-Along Time 2021

 Hi Friends!

Yes, I have been INCREDIBLY absent from the blog. I'm blaming school. (Things are going great. My grades are good, I got into all my first-choice classes for next semester, the finish line is so close I can taste it.)

We are coming up on two of my favorite events of the year:

-The Ravelry Indie Gift-A-Long, beginning November 23, 2021

-The Off-Ravelry Fasten Off Yarn-A-Long, beginning November 30, 2021

I'm so excited to be a participating designer in both of these events again, and I hope to see you hanging around one of them!

September

I did not intend to take the last month off from blogging, but it turns out I really needed a break! I'm wrestling with how often I want to show up here—I love you all, and I love sharing here, but I'm also very busy (what with work, and grad school, and trying to keep my dog happy and socialized) and I don't know quite what the right balance is for me yet. 

Anyway! Updates! I successfully cleared a bunch of stuff out of my apartment and got it all clean and vacuumed before school started. I also got my freezer absolutely packed with freezer meals and Trader Joe's tamales so I don't have to think about dinners all the time. 

Classes started last week and I think it's going to be a really good semester. I'm taking Information and Inquiry, Community Engagement, and Public Libraries, and I've had both my professors before and really like them. Just fourteen more weeks, then winter break, then sixteen more weeks. I can do it.

As far as work goes, I was given a reference shift this semester and I'm really loving being down at the reference desk for a couple of hours a week. It's still pretty quiet, because none of the usual big assignments have been given yet, but I didn't realize how much I missed having some time in a public-facing position. 

I almost forgot! It is September now, which means it's time for my Birthday Sale! Use code HB31 to get 31% off everything in my Ravelry and Payhip stores. The code will be good through September 16th. 

Organizing and a New Sweater

This weekend I decided I wanted to konmari a bunch of my things and I maybe went a bit too hard too fast. I got through all my clothes and accessories and books in just a day and a half, and now I'm exhausted. Fortunately that's pretty much all I wanted to prune right now, but oh man it's tiring. I have a big pile of stuff to get donated or sold in the city and a slightly smaller pile of stuff to go to my dumpster once I have the energy to carry it out there. I've been meaning to do a big declutter for a while, so it feels nice to have done, and hopefully I'll be able to organize my closet and bookshelves some more before school starts up again THREE WEEKS FROM TODAY.

This week's lunch knitting is another fingering-weight sweater, because why not. It's Playdate, from TinCanKnits, and I started it just before vacation as an easy project to tote around on our various adventures. I ended up being too busy and tired to work on it much during vacation, but it's a nice lazy project for right now, and it'll be great for class knitting once classes start up again. 

Honestly, this has been such a weird summer so far, and it's strange to think that it's almost over. Between transitioning back to work in the library full-time, vacation, and resting up after my first year of grad school, the summer has really flown by. Fortunately it's not quite done yet, and I have a few more things to get done before school starts, but it really feels like yesterday was June! 

Vacation in New England

Hello friends! I totally just disappeared on you, didn't I? I was in fact on family vacation, and I had a post about planning for vacation all written up here but when I just logged on now to talk about how vacation went, I saw that the post was still a draft! Whoops!

Anyway, I went to New England with my mum and my siblings for ten days and it was great. We saw mountains, we went out on the ocean, we rode a swan boat in Boston, we hung out in the woods and saw salamanders, and we went to a minor league baseball game (I am firmly of the opinion that minor league baseball is one thousand times better than major league and that aside from hockey minor league baseball is the best sport).

(Also for anyone following Kat's Book Bingo attempt, I did manage to read the last four books I had on my bingo square while I was on vacation, so I completely filled in my bingo card! Now we wait to see if I get my name drawn for prizes.)

So! Pictures!

It was nice to get back out there and visit with our old friends, but now I'm back and I have just over three weeks to get myself re-settled and ready for the semester to start! 

Two Bingos

It is TUESDAY, how's that for a change, kittens? I very much enjoyed my long weekend, even though we had a heat advisory here and it was GROSS and MISERABLE. I did a little cleaning, did a little baking (made my favorite cookies!) and got myself pretty well caught up on book bingo.

I finished SIX WHOLE BOOKS this weekend, got my first two bingos, and I'm eight books away from my blackout. Fingers crossed, but I'm feeling pretty good. Most of these squares are going to be covered by books I already have downloaded to my phone, so I was holding off on starting those in case I needed to read them during vacation. 

Did I mention vacation? I'm going on vacation next week for ten days. I'm very excited. I still haven't picked out knitting to bring. 

Catching Up

Happy Friday! I'm definitely looking forward to the long weekend—I haven't been making tons of progress on my book bingo card the past week or so, but I think three days off should help me cross off a few more squares. My only other plan for the weekend is to get my new crop top pattern written and sent to my tech editor so I have a chance of releasing it before I go on vacation the middle of the month.

I also, as you can see above, changed up my lunch knitting. I'm not really knitting as much during lunch as I used to, and I decided I'd make better progress on my garter stitch sweater if it was at home by the tv, so I'm trying smaller projects at work. This is a cowl that I started back in May so I'd have something mindless to work on, and it's so close to done I can taste it. 

I hope that you all have something nice planned for your weekend, especially if you're enjoying three days off like I am. 

Peachy Keen

Hello friends! I hope you're all doing well. I did manage to get my peaches canned (and don't they look beautiful!) but my apartment is still in a bit of a tip. Turns out that driving to the city to pick up peaches one day and then canning all those peaches the next day is a Bit Much and doesn't leave much energy for things like checking the state of the fridge or cleaning the tub. 

I really wanted t get my crop top sample finished this month, but as it still needs seams and a collar I think the only way that might happen is if I sit down tonight and really try to bang it out. There's a bunch of dishes from yesterday that should get washed first, but I think it's doable (if I keep saying it, it must come true). 

We also finally got some rain here on Saturday, and I wish I had been able to sit at home and properly enjoy it. We got almost no snow last winter, and we've had very little rain so far, so everything was super crispy. Hopefully we'll  get a bit more rain soon—Saturday was great, but we're still way behind where we should be! 

Peach Plans

So, I haven't been working much on my sweater sample this week. It happens. I did manage to finish the front of a crop top sample earlier this week, and now it just needs seams and a collar, so at least there's something there. 

I got the sudden urge the other day to make canned peaches, and when I checked the fruit truck schedule and saw that the current deliveries are peaches and cherries I knew that it was meant to be. I ordered 25lbs of peaches, and even though it means I have to drive up to the city tomorrow morning to pick them up, I'm looking forward to doing some canning this weekend. 

Otherwise, there's not much going on over in my neck of the woods. I hope you all have something fun and restorative planned for the weekend, and I'll see you on Monday! 

Book Bingo and Shakespeare

Has it really been a whole week? Lots to catch up on here. First up, checking in with my book bingo square, and I'm doing pretty well. I'm one book away from my first bingo, and, coincidentally, the book for that square is up next on the docket. I have books identified for all but two squares, so I just need to buckle down and keep reading. I'm in a good place, though, and I think I actually might be able to squeeze out a total blackout by July 31.

On Friday my mum and I went out to the fabric store and I got fabric for two dresses and a robe. I still have some fabric in my studio that's already washed and waiting to be ironed and cut out before I can play with the new stuff, so hopefully I can get that room tidied up and prepped for some sewing soon. 

This weekend was also the South Dakota Shakespeare Festival, and this year's play was Twelfth Night, which is one of my favorites. I went to see the play on Friday and Saturday nights, and it was a total delight each time. It was also great to see so many people from the community able to get together in the park—the festival was obviously cancelled last year, and we all missed it! 

Weekending in Pride

It was an incredibly busy weekend, but it was a lot of fun! On Saturday morning my mum and I went up into the city to go to the farmer's market and check out the pattern sale at Jo Ann's, and we finished up at our favorite Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurant for lunch. Saturday afternoon was the library book sale, which is usually monthly but, for obvious reasons, hasn't been held since last March. There was also an arts and crafts fair that our town's Pride organization hosted, and I got a new tobacco-and-bay-scented soap and bought some stickers.

Saturday night was the Pride Pub Parade, and I partied much harder than I usually do, even without the excuse of being home for over a year. It was so much fun, though, and we ended the night doing karaoke with a wedding party that we met doing their own bar crawl. After all that, Sunday was more for resting. I walked Lee Lee over to the park, which she loved, and I got interviewed by local news about the Pride celebrations, and then I spend the rest of the day doing chores. I was exhausted after being out past two on Sunday morning, though, so I did stop for a nap before folding my laundry, and I never got around to taking care of it, whoops. 

Fortunately, my fingering-weight Easy A sample is just as bar-friendly as the original, and I managed to add several more rows of garter stitch to the body on Saturday night. I love having something that's so easy to pick up and put down mindlessly, but I don't really think I'm cut out for another big bar night for quite a while! 

How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun?