Upgraded, including wandering through the process for the wacky Twitter Tools setup. So this is the checking-to-make-sure-it’s-all-working post.
I’d have more, but I work at Most-Hated-Retailer-in-America and tomorrow is Thanksgiving. So.
Have some FOs. Pics after Friday, lol.
After just short of 3 weeks of reasonably concentrated effort in half-hour to hour length packets, I have a design probably 70 percent done, including the pattern writing. It’s nothing that’s going to revolutionize the design world, but I quite like it and I’m pleased with having managed to get it out of my head and into the physical world. At this pace, it won’t be too terribly much longer before I’ll be able to introduce it here. This is an unqualified Good Thing.
I have to fight the feeling that I’m still working too slowly, but that’s ok. Life is here, and sometimes demands my attention. This window with this new post sitting in it, for example, has been open for 2 days while I’ve dealt with other issues.
I’m seriously considering reopening the Etsy shop. It sounds like they’ve made some upgrades that will make it a little easier to run that I’ve found it in the past. It was fabulous for selling physical objects, but not as much for patterns. That may have changed and may be worth trying again. That’s another window that’s been sitting open for a couple of days now.
Anyway, onward. There’s laundry to do and a promised project to finish and kids to herd.
Ok, ok, cheesy title but it’s early. The important thing is that the Winter issue is up at Twist Collective!
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Trip to Maine was nice. Got to stuff myself silly at my favorite local eatery and spend an hour or two cursing at Traveling Woman. I don’t know what it is about that project, but even the simple stockinette portion kept going wrong for me. Methinks that I am currently lacking the focus to knit lace. Or the yarn is angry at me for making it live in a ziploc bag in the dark between bouts of working on the thing. You never know.
This afternoon I have the house to myself and in the absence of three small loud children I’ve been working again on a new pattern template. Nothing elaborate…I’m not in a good place right now to purchase or learn anything more elaborate than Word, but I’ve managed to jazz it up a bit all the same and I’m pleased with the results. I also set to writing the pattern that I think will make its debut the soonest. It’s been pulled from the pile of swatches and scraps and will shortly, with any luck, be made to behave.
I have no FO to show for this weekend, but the scarf project I’m trying to finish right now should be all set by the end of the week. Yay!
Got no pictures, either. I can be incredibly lazy sometimes, and moreso when I’m tired and bouncing between happy and cranky. On the plus side, the boyfriend gave me this to keep my moody self out of his hair, and I’m finding that I quite like it so far. So a book may actually get read around here for the first time in ages. Exciting stuff.
Ah, well. Back to the pattern thing. I have to do this writing in little pieces or it wouldn’t get done at all. Watching a design grow under my hands is easy. Writing it out so someone else can follow it? Not so much.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the boyfriend’s family has a cabin in Maine, and the boyfriend? He’s been building himself a pretty damned awesome solar power system for the place over the last couple of years. His charge controller crapped out a little while back, so we’re off with the replacement to get the thing up and running again.
I’m only bringing two projects, but it will only be a 28 hour trip, lol. If I do it right, one WIP will be a FO by the time we get home. 🙂 Pics if I remember to take them before we leave tomorrow. The light up there is gorgeous. So tempted to do my next pattern photoshoot up there…but I hope to have something finished before spring, lol.
I’m a bit caught up in delaying tactics at the moment, but I’m still working on things that are positives for the business. I did a simple bit of reformatting on my pattern template this morning that really improves the look of the pattern I tried it out on (at least to me, lol). I’ll let it wait a day and if I’m still this fond of it tomorrow, I’ll redo my existing patterns to have a consistent look.
I’ve also decided that I’d like to rework the samples for a couple of them, and redo some of the photography now that I have a camera again. I need to build myself some sort of setup where I have consistent light. I used to have one, but my reliable lamp died and hasn’t been replaced. Oh, the joys of a tiny budget…
Anyway. Making progress. Pleased with that. 🙂
It’s been a very, very long time since I had a wander around Boston. IIRC, the last one was in 1994, when I spent a solid week roaming freely. I was visiting a friend, and he was working during the day, which left me free to discover the city.
I moved out to this area almost 7 years ago and I can count the number of times I’ve been properly in the city on one hand. Sad, but I’m old and settled now. 🙂 I’m lacking the time to just take off for a day and play.
Yesterday I had to go there for a medical appointment, so I brought Michael along with me for moral support, and we made it a day in the city that happened to include an appointment, instead of just popping in and out for the thing. And it turned out to be an incredible day, instead of one that could easily have been difficult and depressing.
I don’t have the pictures; he was the expedition photographer, lol. We got there just as the sun was coming out for the afternoon, between rain showers, and just walked around semi-aimlessly, doing the tourist thing. We wandered through the Common and the Public Gardens and generally just hung around until it was time for the appointment. Once we were done with the medical thing, it was lunch and a trip to Windsor Button. That was my birthday present, lol…I told him he didn’t have to buy me anything, just endure the stop with me. 🙂 I wound up buying this, which I’ve wanted for a while, because I couldn’t decide on yarn. I was really impressed with the wide range of yarns they carry…there were acrylics and blends all snuggled up with alpaca and wool and silk. There’s something about that that makes me unreasoningly happy.
Anyway, the appointment was inconclusive. They had trouble finding the records that my doctor’s office sent, so he wanted to look over them before giving me a conclusion. His impression, however, was definitely not MS, which leaves us with, “I don’t know.” So probably back to waiting to see what happens next. Which is ok. These things sometimes stay mysterious. What can you do?
Also, this is the first time I’ve taken the commuter rail into the city and it was awesome. It was amazingly stress free and worth every penny. And it’s funny to realize how close together everything here really is…if you’re a train. 🙂 Not to mention how compact the city is.
In any case, it was a thoroughly awesome day. I really ought to go wander around Boston more than once a decade.
I need a new name for this endeavor. The previous one is half made of fail. This is what happens when I write too early in the morning.
Anyway.
Pretty much nothing has been accomplished on the yarn scene the last few days because I’m busy blowing my nose repeatedly and wondering why I had kids in the first place and if I were going to, why am I not homeschooling? I love my little vectors, but kindergarten may be the death of me.
On the schedule today: I have knitting that I need to finish for a friend of mine and I want to take at least a few minutes to work in one of the patterns in progress. It’s totally my birthday and I’m off work and I’m putting my foot down and stealing the time. 🙂
Yesterday I managed to get a solid half an hour in toward the sample I’m working on, and developed a firm conviction that I need to stop getting ideas for such big projects, lol.
So today I don’t have to be to work until 10, and I hauled my ass out of bed at 6, figuring that would give me a good hour or hour and a half before the kids got up. I took a long hot shower, and made a pot of coffee, and luxuriated in the quiet. The blessed, blessed quiet.
And before you could say boo, the kids were up. Because somehow that took me an hour and a half. ROFL! Working nights I was accustomed to having quiet when I got home, and I had missed that so much I was too busy feeling all peaceful to get any work done. OTOH , my Rav surfing is out of the way for the moment. Heh.
So I’ll work a bit on the sample, which doesn’t require concentration of the same degree, and try again tomorrow. Because this is how I used to do it, dammit, and it’s how I’m going to do it again, one step at a time…