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!

About practice sampling

What I am about to show you is not a gauge swatch. It's a practice sampler.

What's the difference? I'm not trying to get X amount of stitches or rows per inch. That means there's really no pressure--no measuring, remeasuring, bunching, stretching, pulling, measuring again, changing needles, no bad words, and no pulling hair out.

A practice sampler is just what it says...a sample that you knit for practice. It's not going to BE anything. It doesn't have to FIT anything. It's simply knitting for the fun and joy of knitting.

This particular sampler just happens to be the toe section of Anna Zilboorg's "Half-Stranded Socks". I've written of this pattern before, a little over a year ago. (Here.) Since that post I have taken a class from Anna, as in live and in person. (More on that later.) For me the class was kick in the butt I needed to practice the art of knitting and become a better, well, practitioner.

My little sample is far from perfect, but did I really expect to hit a home run on my first at bat? (Actually...yes I did.) Some (a lot) of the stitches are wonky. Strike one. I executed a positively crappy stitch pick up along the toe. Surely I don't have to point it out to you. Strike two. Then there's the puckered area over on the left. Strike three. So does that mean I'm out? No way! I've only just begun.

My brain knows what my fingers should be doing, but my fingers are being stubborn. I can do it, but my fingers are balking as I coax them into trying a different way of picking up stitches along the toe band or to remember not to tug the yarn too tightly across the back of the color work. Muscle memory is very difficult to erase and reprogram. It takes patience, which I tremendously lack, and practice.

And don't even get me started on that old cliche "practice makes perfect". That's a whole other therapy session... (Hi, I'm Chris and I'm a Perfectionist...)

For now I'll stick with practicing and more practicing.