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? 

Past the Ribbing and Planning for Pride

If you look very closely, you can see that I've finally started working some garter stitch on this sweater. I haven't been knitting a lot during my lunches this week, but getting past the ribbing is a huge accomplishment and I'm hoping I settle into the rhythm of garter stitch easily. 

This week has been another hot one, but we finally have some thunderstorms today. It still might get up into the high 80s, but right now it's a nice relief. This weekend is my town's Pride festival, and I'm hoping that the heat relief from this storm lasts the next couple of days so we can enjoy Pride. 

Book Bingo is going well, I've marked off four squares already, which puts me in a pretty good position for the next few weeks. I'm having trouble coming up with books for some squares, but I've got ones picked out and lined up for most of them, and I mostly need to keep working through the pile for now.

Have a good weekend! 

Numbers on a Monday

1. I hope everyone had a good weekend. I stayed inside the whole time, because we're in the middle of a stretch of really hot weather—close to 100 degrees at the worst parts of the day!

2. Because of this, I don't really feel like cooking or eating real food when I finally get home, so yesterday I stocked up on smoothie supplies, since those are basically ice cream with more nutrients. My main go-to is strawberry, but I still have some mango in my freezer too.

3. The crop top that I mentioned is continuing apace, and with any luck will be finished this week. I'm hoping to get the pattern out this month, and I'm really excited about this one.

4. Today starts summer reading book bingo at my public library and I am ready to get started! I'm aiming for a full blackout, but that's pretty ambitious. It's been forever since I've done summer reading, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how far I can get!

5. I am definitely still adjusting to working in the library again, and Lee Lee is adjusting too. It's a process. I am feeling very tired a lot and she is alternating between being mad that I've left her and thrilled that I've returned. I'm hoping that we'll both get back into the swing of things soon, but the last fifteen months have been so weird for everyone, I know that it's going to take time. 

Book Haul

Happy Friday! It's been a pretty decent week back, although I'm having a bit of a rough transition. I'm forgetting things left and right and my diabetes has apparently decided to be even more erratic, but we'll get through it. It's also finally gotten really hot here, which I hate, so I'm planning on holing up in my apartment underneath a ceiling fan for the next two days.

I'm also taking advantage of the fact that I'm not currently in school to dive back into reading for pleasure! I've been waiting to read most of these books, and I took advantage of being back on campus to check them out this week. My public library is also doing book bingo for adult summer reading—I don't think I love book bingo, but I really love prizes, so I'm going to try for a blackout on my bingo card. Summer reading starts on Monday, so I've identified which of these books will count towards a bingo square and I'm going to put off starting them until after the weekend.

Knitting is...slow. I've knit six more rows of ribbing on the sweater I showed you on Tuesday, and I have six more rows to go before I can dive into the endless garter stitch body. I have managed a fair bit of progress on a linen crop top that I haven't shared with you yet, but I've generally been pretty tired this week, so no major progress anywhere. 

Back to It

Happy Tuesday, friends! We had a long weekend here in the US, and I ended up getting lots of house cleaning done. It feels really good  to have my space organized, and it's going to be a great place to come home to in the afternoons. Oh yeah, I'm back to work in the library in-person this week. That's a change.

There's really no way to know how messed up my routine is going to be for the next few days or weeks. It's been about fifteen months since I've worked in-person for more than a few hours each month, and I'm pretty sure it's going to be a rough adjustment. I'm also worried about Lee Lee, who has a history of separation anxiety, although we did manage to train her out of it once before the pandemic started, and I do believe we can do it again. Hopefully.

Knit-wise, I've got a few different things on the needles right now. This is going to be a fingering-weight version of my Easy A pattern, eventually (turns out fingering weight knits up way more slowly than aran or bulky weight) and while it's a bit of a slog (the back is already done, so we're a third of the way there, technically) I really think the final sweater is going to be great.

Weekending

This weekend was busy! Saturday was the dance recital, and it went really well, but it was a very long day. I ended up going to bed pretty early, which I'm sure I needed. It was great to catch up with the dance studio team, and one of our old teachers came back to visit for the day as well, and it was great to see them.

Yesterday I got myself into a cleaning mood. My kitchen has been a disaster for a while—mail piled up, food not put in cupboards, pans piled on the stove. I promise I have been trying to keep it tidy the last few months, but I've only ever managed to clear a small part of the counter or put a few pans away. Yesterday I put everything away, cleaned out my fridge, wiped down counters, the works. It feels so much better in there now, and hopefully we won't see Disaster Kitchen again for a while.

I don't really have plans for this week yet. I'm still resting up after the semester, and I don't know when I'll figure out my new regular schedule. Next week I go back to work in the library full-time, which will be good, but a big adjustment, so maybe I'll hold off trying to figure out my normal for a couple more weeks. 

Friday By the Numbers

1. I finally took a picture of my baby doll setup (most of my dolls are on a table in my bedroom, but the babies sit on this painted trunk by my dining table). On the left are my grandmother's doll and my mother's doll, and then the two on the right are ones that I found myself over the past year or so. 

2. Tech rehearsals for the dance recital went great, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow. It's going to be a long day, but I've really been enjoying hanging out with all my pals from the dance studio again.

3. My apartment is a bit of a disaster. I haven't really had a chance to seriously tidy up in a while and you can tell. Hopefully I'll have some time on Sunday to tackle the worst areas.

4. One of my friends retired this week, so we're having a couple of little outdoor celebrations for her this weekend. I'm looking forward to them—these are the first gatherings I'll be going to in over a year, so it feels a little weird, but I'm mostly really excited to see everyone.

I'm Back!

Hello, friends!

It's been a while, hasn't it? I had to take a break from the blog at the end of spring semester—I was exhausted and burnt out, and something needed to give. I missed being here with you all though, and I'm feeling a lot better now that we're about a week out from finals. I don't have my final grades for this semester yet, but based on all my assignments I should be in a very good place.

I've started a couple projects that I had set aside for the summer—I have a pair of antique quilts to clean up and mend, and the first one has already been cleaned and is waiting for me to sit down and look at where can be sewn up and where needs darning. I also started catching up on tv—I have a list that's almost three pages long in my journal of shows that my friends are insisting I need to watch, and while most of my free time has been spent catching up on sleep, I've at least started working my way down the list.

I also roasted a chicken yesterday. I've been really craving a roast chicken for a few weeks now, and I also have been wanting to make a batch of bone broth. I don't know if it's the fact that I've been mostly living off of eggs and quesadillas for the past several months or not, but this chicken was the best one I've ever made. I have the carcass in my stock pot now and hopefully I will have several quarts of delicious broth in a few hours.

This week I'm helping out with the dance recital and calling cues—I've missed working at the dance studio this year, and I'm really looking forward to seeing my instructor friends and all my little dancers. It means I'll have tech rehearsals the next four nights, and I'll be busy over the weekend, but I'm really looking forward to it. 

Mooreville Chalk

Mooreville Chalk is named for the Mooreville Chalk Formation in Alabama and Mississippi. The formation dates from the late Cretaceous period, and is a rich source of dinosaur, mosasaur, turtle, and fish fossils.

Mooreville Chalk is a slightly cropped, boxy top, in-tended 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.

Mooreville Chalk is now available on Payhip and Ravelry and is 20% off with code CRETACEOUS.

Kat's Perfect Beanie

I love a good beanie, and I’ve thought a lot about what my perfect beanie might look like. There’s nothing as beautiful to me as a simple project with thoughtful details, where the yarn can really shine, and Kat’s Perfect Beanie hits the mark.

Starting off with a folded knit hem and ending with charming pi crown decreases, Kat’s Perfect Beanie is both a simple and a quick knit, and it looks beautiful in everything from wooly natural yarns to your wildest hand dyed skeins.

Kat's Perfect Beanie is available on Ravelry and Payhip, and is 20% off through April 13th with code PERFECT.