on-one because I plan on telling him that I am going to retire at the end of March. This summer I finally realized that I don’t want to do this anymore: we have too much going on and I no longer have the time or energy to get the exercise I need or doing any thing creative.
I don’t want to leave him completely in the lurch, hence the 3.5 month notice. When I first decided I was going to retire next year I was thinking of January 1st, but I’ve just let things slide to much in telling him.
Time draw the line in the cement.
Congrats on making this decision! It’s a big one, especially if you’ve been with someone for a long time. But it is best to recognize you are no longer getting joy from what you do and need to “rewire.” I’m taking this same plunge in January and looking forward to it with fear and excitement!
I drew 4 portraits of people, and was pretty pleased with my drawings. They don’t all totally look like the models but one does and the others are definitely reminiscent of the people. I’m getting more consistent too, which is great. Practice :-).
And I decided last week was finally-get-round-to-organising-health-stuff week. So I made half a dozen appointments and I’m feeling quite relieved about that.
Now I need to make December finally-get-round-to-organising-finances-stuff month. Time to stop putting things off!
preparing for two gingerbread house decorating parties on Saturday and a baby shower on Sunday. Plus trying to upload an audiobook, to Findaway. I still have to do the food shopping and figure out how to clear the living room one-handed. I am praying my son can come help. But I know he is overbooked. Also, I had an ECOCAST audition come in today. So I think I will go for a walk between rain bouts and work on memorizing lines in a Russian accent.
There is more but that will do it for now. I am going to Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake tonight with my critique partner. She scored tickets. Yay!
Drum roll. The Christmas cards are finished. All thirty or so of them.
Every card gets either a hand-written note or a personalized letter, which is not difficult since I only have about 4 different things I talk about: 1. house projects. 2. The Morgan is almost ready for licensing. 3. Vacation. 4. I changed my mind about where to move the stairs on the hillside. Good thing I still haven’t finished that project. This has been the format for my Christmas cards for at least the last 15 years. I am not sure what I will write about when the Morgan gets licensed and I finish rebuilding the stairs. And of course it is unlikely the house will ever be completed because the things I did 30 years ago are now ready to be redone.
Onward and upward to finishing the Christmas gifts. (We aren’t doing a tree this year so that’s a couple of days work eliminated.)
I bought a gnome with a green hat and I’m going to put lights on that. I am so not a gnome person, but the green hat sold me. Also it was $15, so not a budget breaker. (That would be the yarn I bought.)
I finished my first ever scarf. It bulges in the middle as I added stitches somehow, then I skimmed it back down. My little thinks it’s beautiful. Then I learned the purl stitch, and practiced making stockingette fabric all the way from Santa Cruz to San Diego (9 hours). Got bored, so I tried adding a pattern. That took me all the way back from San Diego.But the yarn is variegated, so the pattern doesn’t show, and I was super bored, so I tore it a
L apart (frogged?) and now I’m doing ribs and it’s lovely.
I’m really enjoying my new hobby!
Yes, it is “frogged”. Because “rip it, rip it, rip it” sounds like a sound the frog would make.
I’m glad you enjoyed knitting!
Oh, good.
I just frogged two different borders and the start to a Secret Paths in Hood River Hawthorne. It’s very freeing.
Finishing the contemporary romance novella I’m ghostwriting. The client was later than expected getting me feedback I needed to move to the next stage, so now I’m trying to write 10,000 in 2 days. Which would be totally doable except those are both days when I’m at work 8 hours a day. But I got 4,000 today. Which means I need to do 6,000 tomorrow. This is fine. This is fine. This is totally fine.
As the flames lap around you.
Been there.
Making jewelry and various magical kits, the first to sell at my shop and on Etsy, and the second just on Etsy.
December, argh.
Okay, I am UPSET if the absence of a Good Book Thursday means that Jenny’s power is still off. New Jersey power companies are NOT making me happy. (Having a bit of a tantrum, though not in NJ….)
Part of it is that New Jersey Power is inept (ask all the trucks that came from out of state to help and that sat in the mall parking lot waiting for instruction) and part of it that they restore power to the neighborhoods with the most people first (which makes sense) and we’re a little wilderness township full of bears and cottages.
But the power is back on as of Wed night (god, what a relief) and I just now got internet back (GOD, WHAT A RELIEF) so now I will go make stir fry, or maybe just a sandwich. And I don’t have to go out tomorrow to get internet so I’m all cosy inside now. VERY HAPPY IN NJ.
I have to put together a portfolio of basically my entire academic working life (30 years worth). I have 5 weeks left to complete, but the holidays will be in the way – complete with daughters arriving home for a month. I long to drag out some knitting but won’t get this done if I don’t stay focused.
I recently had to rip back hrair rows of knitting and ended up with yarn barf of massive proportions. You have my sympathy for both the tangle and the powerlessness in your home. Hope all is resolved soon. (^-^)
That sounds like Hell. My entire academic life is probably only twenty years and I’d lose my mind trying to pull that together. You have all my sympathy.
The late wife (died in ’97) once explained to me that you don’t assemble a curriculum vitae, you maintain it your entire life. Otherwise it gets entirely out of control. It sounds like she knew about what she talked.
Your wife was right. I refresh mine pretty much yearly. Mostly just adding publications. Which is all rather silly now because I am 64 and counting, with no plans to continue this work after retirement (it’s off to new pastures for me!). But, well, habit.
But if you do it routinely it’s far less of a pain.