Tour De Fun

Hello friends! It has been a rather productive week here at the Bear Ears house, but maybe more importantly, it was a fun week. I finished up my skein of Cider House from Greenwood Fiberworks. It came out to 250 yards, which is the same as the last time I spun a braid of Greenwood Fiberworks. I remember wanting that skein to have more yardage just like I wish this skein had a bit more yardage. Maybe it is the fiber and not me? It sure is pretty, though.

I didn't expect to finish the braid of Cider House before the end of Tour De Fleece, so it was a great surprise that I might be able to spin something else. I've pulled out two braids of Wonderland Dyeworks' 80/20 Merino/Tussah Silk in the Coral Reef color way. 

This time around I'm aiming for a DK/Worsted weight two ply. I've made a great start. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll have a second skein by the end of the tour.

Meanwhile, I've kept up on my knitting. Connor and I have been watching Vikings. It is interesting enough that I can't work on anything that requires looking down, but my hands were getting itchy so I found that the many rounds of stockinette in the Dude Sweater kept them happy. I'm at the next stretch of color work though, and I'm a little intimidated. It took me a few days to get though the color work when I was doing it on the sleeves. The sweater body is three times the size of a sleeve... 

Dad's Peeta Sock is also growing. I have found myself in the car pretty often. Although the car rides aren't very long, a few rounds here and there really add up.

Connor and I have also been playing the odd round of Scrabble. I think I mentioned last time that turns can last a while, so it didn't take many games to finish the latest lavender sachet embroidery. I've now got three embroideries waiting to be sewn up. I think I might wait until I finish the sweater body that will need to be steeked before dragging the sewing machine out.

Is anyone else joining in on the fun with Tour De Fleece? Leave a link, I'd love to see your lovely skeins.

Sucking The Fun Out Of Fun

Has anyone else had a time in their life where they forgot how to have fun? I feel like that has been me lately. Since the last week of April, I've been staying disciplined by working on getting The Comic up and running. Every day I edit at least two pages and after I get a pile edited, I (digitally) cut them up and Connor posts them. The thing is, I had gotten so efficient that even when I left room for myself to do something fun, like knit, it wasn't fun anymore. My efficiency spilled over into my hobbies. I'd tell myself, "The faster you finish this knit, the sooner you can finish the next one." I made myself into a machine. This isn't any way to live. 

After making myself miserable for the last two plus months, I heard a sermon that snapped me out of it. The sermon itself was about envy, but in it the preacher talked about the movie Chariots of Fire. (A quick aside, I've never seen all of Chariots of Fire. I watched about 10 minutes at which point I realized there weren't going to be any chariots, so I stopped watching.) The plot follows two runners. One is always worried about who is catching up to him and who might beat him while the other throws his head back and enjoys the act of running. I realized I was the worried runner when really I'd rather be the happy one, so I've been practicing mindfulness. When I catch myself strategizing what I need to do next, I write it on the list, then promptly think about what I am enjoying about my current activity... even the ones that aren't really that fun on paper. I'm happy to report that it has been working. I feel like I'm having fun again. An added bonus has been that I've found myself more productive while I've been having fun.

What are those things, you might wonder? Wonder no more! First off, I am happy to say that I have finally finished editing Book 1. Connor and I need to still put the latter half of book 1 on the website, but we have made that a more pleasant experience by listing to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. (We have especially enjoyed episodes 303, 305, and 310.)

I've continued to make great progress on my father's second Peeta Sock and Connor's Dude Sweater. In typing this, I realized that there is nothing on the needles for me. Gasp! Actually, I'm having a great time knitting both projects and I look forward to giving them away when they are done.

I also started work on the next lavender sachet. I have embroidered several now, but had put them aside to stay true to the comic. I pulled it out again while Connor and I were playing Scrabble. We both can take a long time to come up with a word, so I've been able to make good progress on the new one.

And last, but certainly not least, I've been putting time aside at night to work on my Tour de Fleece project. I entirely forgot Tour de Fleece was coming up until a day or so before it started. In an effort to stay in the moment and not suck the fun out of it with too many goals, I only have the modest goal of spinning a three ply sock yarn out of my braid of Greenwood Fiberworks 80/20 Merino/Nylon in the Cider House color way. It's been on my mind for a while, but like the embroidery, I wasn't going to work on it until I had "earned" it by doing enough of the comic.

It seems so silly now that I was punishing myself by not working what I really wanted to. Connor reminded me that everything will eventually get done, and I suppose that is true. And if it doesn't get done, maybe it never really needed to anyways.

Has anyone else had the problem of sucking the fun out of their hobbies?

Catching Up On Crafting

I've been pretty productive with my various projects as of late. After realizing that I was not quite starting or finishing anything, I knew that I needed to make a list of what was causing each project to stagnate. It seems silly, but every project just had one step that needed to be worked on before I could go full steam ahead. 

For the Iceland sweater, I needed to swatch, so swatch I did. The swatch wasn't very helpful though. Since the pattern doesn't have a very good schematic, it was difficult to know how to successfully make the adjustments I wanted to. Eventually I decided that maybe I should just cast on. If it goes badly, I'll just rip it out and try again.

Next up is this test knit on my to do list for a while. It doesn't have a solid deadline, so I've waited until I had some brain power to put to it. I did my swatch, got confused over the stitch pattern directions, got clarification from the designer, and cast on. Of course after I got past the cuff, I realized that I had another question. This project will sit for a little while longer, but I'm glad to have gotten it started.

I recently wove in the ends to two different pairs of socks, but they still weren't being added to my sock rotation. I've mentioned in the past that I like to re-fix the color in all my socks before wearing them. If I have several pairs of socks close to completion, I'll wait until they are all done so I can do them together. I wasn't getting around to re-fixing the color and I realized it was because the Hieroglyphic Socks were a little too long in the toes. I wanted to fix the toes before re-fixing all the color. I don't know about the rest of you, but I wasn't really motivated to unweave in the ends and rip back color work. I finally caved and am pleased to say that both the Hieroglyphic and Rainbow socks are now re-fixed and drying.

My lavender sachet project also had been languishing. I often thought about embroidering, but kept putting it off because I needed to set up the fabric. After having a good think, I worked out the spacing I needed between each sachet. (2.25 inches) And to prevent myself from putting it off again, I'm sewing all the bag boundaries before I keep embroidering. It's going pretty well.

The last project that I'd been putting off was catching up on my comics. After Hawai'i, I was nearly two weeks behind. I've been slowly catching up by doing two comics a day: the previous days' comic and one from when we were in Hawai'i. Eventually I'll be up to date.

How has everyone else dealt with stagnating projects? Do you find a list helps or do you have a different method?

On The Hoop

After my last post, I still tried to put off starting my lavender sachet project. Of course because I had said I would stitch at least one stitch, I was too embarrassed not to go through with it. So I stitched a stitch and it was ugly. Then I stitched another stitch: still ugly. I stitched a bunch more stitches before pulling them all out and trying again. My second try went much better. I stitched a smaller stitch and it was less ugly. Then I stitched another stitch and it looked nice too. Eventually I hit a rhythm and was sad to put the fabric down at bedtime. I finished up the next day, broke out the sewing machine, and voila! I now have a completed lavender sachet. The pattern has been stitched on both sides, so there is no wrong side.

This sachet has a quarter cup of lavender in it.

I've already started my second project. This project also suffered from some ugly stitches that I pulled out before getting a size I liked better.

With knitting a WIP is "on the needles." Is an embroidery project WIP called "on the hoop?"

While I was getting my pictures together for today's post, Scooter came out and joined me. I snapped a few pictures of him too, but he wouldn't make any eye contact with the camera today. I'm happy to report that since his surgery to remove fatty tumors back in November, he has fully recovered and has so much more energy that he previously had. It's always a pleasure to see him bound around joyfully.

He looks grumpy, but he was quite happy while he was following me around.