Making a Home

I got a call two and a half hours into my Ikea delivery window on Friday letting me know that my order was delayed and would be delivered on Monday instead. Instead of spending the weekend building shelves and unpacking books, I watched some YouTube, watched a movie, and read a lot. It was a nice little rest, and when my Ikea order finally did come on Monday afternoon, I was raring to go. I built the two Kallax units that I got for my bedroom and two of the Billys for the living room on Monday, and then I built the last two living room Billys last night.

Now, I know that there's no such thing as a level floor or a straight wall. However, I didn't realize exactly how uneven my floors and walls are here until I tried lining my Billys up along the wall. I'd initially planned for them to all be flush against each other, but that wasn't going to happen. I'm okay with the placement now (I don't love having little gaps in between them, but there's no other safe option), and I think they'll look fine once they're filled with books and treasures. I'm hoping to get a bunch of books unpacked this week and start organizing the shelves, because I need to make space in the craft room (where all the full boxes live) for the rest of my stuff that's coming from South Dakota this weekend.

I didn't really bring much furniture with me from South Dakota—most of what I had was cheap, or had been picked up for free, so aside from my armchair and my papasan and a few small pieces with sentimental value, I've been looking for and picking up all new furniture. A couple weeks ago I found this adorable little dining set on Facebook Marketplace—I knew I wanted a small dining set, and I really wanted something with a drop leaf that could seat at least four people (I dream of making friends here and hosting brunch). This little table is perfect. I love the formica top, and the chairs it came with are great. My plan is to get a couple of folding chairs from Ikea to have enough seating for my future brunch parties, but that can wait. 

The rug is a vintage wool rug from Turkey, and I adore it. I really wanted a rug to define the dining nook, and I'm so pleased with how it ties the space together. Eventually there will be another little buffet for more storage along that back wall (currently it's acting as my dresser, but eventually I'll get a proper, larger dresser for my clothes) and I'll be able to properly display my vintage pyrex and my antique punch bowl. (The bike is also not living in the dining nook full-time; there will eventually be a rack to stand it up in the craft room, once everything is unpacked and there's room for me to get/set up a rack for it.)

This weekend is going to be busy—I fly out to South Dakota early Saturday morning, and on Sunday we'll start early getting the Uhaul loaded so I can make the drive back. Back when I made my initial drive out here, it took me almost exactly eleven hours from getting in the car to parking at my new apartment, but that was just with my (very full) car, so I'm anticipating the drive on Sunday to take a little bit longer. It will be so nice to have the rest of my stuff here, though. Most of my craft supplies are still in South Dakota, as well as my entire liquor collection and my tv, and it will feel really good to have everything moved.

It's Really Been a Year

Hi, friends. It's been a while, hasn't it? 

The past year was a bit of a doozy. Since we've last visited, I finished library school, spent many months trying to recover from working and going to grad school at the same time, and spent almost a year to the day applying for jobs. 

2022 was rough, y'all. It was all I could do to just keep going. I didn't write much, I didn't knit much, and since we last met I managed to release just one pattern (Ravelry Link) (Payhip Link). At the beginning of last year, I had big aspirations: I was going to recover from grad school quickly, dive back into writing and designing and making full-throttle, I was going to get a fantastic new job and move to Minnesota to be near my bestie. And then none of that really happened.

In November I applied for a job on a whim. I was burnt out on job hunting, and this job was outside of my search parameters, and I was so tired and frustrated that I decided to just send in my resume. And then six days later I was offered the job. 

Almost one month ago to the day I packed up my car and drove myself, Lee Lee, the goldfish, and all 57 of my plants to Illinois to start this new adventure. It's been a wild couple of months, and it's still really stressful—I'm surrounded by boxes and piles of stuff, I need to make one more trip back to South Dakota to get the rest of my stuff, I'm learning a brand-new job and a brand-new city and getting used to living in a new apartment that feels so very different from anywhere I've lived before. 

It's been an adventure (and will continue to be one as I continue settling in!) and sometimes I still can't quite believe that I did it. Bit by bit, my new apartment is starting to feel like home—I have a bed, finally, and this week I'll get the first batch of bookcases so I can start unpacking some of the book and tchotchke boxes, and I'm slowly getting used to navigating the new kitchen. I've gone on little adventures to the winter farmer's market, the public library, and some thrift stores to start learning the area, and I'm starting to get a feel for my job. 

It's good to be back, friends, and I hope that in 2023 we'll have lots to share with each other here. 

Checking In

Hello, friends! I'm here with my promised monthly check-in, and I can't believe January's gone and we're almost halfway through February already.

I released two patterns that I worked on throughout last year, and I currently don't have any designs in progress. I'm not sure how I feel about that—on the one hand, it's nice to have that pressure taken off me, but on the other hand, I've been working on some design or other straight through since 2014, so it's definitely a change.

Classes have started, and I think it's going to be a good semester. It doesn't look like any of my classes will be too too difficult or onerous, which is a relief—I don't have major projects in two of my three classes, and so far my reading load is about half of what it's been in past semesters. I have to do my graduation portfolio this semester, too, which I'm not really looking forward to, but I've come this far, so I'm sure I'll get through it just fine.

One thing I finally did this month, after putting it off for years was sandwich my vintage quilt top. I got this at a church bazaar back in 2014 (I think?) and I've been seriously meaning to sandwich it since I moved into my apartment. For whatever reason, it just never was a priority when I had the time to do it, but a couple weeks ago I decided to go for it. I haven't been knitting as much during my classes as I thought I would before I started library school, and it's really good for my mental health for me to make things with my hands. 

This quilt top isn't perfect—there are crooked bits, and the fabrics are all different weights, so some have stretched out more than others—and that gives me a lot of freedom to not worry about quilting it perfectly. I can just enjoy the process of stitching and not think at all about how even or straight my stitches are. I've really been enjoying being able to just make something without putting any pressure on myself to make it perfect, or even good. No matter how messily it's stitched, as I'm sitting in class or watching YouTube, it will be functional, and I'm sure Lee Lee will fight me for possession of it when it's done. 

There's probably something there about the freedom of doing things badly—even intentionally doing things badly. Sure, there's a lot of satisfaction surrounding a perfectly executed project, but right now I'm really loving the process of stitching without any pressure to make it look nice. 

Jasper Beach

Jasper Beach is a quick knit with a big payoff. Super bulky yarn coupled with bobble stripes creates a thick, cozy cowl sure to keep all kinds of winds and chills off your neck. Perfect for cold-weather foraging, beachcombing, and just walking around your neighborhood.

Jasper Beach is worked in the round from the bottom up.

Jasper Beach is available on Ravelry and Payhip, and you can use code PEBBLES for 20% off through Wednesday, January 26!

This is the last pattern I have lined up for release for a while—since it's my last semester of library school, I'm taking even more of a break, and I currently don't have any designs in progress! It feels weird, but I'm letting myself focus on finishing my degree, working out my next steps, and taking care of myself. Maybe something new will sneak into my sketchbook or onto my needles, but I've taken that pressure off myself for the next six-ish months. 

Scrounger

Scrounger is a cozy, textured shawl worked sideways from one point to the opposite side. Featuring garter stitch and a simple lace repeat, Scrounger is both comforting to knit and easy to wear.

Perfect for wandering around in the woods or downtown, Scrounger is the ideal shawl for uncovering hidden treasures.

Scrounger is currently available on Ravelry and Payhip, and it's 20% off through Friday, January 21 with code FIND.

Changes, and My Word for 2022

Well, hi, friends. It's been a while, hasn't it?

I made it through my third semester of library school, all the winter holidays, and a quick ER vet trip (Lee Lee busted her eyelid on the coffee table, she's fine) and I'm looking kind of trepidatiously at the next six months. 

In two weeks I'll start my final semester of library school, and sixteen weeks after that I'll be done. I'll have my master's degree. That's...huge. I don't know what job I'll have this summer, or where I'll be living, and it's a very intimidating feeling. 

I've never really liked change, but I'm at this transitional period in my life where I need to go through some major changes to get where I want to be. My therapist says that this is a "growing time," and that it will be healthy for me. I'm trying to believe her. (I'm sure she's right, that's why she gets the big bucks, but it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.)

I've toyed with choosing a word the past couple years, but this year it came really easy to me: Growth. A bit on the nose, perhaps, but I've spent a lot of energy over the past two years working on my education and my mental and physical health, and I've done a lot of that "invisible" growth—strengthening my roots and building up momentum—and soon I'll be ready to shoot out some new leaves and flowers. It's weird to know that I'm coming up on the end of a project that's taken most of my energy for almost two years

As afraid as I am of the changes facing me this next year, I'm also hugely excited to see where I end up and what this next stage of my life will look like. 

I can say that I feel more at home in myself now than I ever have before, and that makes me hopeful

In an effort to not put too much extra pressure on myself, I think I'm going to commit myself to checking in here monthly for now. I'm also not committing to designing right now, but have two patterns with my tech editor right now, and I'll pop in to announce those here when they go live. I have some sketches in my notebook, and I've mentally assigned yarn to them, but we'll see when they get started. At the beginning of library school, I had high hopes for how much sample knitting I'd do in class, but it turns out that grad school is mentally exhausting, and I'm finally accepting that and taking all the pressure off. 

I suppose you'd like a picture of something knitterly. This is my mother's xmas sweater, which I started mid-October and finished three days before xmas. She had bought the yarn a couple years ago, and approached me in October about knitting her a sweater with it for her gift. It's the Natural Cardigan (Ravelry Link) by Christina Körber-Reith, and it really was a pleasant knit. 

-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!