Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Many members of my family are sharing lists of goals for this year with each other. So, in no particular order, here goes:

Yoga x 20 days per month, for the whole year
Practice French more often
Write two blog posts a month
Pay down credit cards
Pay off two student loans
Pay off piano loan
Increase our contributions to our kids' RESP fund
Lose weight
Save money in a TFSA
Clear out my office
Use a cash envelope system, like Gail Vaz-Oxlade recommends
Follow at least two 'bites' per month from One Bite at a Time
Learn to play the violin
Knit one lovely thing each month
And finally, my sister and sister-in-law both set seasonal goals, so I'd like to come up with some fun things to do with my family each season


Not a bad list, if I do say so myself. Everything feels either manageable, like something that I wish I had more of or less of in my life, and/or will stretch me a bit. I really like making lists, especially because I am the kind of person who needs to refer back to them when my energy is running low and all I want to do is have a nap.

Some of these things are lifestyle changes that I want to make. So far, I've done yoga six out of eleven days this month, taking a break for a couple of travel days. Very manageable. I've been tackling the 'Eating Your Frog' and making a list suggestions from One Bite. Again, a bit of structure for things that I already do.

Some of them are pushing me to do things that I've wanted to do for a long time. I have a chance to learn to play the violin right now but I haven't taken it up yet. Even if all I do is learn how to crank out a scratchy version of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", I'll be happy. I've also been losing the rest of my baby weight steadily over the last few months, so I'm excited to push myself to do that. You'll notice I didn't put up any specifics about my weight loss. I believe that it's important to know specifics of your goal and how you'll get there. Trust me when I say that I have specific weight loss plans, I just haven't posted them. Likewise, the details of my loans.

And, they also give me permission to do things that I really want to do, with the key word being 'permission'. I love using beautiful yarn to make beautiful things. However, I often don't get exactly what I want. So, this year I'm going to choose one project a month that has been in my knitting queue forever and make it the way that I want to. This month I've chosen to make the Featherweight Cardigan by Hannah Fettig. I splurged and bought two skeins of madelinetosh tosh merino light in antler (the cream colour in my picture). I bought two other skeins to make a dress for my daughter, but then poached the skein of tern for my cardigan (the gray stripe from my picture). I'm going to do stripes of antler, tern and cousteau, which is a rich green. I love how it's turning out so far.

Finally, you might have noticed that none of my goals are work-related. I decided that, following last year's workaholic tendencies, that I wouldn't make any personal goals that were work-related. I work more than I should already. Instead of making goals about limiting how often I work, I decided to add things into my life instead, like more yoga and more knitting, which will help keep my sane and hopefully interfere with some workaholism.

And, on an unrelated topic, in the picture, my cardigan is on top of another skein of yarn that I just opened up. I was approached by a student and asked to make something for a charity auction. I tried not to be, but have to admit that I was flattered that they thought I would make something that people would bid on. The problem is that I don't have a ton of time to spend on it since the event is coming up in a week and a half. I landed on making the Marian Cowl by Jane Richmond. I decided to make it with Rasta yarn by Malabrigo. I went to my LYS to buy a skein, and when they heard what I was doing they donated the yarn, along with about 20 scarf-making kits. I was so impressed, especially since I was about to spend $30 on the yarn, and left the store with several hundred dollars worth of merchandise. I so excited to tell the student who originally asked me about the donation from the yarn store. Good karma!

October Update

Well, I feel like I am slowly emerging from the busiest month and a half of my life. Besides being up day and night with brand new babies, I don't think I've ever worked such long hours in my life. Maybe when I was doing my Masters full time, with three jobs and a practicum. But I didn't have kids then, so I wasn't as constantly weary. Anyway, I've now done the first month and a half of my new job, which I'm very happy about. Some very rocky moments, but I escaped mostly unscathed.

I can tell that I've reached the turning point of busyness with the new job because now I actually have time to knit again. Not much, but something is better than nothing, right? I finally finished the second, bigger size of the Sadie dress for my niece.

I'm really happy with how it turned out. I thought about frogging it at the beginning because the colour seemed too dark, with few colour variations. The yarn is Sweet Georgia, Tough Love Sock (which is an awesome name) in the Ultraviolet colourway (which they don't seem to make anymore). I spent some time on ravelry and checked out other projects that were done in the same colourway. The other projects changed my mind, and I'm happy that I stuck with it because I love how it turned out.

So, on to my next projects. I know several people who are expecting babies soon, so I decided to work on a few different baby blankets at the same time, just to be prepared for boys or girls.

Baby Granny Stripe, pattern by the Purl Bee

Cerys Baby Blankie, pattern by Leah J Williams

Last but not least, I had a chance to go see my kids in their swim classes. I had to miss the first two because of work (even though they're on Saturday mornings) but was really happy to see them in action this past weekend. They both LOVE the classes.

The pictures aren't great, but I had to take them quickly since I try to avoid taking pictures of other peoples' children. Thank goodness for them, the kids seem to have inherited their dad's athleticism, rather than mine.

Now that work is starting to slow down a tiny bit, I'm realizing how much time and energy I'm spending on all the small details that need to be taken care of. Some are things that are an hour or two old, but some are a month old. My goal this week is to tackle all of them. It sounds ridiculous, to say that I'm just going to take care of everything this week, but I decided that if I can put all my energy into this week and try to take care of as many loose ends as possible, I'll be able to move forward with more time and energy. Wish me luck!

Summer Update

Hello! Once again, a long time since I've posted. Instead of lamenting how long it's been, I actually had to look at the date and be amazed at how much has happened since I last posted. I have a lot of good reasons for being busy. Some of the highlights are:

1. Finishing the school year
2. T started walking two days before his birthday...then climbing...then running. Exhausting!
2. T's first birthday

3. Two week trip back to our home town, where we helped roof my parents' house
4. Trip back home...one car, two adults, a one year old, a two year old and two cats.
5. Packed up and moved...three floors down and 200 meters away
6. Unpacked most of our house in a day and a half

'Helping' with the move

7. Started a job a couple days a week, with Z at home with the kids
8. Had friends stay with us. Our friends from Germany (two adults, a two year old and a nine month old) stayed with us for three weeks. During that time, some other friends also stayed with us for five days (two adults, a 12 year old and a three year old).

M is sad that we're saying goodbye and mad that we can't go with our friends to Germany right now.

9. While visitors were here, we were tourists in our home town. By far the busiest summer we've ever had.
10. M turned three years old and we had a big party to celebrate

11. Gearing up for my return back to counselling from maternity leave
12. Starting a new role, which will be very labour intensive

One of our busiest summers ever. We had a really busy summer last year as well, but that was mostly because we moved twice and had a baby. While that was gratifying in a different way, this has been a lot more fun. Equally tiring, but more fun.

On the beach at Jordan River, BC. Guess which one of us isn't part Japanese?

Needless to say, I haven't been knitting a lot. I knit a shawl (which is actually more of a scarf) during the Olympics as part of the Ravellenic Games on ravelry. I'll write a longer post about it, but here's a little preview of it.

I have less than a week before our school starts up and I'll be flat-out busy. I'm going to take better pictures of my shawl for a longer post, but in the meantime I'm working on a blanket for my friend's brand new baby.

Winterfresh Cardigan

In the spirit of knocking another thing off my list, I'm going to post about one of my favourite knitting projects. I started writing the post on February 16th, so I guess it's time that I actually finish it!

I am so excited that I finally finished a project for myself. I've made a couple before (out of the 100+ projects that I've made), but this is my first sweater for me (at least, that actually fits me).

I ordered the yarn a long, long time ago from ..... They were having a big going-out-of business sale and so I placed a big order. I think I ordered about 20+ skeins of yarn. Opening the box felt like Christmas. Anyway, part of my order was 4 skeins of Cascade Venezia, in the colour way Winterfresh. Blue in almost any shade is by far my favourite colour and I especially love aqua. So, with great intention I ordered the yarn. And it sat, and sat, and sat.

I finally cast on for the cardigan at the end of last summer. I wanted a project that was fairly simple, and this project has an almost unending amount of stockinette knitting. It's a really easy top down project, and once you get past the divide for the sleeves, you just keep on going with stockinette. The most challenging thing was keeping up my motivation to with the long, long rows of knitting or purling.

I also got sidelined at one point because my cable connecting the two ends of my circular knitting needle broke. I bought a new one a few weeks later, but it took me a while before I picked up the project again. I finished it off with a bright red button, since my favourite colour combination is aqua and red. I actually wore the cardigan with a red tank top this past weekend. I'm so happy that I actually finished the project because it's one of my favourite things in my wardrobe and I made it! Crazy!

My ravelry project page is here. The pattern is called Lady Kina, and it's a free pattern (in both English and French) that you can find here. There's also a pattern for a mini version of this that I'm sorely tempted to make for M.

Eat Your Frog!

Why does my kitchen look like this?

It's been so long since I've been posting regularly, so there are  a lot of things that I want to write about. I decided today to stick with one of the big things that I'm doing in my life right now. The cute kid pictures and knitting adventures will have to wait for another post.

(OK, just one...)

I haven't had very much free time at all over the last two to three weeks. Family emergencies, busyness with work (including some big projects coming due), a toddler who is reaching new milestones daily (like figuring out how to open doors...I'm not a huge fan), financial stress, general exhaustion...the list continues. Generally I can manage to balance everything, but with my daily goal of having a cup of tea and knitting (even for two minutes), I can tell that time and energy is in short supply when I haven't knit in more than a week.

Anyway, I was reading a funny blog a couple weeks ago and followed a couple links that were on the page. I eventually got to this website: http://52bites.com/. I'm in love! Tsh Oxenreider has essentially taken all the things that I want to focus on and created an e-book about tackling each thing in a manageable way. Her blog is www.simplemom.net and she describes the goal of her blog is to help her readers live more simply. How lovely is that? The idea is very attractive.

So. Back to the e-book. Tsh sells an e-book on her website called One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler. The cost is even simple...$5.00 US for an instant download of the book.

The book is written in 52 sections, one for each of the 'bites' that you can tackle. The sections are short and sweet. Some are more intuitive than others, some are more complicated. The book is divided into different themes: living green, living well, money management, organizing your mind, organizing your space, relationships, taking care of yourself, and time stewardship. Many of the 52 sections fit into multiple categories. There isn't one single theme or section in the book that I don't want to tackle. I actually have had the book open in a minimized window since I bought it, so that I can open it up and read it when I have a chance. I've been so busy lately, but can easily find three minutes to read a new section and think about how to incorporate it into my life.

To start, I tackled a few sections that were similar to things I already did (drink more water, carve out intentional downtime). Some of the sections I'm currently tackling are things that have been on my to-do list for a while (declutter your wardrobe, streamline your email). My clean kitchen is the result of #39, which is 'make a daily to-do list'...again something that I've always done, but with some great ideas of how to make it more workable (and guilt-free). Also, I use #1 every day, which is 'eat your frog'...one of my favourites, based on the quote from Mark Twain, "Eat a live frog every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day." I'm looking forward to the sections on making a debt-free plan, creating an essential papers file and dumping your brain.

Of course, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll end the post with a picture of what my living room currently looks like...always a work in progress:

Static!

Weekly Update

Oh, hello! Do you remember me? I can't believe it's so long since I've posted. I had such a good rhythm going but life seemed to get in the way. The funny thing is that the big reason I got derailed was because it was Spring Break and I had more family time. That's always the time that I plan to do more things that I really want to do, but in reality do less relaxing and have more organized outings.

So, my plans have been derailed for a little while but are now back on track. I think that as time passes and I'm not meeting a personal goal (about finances, exercise, sleep, etc., etc.) I feel that I need something big to jolt me back into the routine or as penance for not keeping up with my plan. To that, I say, screw it. I'm going to keep posting on my blog at least once a week and refuse to be sucked into guilt about not posting. For anyone who has known me over a long period of time, this shift from every-present guilt to acceptance and (dare I say?) compassion may be shocking.

Life has been pretty busy in the last five or six weeks. I'll post more about that in the next few days. I haven't been keeping up with my goal of knitting every day, only because I was sick and have been putting in a bigger effort to get more sleep. I have some ridiculous stories about keeping up with a two year old and almost-one year old (who said his first word today...Mama!...or more like MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA, while crying. But I'll take it!) and have had some photographic evidence of these travails, so keep posted for an update in a day or two. Or five weeks. Whatever, guilt be damned!

I've now started the tradition of colouring Easter eggs with my daughter, which is a tradition that I have previously (and, will again in the future) force my adult siblings and friends to participate in.

Weekly Update

Poets Cove Resort

I'm so excited that Spring Break has started. Our break began last Thursday and goes until April 9th. I feel so lucky that we get to spend this time off together as a family.

Some things I'm knitting this week:
I'm working away on my Sadie baby dress, which I'm making for my soon-to-be-born niece. It's really cute and I love the Malabrigo Sock yarn that I chose. The Violeta Africana colour way is pretty and doesn't pool badly (for all of you non-knitters, that means that the light and dark colours don't group together badly, so that the project looks splotchy).

I also just bought the pattern for Jared Flood's Tweed Baby Blanket. I know that I keep putting off my cowl design that I want to write up, but I realized last week that I have another friend who is going to be having a baby shortly, and I thought it would really be nice to finish a project before the baby actually comes. 

Some things I'm loving this week:

Poets Cove Resort

Good friends who volunteer to watch my kids. Overnight. When one of our friends heard that I had never been away from my kids overnight (M is 2 and a half years old and T is 9 months old) she suggested that she could watch them while my husband and I went away. It was challenging to get everything sorted but I was motivated. Pumping milk over a few days, since T is still nursing, cleaning, writing out instructions, prepping meals...all of it totally worth it to actually sleep through the night for the first time in 3/4 of a year.

Poets Cove Resort

We went to Poets Cove, which is a resort located on Pender Island, BC. We live on Vancouver Island, so it was a relatively short ferry ride for us. Of course, I was tired when I was reading the ferry schedule and we ended up taking the ferry that stopped at Mayne Island and Saturna Island before we actually stopped at Pender...a grand total of 2 and a half hours. I thought it was a short ferry ride so we didn't have breakfast first. We ended up raiding T's rice husk teething biscuits from our emergency car stash. After such a delicious, filling breakfast, we napped in our car on the ferry. I could tell my husband was tired when he slept through the ferry docking and three cement trucks backing on to the ferry, parking beside our car.

We made it to the hotel, where we napped, went for a walk, went for dinner and then slept through the night. Glorious! The hotel was really beautiful, as you can see from the pictures. Of course, we didn't see as much of it as we could have since we were sleeping most of the time. The island was also really lovely, with green, lush forests everywhere you look. We'll definitely be going back.

On a side note - our kids ended up not going to bed easily, waking up (between the two of them) four times during the night and M got up for good at 5 am. My friend was impressed that we do this everyday. I think it would be a great form of birth control for people to try once or twice. 

Some things I'm working on this week:

With the start of Spring Break, plus going away overnight, I decided that I was going to prep meals ahead of time and freeze them. My favourite way of cooking is the crockpot, hands down. I now have a freezer full of prepped meals that are kid-friendly, gluten-, dairy-, soy- and peanut-free, and can all be cooked in the crockpot. If I can muster the energy, I'll post what I did in the next few days.

All three pictures labelled Poets Cove Resort are from the Poets Cove Resort website.

Weekly Update

Well, I'm only a week or so behind with my weekly update, but who's counting? We've had a lot of upheaval lately but the dust seems to be settling. Just to add an extra challenge to our lives, we're going to host a small party at our apartment after work. My husband invited 35 people. I would guess that our apartment could comfortably fit 10. Maybe 12. I guess we'll be cosy!

Some things I'm knitting this week:
I finished my socks, which I love. When M saw them, she asked me for a pair for herself. I've been working on those when I have a few moments, but they're few and far in between. I'm sticking with my challenge of knitting every day...however, sometimes I'm picking up the needles at 1 am. That still counts though, right?

On the horizon, the cowl that I started a while ago. I love the pattern (created by yours truly) but need to size up the needles. I'm going to rip it back and start over, writing down the instructions this time.

I also just bought a lovely skein of Malabrigo Sock in Violeta Africana, a beautiful variegated purple. I'm going to make a little knit dress for my new niece (the very first one, after four nephews!) who will be born sometime in March. Hopefully I will finish this project before my niece turns 8.

Some things I'm loving this week:
This blog makes me laugh all the time. You know when you need a good laugh? Go check this out. I think I can relate to 99% of what she writes about. The only reason it's not 100% is because her kids are slightly older than mine. That's it.
http://crappypictures.com/

Posts I can especially relate to:
http://crappypictures.com/2011/05/what-it-is-like-to-change-diapers-illustrated-with-crappy-pictures.html

and this:
http://crappypictures.com/2011/07/my-cat-before-after-kidsillustrated-with-crappy-pictures.html

Making soap...I'll post more info soon.

Some things I'm working on this week:
Hanging on for dear life. While party planning.

Off to go wake up the kids from their nap. Just kidding! M has been crashing around in their room the entire 'nap' time and is now alternately yelling "MAMA!" and playing a trumpet.

Vintage Socks

One of my very favourite knitting pattern designers is Susan B. Anderson. She can do no wrong. I was an off-again, on-again knitter until I discovered her book Itty Bitty Hats. Now, as my husband likes to call it, I 'knitblog', which I think really says something about how she is so inspirational. Susan has a great series of Itty Bitty books as well as a very cute book called Spud and Chloe at the Farm. I don't have the last book yet but it's only a matter of time. Susan also has published many free patterns - not only is she a brilliant designer, she's very generous too.

Susan recently shared some of her latest knit socks on her blog. She had such a big response to the posting that she wrote down her personal pattern for making socks - found here (and here is the ravelry page). Although I've got a few other projects on the go or waiting in the wings, I had to cast on for this pattern right away. I dug out a skein of my precious yarntini Self Striping Sock yarn in Vintage.

Susan's sock pattern is a quick and easy knit. She has mastered the art of pattern writing. Her instructions are always crystal clear. This pattern would be perfect if you wanted to try casting on for your first pair of hand-knit socks.

The best part for me...Susan and I have the exact same size feet, so I followed the pattern exactly. Not a single change. They fit perfectly. I had planned on doing my weekly update today, but I decided instead that I had to write about my lovely new socks. Did I mention that I love them?