by Kat | Aug 23, 2019 | General, In This Moment
Overnight rains have ushered in much cooler temperatures! After days in the 90’s, today our high will be in the low to mid 70’s — ahhh! I have the windows opened wide and my ears are rejoicing hearing the birds rather than the non-stop drone of the air conditioner. It is amazing how this change in weather resets your attitude, isn’t it? I also rejoiced at having a hot coffee rather than iced and it tasted so good!
Thinking About —
My next knitting project! I have some “lingering on the needles” sweaters and I will probably pull out Tegna first and try and get it finished. Why? Well, believe it or not – I can see the end of the Romi sweater – I only have the 6 rows to go to the lace (and final) section of the body and the sleeves! Now granted, the body rows are long, but the end is in sight! However, this sweater caught my eye this week and it has been rattling around my brain ever since! I even think that I have yarn in my stash that might work for it! However, no swatching until I have Morrine Short and Sweet finished! (At least that is what I am telling myself! Ha!)
Gathering —
I have started a “garden journal” (albeit late in the season) but I am writing down what plants I grew and how they produced. This way, next spring when the lure of all the seedlings calls, I will have a road map for what worked well and, more importantly, what did not work well so I can hopefully get better outcomes! I switched up cherry tomatoes this year and these were much less prolific than previous years plants and I had some large tomato plants that were real duds as well.
Inspiring —
I have been reading the NYT’s 1619 Project and this week these poems especially. They are hard to read – it is not a proud past we have and that is even more complicated in that this past is still our present in so many ways, and if we continue on happy with the status quo, it will be our future as well. But I believe we can do so much better and it all starts with truly understanding our privilege.
Finally —
I am so happy that the weekend is here! I have a new book from the library that I hope to read tomorrow. And, beyond that I am not planning much of anything for my “day alone”! I don’t really want a list a things to get done – but rather a day where I don’t have anything that I need to check off!
Don’t forget about my “Pay The Nickel Boy’s Forward” give away is still going on – if you want to put your name in the hat, you have until Sunday night to leave a comment! I will pick the winner on Monday and get the book in the mail to you! Have a great weekend and I will see you all back here on Monday!
by Kat | Jan 20, 2019 | General, In This Moment
Greetings from a sunny but very cold wintry wonderland!
The weekend forecast was the stuff of a weatherperson’s dreams – all the weather in one day so, we braved the crazed “Armageddon” crowds at the grocery store to get a couple of things. Really not the most brilliant thing we’ve ever done, but we did manage to survive.
We thought that trip was a fool’s errand when all the predictions for Saturday just sort of fizzled out. No snow but yes, we got lots of rain and the temperatures stayed well above freezing all day. The rains finally turned to ice and then to snow as our temperatures plummeted to single digits overnight. The arctic blast is indeed upon us!
And, so what do you do with all the weather drama? Well, you make comfort foods (i.e. stuffed acorn squash), drink whiskey, and finish projects!
I did some sewing with really lovely results. I mentioned Fancy Tiger Crafts One-Hour Top a couple of weeks ago and I found some knit fabric on sale at JoAnn’s and in less than an hour I sewed up a muslin from the sale fabric to see how it would fit and what adjustments I might need to make. Yes, less than an hour – including cutting out the pattern in that time! There are just 4 seams and then stitch the neck, sleeves and hem with a double needle, which gives a really lovely and surprisingly easy finish! And, the fit is really wonderful so I have been looking online for more knit fabric to make a couple more shirts!
Steve’s mom loved her Christmas Cowl so much she asked if I could make one for Steve’s dad, which I was happy to do. I finished it on Saturday and delivered it early Sunday morning and just in time for the single digit weather we are going to be having this week!
I blocked Rachel’s Birthday Shawl and got the few ends woven in, and it is all ready to be shipped off to California!
I also finished a pair of handspun socks that were two years in the making! That’s right I bound them off on Sunday morning – I still have ends to weave in but at least they are off the needles!
Inspired by Mary, I cleaned up my Ravelry queue and frogged a few items that just are not going to ever be finished for a variety of reasons. It feels infinitely better looking at my queue now and I even feel energized to get these lingering projects finished! All this work deserved a reward so I cast on a new shawl with a skein of handspun yarn that I found in last weekends organization that I had earmarked for this project!
In the “late to the party” category (and thanks to pneumonia!) I have recently discovered how entirely enjoyable Doctor Who is! I am just starting Season 4 thanks to Sunday’s snow storms and wintry blast! I will just say this; The Doctor is a very good knitting companion!
Steve works tomorrow, no day off for him! But if you do have tomorrow off – I hope you spend a little time thinking about MLK!
What did your weekend hold?
by Kat | Jan 3, 2019 | General, Words
Today is all about my intentions for 2019 – intentions that I think will work in concert with my word of the year – focused intentions sound much easier to keep however, deciding what things will be on my list this year has not been easy at all!
Intention One:
Make with more of a focus. This will mean not jumping on every “new” thing that comes along – which might just be the hardest part of all! But my making has been most haphazard in years past – some with great success and some with epic failure! So, this year, my making will have a focus on things that were on my radar – things that the desire to make has not diminished but has grown! I also want to do more gift and charity knitting this year. And, I am off to a good start on the gift knitting! I have had this mini-set for a very long time and have had absolutely no idea what to do with it, and then I saw Sarah Jordan’s Mini-Maximization and knew I had found the perfect project for it! I made some good progress yesterday which is a good thing since this will be a 30th birthday gift for my daughter next month!
Also, this year, I want to continue to do more sewing! Look for a couple of new cold weather things coming soon and I have plans to make a couple of these t-shirts with my serger!
Intention Two:
Move! This quote by Thomas Jefferson is in my planner – “Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.” It is a very good reminder to me that I need to move my body! I have even added a “check-in” of sorts to my planner. I am hoping this accountability will help me get back to moving – and make it a permanent habit!
Intention Three:
Be a more positive person every.single.day. It is a frustrating world and I cannot change everything, but I can change me by being more positive in all things. I need to focus more on the things I can have an impact on and less on the things I cannot change.
So, there you have my intentions for 2019! My plan is for success and actually make them a part of my everyday life – reminding myself daily of them so that they become a part of me. I think these tie in well with my word for the year.
Want to see more lists? Head on over to Carole’s!
by Kat | Jan 2, 2018 | General, In This Moment
Did you miss me? I sure missed you all!
My plans to end 2017 did not include falling off the blogging map! I did have some rather nice posts planned to close out the year. However, they were only plans in my head and not plans in the form of ready to go blog posts.
Sickness and that lack of preplanning made for very quiet days at Casa delKatKnits as 2017 ended. A HUGE thank you to those who messaged me asking if I was alright! Yes, I am back among the land of the living…barely, but absolutely on the upswing!
In my absentia, besides sleeping an inordinate amount of time, I managed to finish my epic yearlong stitching project. I am stitching away on my new stitching project with mixed feelings. I have not taken any stitches out, but I am not feeling much love for this project in its current state. I spent some time meditating yesterday while I untrimmed the tree and I think I have figured out a way ahead and I am excited to stitch today, so I hope I might be on the right path. More on both projects later this week!
I also managed to finish the body of Treysta and I am working on sleeve one! This was accomplished while binge-watching Strange Things on Netflix. Sometimes, mindless, in the round knitting and unbelievable television are the best companions for the sickly!
Reading absolutely won in 2017, because I only managed to finish 15 projects last year…5 hats, a pair of mitts, a pair of socks, 3 shawls, a necklace, and 4 sweaters. Not a lot of knitting for me for an entire year. I hope to rectify that this year.
There are parts of me that would like a bit of a do-over for some things last week, most especially NYE. Steve found a recipe for Milk Street Kitchen’s version of a French 75. I was determined to not be a total party pooper NYE and I did make us a drink to have with the homemade soup, but it was just not quite right and would have been ever so much better with some actual celebratory eats! Perhaps this weekend we can make them again – this time with more fitting accoutrements…(and perhaps even pictures!)
Now, I have an insanely long, sort of out of control, catch-all list from hell that has my name burned on the top of it. I better get to it before I self-destruct! Doing laundry is tops on the list as I am almost out of clean jammies. Perhaps getting dressed might also be a good idea today!
See you back here tomorrow for some Unraveling!
P.S. To the brilliant commentor who quickly saw my ginormous math mistake, thank you! You won the day and are absolute proof that finishing blog posts that include math while deathly ill is not the smartest thing ever. But, thanks to her genius skills, I was even happier to find out that my reading success was even MORE successful!
by Kat | May 22, 2017 | General, In This Moment
I would love to be able to push a button and go back to Friday. This weekend was one of those weekends that you just don’t want to end. The weather was perfect, including the slow, soaking rains on Sunday! The only “gardening” I have left to do is to fill the containers for the porches and the patio. It would have been nice to get that done over the weekend, but time ran out.
By Saturday morning, the poppies were in full bloom. Their cheery red catches my eye every time I go to the kitchen, and stopping to look at them is the best detour of the day. And, the perfect contrast of petals and the purple center is so stunningly beautiful. As Kym says, flowers are indeed magical.
I worked more on my Book Bingo list, invited a couple more people to join, and then began to work on my “Summer Knitting List” of things I need to finish, and things I want to knit. Both lists will take some dedication to make headway on so, I spent some time looking for audio book options on my Bingo list. I was quite successful at the library which I hope means that my summer knitting and reading will be successful!
I did hit a bump in the road on the KAL knitting project. Pro-tip… dropping a stitch with super slippery yarn (read not wool) is a very bad thing. Not noticing the dropped stitch for half a dozen rows is devastating to the knitting. I tried, unsuccessfully, to pick the stitch up but in the grey light of Sunday afternoon reality spoke clearly in my ear – rip back and start over. Reality is right – this is gift knitting and so I ripped back and will start again today. For the record, I am blaming this incident entirely on the fog that is brought on by allergy medicine. Thanks, Zyrtek… NOT!
I know this should be an “unraveled” story for Wednesday, but I am hoping by Wednesday I am as far as I was pre-mistake-discovery. So, if I could rewind this, I would have not knit this on Saturday and worked on simpler projects with wooly yarn!
And that is all I have for today! How was your weekend?
