Setting Goals

Sometimes the time really does fly by. I intended to start the year off by posting more often and have already failed miserably.

At first I was distracted by the Kindle Fire I got the end of November and there was far too much game playing and movie watching and not enough knitting, beading or any other crafty diversion. I seem to have adjusted to it as I no longer spend hours at a time on it.

In an effort to get more knitting done I started prioritizing my projects and setting goals. This is how January started...

January Goals Week 1:

1.Finish Mermaid
2.Finish a pair of socks from Drip Candles, Dizzy or generic toe-up
3.Cast on a sweater for me
4.Finish Fugue
5.Knit Bosc hat
6.Design a pair of men’s socks

and this is how it ended.

January Goals Week 5:

1.Finish Mermaid - 1/16 need to do right collar side.2.Finish a pair of socks from Drip Candles, Dizzy or Opal Tiger socks 1/10 - 1st foot done, 1/3 of leg started, 1/27 - 1 sock finished, cast on second sock3.Cast on Knit a sweater for me - Belted Cardigan Vest 1/10 - half of back done, 1/19 - back done, left front started, 1/20 - left front finished, 1/21 - right front cast on, 1/26 right front finished, 1/30 - blocked sweater.
4.Finish Fugue
5.Knit Bosc hat - Finished 1/23
6.Design a pair of men’s socks - Picked out stitch pattern 1/4. 1/30 - Ordered Cascade Heritage Silk Vandyke Brown from Jimmy Beans Wool. Will swatch this weekend.

My original plan was to knit my brother's sock from stash yarn since he wanted a pair of gray socks. He changed his mind and decided he'd rather have brown socks to go with his new boots. He's so knitworthy that I had to oblige him. I'm making these extra special by designing them myself.

The sweater I cast on for myself is the Belted Cardigan Vest from Knit Noro. I'm knitting this with Silk Garden from the stash that was purchased during one of the Hook N Needles sales. This year I'm making the same committment to knit from stash as last year.


I was picking up the sleeve bands when I admitted to myself that I didn't like the short-rowed shoulders and three-needle bind off and ripped it all out. There's no point in finishing something when you know good and well that you won't like the end result. I'm going to try and have this finished by tomorrow night so that I can wear it to the Knit-Inn in Greenville this weekend.

I've already created by list of goals for February but my main goal is to knit a lot more than I did last year. I'm focusing on not only using the yarn I have stashed, but also the books and patterns that are in my library. I would also like to design a few items using the stitch dictionaries I currently own.

This year is about setting goals and achieving them. Pushing myself beyond my comfort zone and sharing my talents aand gifts with others. I'm pushing myself to become healthier and stronger in 2012.

Out with the Old and in with the New

As the year comes to a close I think about all that happened or didn't happen this year. I've felt more close to my family than I have in a long time. Yes, some of them still get on my nerves and we disagree from time to time but there is no doubt in my mind that I love them and they love me.

I didn't succeed at not buying yarn but I didn't purchase nearly as much as I normally do and neither did my mom. This year saw a drastic decrease in the number of items knitted mainly due to health issues and in November the arrival of a new gadget... my Kindle Fire.

I've loaded a bunch of patterns and no longer will be carrying around paper patterns unless absolutely necessary. I've spent most of the time since it arrived on November 28th watching movies, playing games and reading instead of knitting like I should have.

I completed only 10 items this year. When I looked at them on Ravelry yesterday I was surprised. I can't recall a recent year when I've knitted a lesser amount of items. I plan to do much better in the coming year. I'm still planning to knit as much from stash as possible but I also plan to limit my purchase of books, magazines and patterns. I have a very large stash of those also so I need to use them.

I joined a gym in November and up until recently was working out regularly. I'm having issues with my knees again and hope to get that all sorted out the first of January. I've seen changes and I'm really anxious to get back to working out. I've also had problems controlling my blood sugars and I know that getting in shape and getting some of this weight off will go a long way to helping with that issue.

As part of getting back on track I also plan to be more frugal and evaluate the purchases I make. Even though I bought relatively little yarn and had a lot of other purchases such as beading materials and clothing. I really would like to get to the point where I'm purchasing more out of need than want.

Well that's it. A wrap up of how I plan to spend the new year so I'll end with ...

Happy New Year and God Bless!!!

A Brief Interlude

After a few error laden rows, I decided it was time to take a break from Mermaid and cast-on with some of the Regia Unicolor I recently purchased.


Front

Back
This is Dizzy a free pattern on Ravelry.

I'm not sure who these will fit but they are intended for my mother. I making my first pair of knee-highs! She's always cold so these should fit the bill. I bought the unicolor with colorwork in mind so I've been spending a lot of time looking at patterns for this type of knitting. I'd like to make hats, mittens and/or gloves and socks using this technique. I'm doing these as a prelude to knitting a sweater using the stash of Kauni Effektgarn I purchased a couple of years ago.

The nephews, Jaylon and Isaiah, spent the weekend with us. At the time I asked their parents if they could spend the night I had no idea I would end up with sick children. Needless to say, I ended up with a respiratory infection compounded by asthma. Thank goodness for Z-Packs. I feel tons better compared to yesterday when I saw the doctor and have told their parents not to send their sick kids to our house. I'm home until Thursday and hope to really feel like myself by then.

Snapdragon Tam

Specs:

Pattern: Snapdragon Tam by Ysolda
Yarn: Madelinetosh tosh DK Candlewick
Needles: 4 US & 6 US
Knitted: September 11, 2011 - September 18, 2011

Perfect! This is the only way to describe this pattern. The only change I made was to knit the band on size a size 4 instead of a size 6. The hat is gorgeous and the Madelinetosh was a dream to work with. I will use this yarn again.

Getting Ready for the Holidays

Slowly but surely progress is being made. I'm trying and mostly succeeding at not knitting for long stretches of time. I've spent all of my knitting time working on my mom's Christmas present Mermaid by Hanne Falkenberg.

I have professed my hatred for garter stitch, but each time I knit a Falkenberg design it vanishes. This particular pattern has so much variation that it never gets boring. I tried it against mom and it looks great. I'm hoping that it doesn't grow during blocking like my Skyline did.

We did our yearly demo at the fair last Wednesday. I checked my entries and I received blue ribbons for my Snapdragon hat, Ziprelaxagon socks and Greenleaves fingerless gloves. My Adamas shawl received a second place. When I got to the socks mother and I burst out laughing so loud that everyone was looking at us. We were laughing because even though I didn't win the sweepstakes this year I won the second highest award which is given by my guild, the Palmetto Purlers. It consists of a ribbon, a membership in the guild and a $30.00 cash award. I paid my dues last month so I guess I'll get a refund at this months meeting.

The hat is Ysolda's Snapdragon tam from Whimsical Little Knits Book 2.


I love everything about this hat. The design is incredible and this picture doesn't do it just. I used the yarn the pattern called for, a rarity for me, and the Madelinetosh is too die for. It is so soft and the color is gorgeous. This was one of my yarn splurges for the year and I'm certain there will be more of this in my future.

This weekend I'm headed to the mountains for SAFF and beading. We're planning to hit SAFF on Friday and the beading store on Saturday. Mom is joining us on this trip. The leaves are starting to show their colors so it should be beautiful up there. I'm going to try very hard not to add to the stash, but I'm not going to prevent mom from doing so!

Back in the Saddle Again

It feels good to finally be able to knit for periods longer than 15 minutes. Between the nerve problems and the high blood sugars I haven't been able to knit much lately.

I still experience problems from the nerve compression and going 17 months without an injection didn't help the situation. I did pretty well for a while, but as the pain begain to increase I wouldn't heed the signs and schedule an appointment for one. The last 2-3 months have been a hell of intermittent and sometimes debilitating pain. I finally took my mom's advice and scheduled an appointment. I had the injection on Wednesday and I have already experienced a lot of relief. I will never wait this long again.

After years of good control, I have been experiencing high blood sugars fasting and throughout the day. I can always tell when my blood sugar is high because it adversely affects my eyesight. I've been told that this is a good thing because I will know when I don't have good control. I pay close attention this because the relatives on my dad's side including him tend to have diabetes-related blindness. I tried an injectable, Byetta, but was unable to get any control with it. I'm on a morning and evening dose of insulin and this is working. My vision has normalized and my highs have begun to come down.

I had grand ideas of putting a lot of entries in the fair but that didn't work out either. I did manage to enter 4 items which is better than entering nothing. I'm also serving as one of the co-presidents of the Palmetto Purlers knitting guild for the 2011-2012 year along with Boykin Exum. There's  much work to be done coming up with a schedule of programs and hopefully a big weekend knitting event. It has been quite a while since I was an officer, but I'm looking forward to serving this year and possibly the next.

I'm not committing my self to making many Christmas gifts but one that I have gotten started on is the Mermaid jacket by Hanne Falkenberg. It is a present for my mom and after a couple of false starts I'm finally on track.

This is my second Hanne Falkenberg design. I have another Mermaid and Pagoda kit to knit after this one. Her instructions can be a little cryptic so you really have to pay close attention. My earlier mistakes were from not reading the entire pattern and misunderstanding what I had read. I've set a personal goal of finishing this by the end of month in case I do decide to make a gift or two or three. Nothing is set in stone for me when it comes to knitting.

I hope to update this blog more often now that my health issues have settled down and I can enjoy the crafts that I love.

Seeing America

Tomorrow I head back to work after 12 days off. This is the longest I've been off work without being ill and I loved it all except for the part where we had to run from TS Lee. San Antonio was a hot 110 when we arrived but the temps dropped to the 90's for the first time in months when we were there.

The VFW and Ladies Auxillary convention was in full force. There were approximately 10,000+ in attendance. We fulfilled our delegate obligations and took some time to see more of San Antonio and get in some shopping.

Despite the heat we did some touring and saw some fascinating points of interest. Of course I visited the Alamo again and we stayed at the Marriot Rivercenter on the Riverwalk and took the riverboat tour but this time they are doing a great job promoting other sites. Even though I've visited San Antonio before I saw much more than I did the first time because I was ill during that trip.

We road the Alamo Tours trolley to see some of the selected sites in order to choose those that we wanted to spend more time visting. The next day we used our "hopper pass" to visit the following sites.

                                                         The Tower of the Americas

The Museum of Texan Culture

Mission San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, one of five missions in San Antonio and the best-known mission in Texas

Market Square  One thing that really caught my eye in San Antonio is the architecture.

This building was used for the movie Ghost Busters...

 and a lot of the older buildings have the "Uglies" or faces believed to drive away bad luck or evil. The Museum of Texan Culture has 26 flags representing the countries or ethnic groups that have infleunced the development of San Antonio and it clearly shows in the architecture.

We left Texas on Friday heading to New Orleans and straight into the path of tropical storm Lee. The bellhops at the hotel were keeping track of the storm and tried to convince us to go around but since we already had reservations we continued as planned. The closer we got to New Orleans the worst the weather became and by the tame we arrived at the hotel that night the winds where high and the rain blinding. We spent the night, cancelled the remaining days when we got up that morning and hightailed it out of there. At that time they were expecting the storm to remain stalled until Monday and even though it didn't turn out that way we were glad we left.

Mother and I were stuck in a hotel in Orlando in 2008 during a TS that stalled and shut down everything and we didn't want to relive that experience.

We had a wonderful trip. Nothing beats driving through and actually experiencing the country you live in. There is a lot still to be done in Biloxi, where we spent our first night of the trip, and New Orleans. There's also a lot of work to be done in Texas with the drought and fires but I love visiting and seeing the USA.