Picking up where I left off

I walked away from my computer and another year has gone by...and now I have two cats. What the hell?

I'm also knitting a Christmas stocking. Didn't I say a couple years ago that I'd never knit another Christmas stocking? Ok, so I'm a sucker for Santa.

This one is going to be for my grand niece who is expected to appear on July 4th. (Yeah, that makes my sister a grandma.) The pattern is the same one my mom knit for my sister and me when we were babies. All our kids have the same sock too. This will be the third generation sock and I've done a little tweaking to the pattern.

The pattern is by Mary Maxim and it's well over 50 years old. I still have the original, and I've tucked it safely away.  I'll post photos of the tweaked pattern in a few days, once I get a little further into it. I'll also post the pattern. (I can post it because it's old enough to be in the public domain, so no copyright issues.) For now, here's the same sock that I knit for my brother in law several years ago.

 More to come. This time I mean it.

The glamour of reality

You won't see pictures of me lounging by the pool or at some random festival. Not this girl, and not this weekend! Today is bush trimming day...had to get out the Black and Decker. It's a big job...

Woosh! There goes a year...and then some

Yeah...I've been absent. On purpose.

The past year has been anything but uneventful. It's just that the events haven't been all that great, but they're getting better.

Sometimes people become "someone I used to know." I lost a group of friends and a person who was a significant part of my life because people I used to know made the conscious decision to be hurtful. In hindsight I say good riddance, but at the time it broke my heart.

Deciding whether or not to start blogging again has been a difficult decision. I have missed it tremendously, but privacy and safety are a concern. It may take a few posts for me to find my voice again. Quite honestly, I'm a little afraid to say anything at all because words were used to confuse and hurt me for a long time. But my confidence is returning and my voice is becoming stronger. My fingers are moving faster on the keyboard and I'm not hitting the backspace as much as I did two paragraphs ago. I've kept silent out of fear that I might say something wrong. I've been stomping down that fear every day for over a year and guess what? Today it didn't rise back up and try to take hold of me again.

Ladies and gentlemen, she's back...and she's got stories to tell.

Who doesn't have pita chips, hummus and a vodka tonic for dinner on a Monday? On the patio...

Destash Update

In less than a week I have destashed 12 ounces of spinning fiber and 6,795 yards, or 1.28 miles, of yarn. Yes, miles.

And I still haven't made much of a dent. But it took a long time to build the stash, it will take time to whittle it down.

My Chrysalis Fibers Etsy shop will close down at the end of the month. I've moved most of the items over to my destash page on Ravelry. I'll keep adding every few days.

I'm also going to list the Ashford Traditional spinning wheel that I picked up last year at an antique mall. It's a single drive, single treadle. There's a small chip in the small whorl of the flyer, but that doesn't seem to interfere with the spinning. I just don't enjoy the single drive/scotch tension. It's a great wheel and comes with 3 bobbins (2 of which are new). I took it apart, thoroughly cleaned it and rubbed it down to a nice glow. $250 or make an offer.

DESTASH!

Well, I have finally come to the conclusion that I have too much. Too much stuff. Too much yarn. Too much everything, and it's weighing me down.

So, I'm destashing, and I'm serious. My destash page can be found on Ravelry, and I'm liquidating my Etsy shop.

Before you call in the professionals, I'm nowhere near done with fibery crafts. I just have too much and it has become a hindrance. When I walk into the room that was formerly known as the guest room and look at all the yarn, fiber, fabric, etc, I get all anxious feeling. My stash doesn't make me happy anymore, it has become a burden, it is unmanageable. It's time to focus, or refocus. As I have said all year, this is my year of doing things differently. Rather than stress and fret over things that are unmanageable, I'm going to purge them.

However, this does NOT mean that I won't be attending the Tennessee Fiber Festival this weekend. It just means that the only thing I will take home is the memory of a good day with friends!