I Stand with Ravelry

Yesterday Ravelry banned support of Donald Trump and his administration. The Ravelry team has determined that they cannot make Ravelry an inclusive space if they allow support for white supremacy, and support for Trump and his administration is "undeniably support for white supremacy."

I am so, so proud of Ravelry for taking this stand, and I am so proud to be a member of a community that is caring, compassionate, and willing to take a stand like this. Ravelry will undoubtedly get some pushback from this: white supremacists don't like being told that they cannot continue openly supporting white supremacy in certain forums. But an important part of anti-facist work is to make it difficult for facists to be openly and vocally facist. By banning support for Trump and white supremacy on Ravelry, the Ravelry team have taken away a space where these people can be openly hateful.

Weekends

Saturday evening I stepped out my back door to see a momma bunny spread out over her brood of babies. I've never seen baby bunnies before, and they were so precious! The mom immediately ran to the next yard to try and distract me (such a good mom!). I kept a good distance and managed some blurry cell phone pictures to capture the moment.

This weekend was super busy. I managed a short nap each day, thankfully, but I didn't really get much else in the way of downtime. I'm hoping that tonight I can relax and finish a library book or two and maybe get another inch or so knit on my Zinone. Since I'm alternating two skeins on Zinone right now, I ended up working on my new shawl sample more this weekend, just because it's a bit easier to cart around through parks and back and forth from events. As is the theme with me lately, this photo does not do the colors in this yarn justice. It's much more variegated in person.

I only have one more play rehearsal this week, on Tuesday night, so I'm hoping that this week I can get some recharging in. On Wednesday I have to go up to the city to see my endo, which I'm not really looking forward to in the wake of my ER visit a couple weeks ago, but maybe he'll have an idea as to why my blood sugar got so out of control.

Linking up with Crafting On

A Week

Oh man, has it really been a week since I've posted here? This week has been crazy and long and I am so excited to be at the back end of it. You know those days where nothing seems to go right? It's been like that for the last two weeks. Play rehearsals are going well, but there's a lot going on and I feel like I've barely had a chance to breathe.

I've made a little progress on my Zinone, but I got distracted by a new shawl sample, so this has been on pause for the past few days. Tomorrow is the halfway point of the TTTKAL, so I probably need to focus on banging out the lower body of this now if I have any chance of finishing it by the 30th. It would be great if I could figure out how to accurately photograph this color, but I'm still not having luck. Oh well.

Tomorrow is the Pride festival up in the city, and I'll be going for a couple hours—the dogs have a grooming appointment, so I'll drive up and drop them off, then go celebrate at Pride until the dogs are ready to get picked up. Next week is my town's first Pride festival, and I'm really looking forward to participating (as much as play rehearsals allow). I'm hoping that even  with all the planned Pride festivities that next week will be a bit calmer than the past two, but at this point I'm kind of expecting something else stressful and crazy to happen. 

Summer Knits and Shakespeare

I can't believe we're already at the end of the first week of June! This weekend is the Shakespeare Festival, so I'm going to be spending the next couple nights in the park watching A Midsummer Night's Dream. I have a few friends in the production, and the festival brought in an amazing director this summer, so I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm just two rows away from joining the front and back on my Zinone, and I'm really looking forward to stockinette in the round. I really love how this is knitting up, and I'm really looking forward to including this top in my summer wardrobe. I was nervous about trying to get this top done for the TTTKAL, since I have another top I want to finish for the OAL and I was unsure if I could finish two fingering-weight tops in two months, but I'm happy with my progress from this week, and I think I'll be able to make it work.

Happenings

Oh, where to start? Sunday was the first rehearsal for Mama Mia and I'm already having a blast with this show. I really can't wait to see what the next five and a half weeks hold, because this really is a super fun show. Unfortunately, late Sunday night/early Monday morning I had some blood sugar issue and had to go to the emergency room. I'm much better now, but that was not a fun way to spend a night.

This year's TTTKAL is now underway, and I pulled out this Zinone that I cast on for last year's kal, but I didn't even get the upper back finished before I shoved it onto a bookshelf. It's really zipping along now, though, and I'm already at the neck cast-on. I've been knitting this during play rehearsals, and while I'm super impressed that I managed to get through the lace, I'm definitely glad to only have to knit plain stockinette from here on out! This yarn is a merino-tencel blend I dyed at a workshop a few years ago, and it's just the prettiest shades of lilac and purple. It's really hard to photograph so far, this photo doesn't do it justice at all!

Sweatering and Weekending and Getting Busy

It feels like this week has dragged on forever, despite it being only a four-day week (thanks, long weekend!). I've been crazy busy for the past two weeks, and while I'd love to take my chance to relax tomorrow, I've let a bunch of stuff at my apartment go undone, and I really ought to catch up.

Rehearsals for Mama Mia start on Sunday, and with them comes the summer craziness. I don't know what my rehearsal schedule is going to be like, and I'm hoping for at least a couple days off each week to relax and regroup. It's all fun, though, and it's only six weeks, and I really do enjoy almost every minute of it.

Last week I started a new cardigan for myself. I'm totally winging it, and I'm not taking any notes as I go along. It's some old kitchen cotton from my stash, and the plan is for it to be an oversized cardigan with bracelet-length sleeves. It's a silhouette I've been wanting for a while, and I think the kitchen cotton will give it the structure it needs without being too hot, so it should be a great layer for work. I don't know how much I'm going to get to work on this in the immediate future, though—this year's TTTKAL and the OAL both start tomorrow, and I have plans aplenty for both of those! 

Hell Creek

Hell Creek is named for the Hell Creek Formation, which spans parts of Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The formation dates from the late Cretaceous period, and is a rich source of fossils from marine and land reptiles, fish, dinosaurs, mammals, amphibians, plants, and invertebrates.

Hell Creek is a slightly cropped, boxy top, intended to be worn with 0-4in/0-10cm of positive ease. The top is knit from the bottom up and seamed, then stitches are picked up for the collar, which is worked in the round.

Hell Creek is intended to be worn with 0-4in/0-10cm positive ease and is shown in size 48in/122cm on a model with a 43in/109cm bust.

Sizes: 30 (33, 36, 39, 42, 45, 48, 51, 54, 57, 60, 63)in/ 76.5 (84, 91.5, 99, 106.5, 114.5, 122, 129.5, 137, 145, 152.5, 160)cm at bust

Yarn: 425 (465, 610, 620, 665, 710, 750, 795, 840, 885, 1030, 1075)yds/389 (425, 558, 608, 650, 686, 727, 768, 810, 942, 983)m sport-weight yarn

Hell Creek is 15% off on Ravelry through Thursday, May 30th, with code BONES!

Sick Day

No photo today, because I spent yesterday home sick and got absolutely no knitting done. Instead I;

• took a nap
• took a bath and listened to a podcast
• ate a vegetable
• made some hot honey lemon water and read a book
• took another nap
• ate some pretzels
• read about the history of vaccines
• went to bed early

Apparently that was the perfect mix to get me back on my feet for today!

Getting There

Happy Monday! This weekend ended up being quite a bit busier than I planned, but I still got a nice big chunk of this top knit up. I've got two more repeats to go on the back, and then it just needs seams, a collar, and blocking. Each repeat takes around an hour to knit, so I'm feeling pretty good about getting this finished. The pattern is with my tech editor now, so look to see this pattern coming out sometime next week!

I also managed to read quite a bit this weekend, despite running around all the time. By the time I got home last night, I was too tired to turn on Netflix, so I finished a couple of library books that have been languishing in my TBR pile. I'm notorious for checking out lots of books and never returning them on time, so it felt really good to get a few finished and returned.

I don't have anything planned for tonight other than cooking up some freezer meals and hopefully getting another library book finished. It's supposed to be pretty cold and rainy the next couple of days, but it should clear up by the middle of the week, and I'm hoping to get over to my community garden plot to get some stuff planted before the weekend.

Patterns and Recitals and Gardens, Oh My!

This top is growing, and I'm hoping to get a big chunk of the rest knit up this weekend. I don't have anything scheduled for tonight, so my plan is to cozy up in my chair, throw on some Doctor Who, and whack out as many rows as possible. I've blocked off tomorrow as a pattern writing day, but if the writing and formatting goes quickly, I can get some more knitting done tomorrow afternoon.

The recital for the dance studio I help out with costuming for is tomorrow night, and I'm really looking forward to seeing some of the dances. Two of my favorite instructors are leaving this year, so I definitely want to help celebrate the work they've done with their classes this year.

Sunday I have my first meeting for the community garden, and I'll get assigned my plot space. I'm so excited to get started growing things—I always hated helping my mum in the garden when I was growing up, but I definitely see the appeal of cheap vegetables now, and after getting so interested in houseplants over the past year, I really love the rush of seeing something that I'm responsible for grow and flourish!