Sometimes Monday | 4.10.23

Sometimes Monday | 4.10.23

is focused on the search for calm.

I confess, I did some rage knitting over the weekend… which resulted in the finishing of my Handspun Sweater. It is getting a good soak and needs a few ends woven in, but I think it will be ready for the big reveal on Wednesday.

This morning, I am ignoring the mundane and instead have painting front and center… watercolor painting, that is! It is the one sure thing that will get me out of my head, and after the weekend’s news… I need that!

See you all back here on Wednesday with a NEW SWEATER!

Sometimes Monday | 4.10.23

Sometimes Monday | 8.15.22

is for emptying out my brain…

Occasionally I have so much clutter just rattling around my head, I just need to dump it all out. Clean the slate, as it were. This is one of those Mondays!

I am wondering how there can be so many mosquitoes outside right now. It has been 90-gagillion degrees out for a long-ass-time, we have had scant to no rain (and the only standing water in my yard is in the bird bath and the bee bath… both of which get clean water every day.) And still… I have what feels like 12 billion mosquito bites on my ankles, arms, legs, feet… yep, every place that is not covered… is covered with bites. My itch factor is off the charts right now…

Toe Up Socks are great….until you get to that dreaded point of binding it off at the cuff. I have several stretchy bind offs in my repertoire but none of them have been perfect for this bind off. They all are flaring out at the top… ruffling a bit too much for my liking. I have ripped out three bind offs thus far and put the sock in Time Out for a bit. While said sock has been in Time Out, I have done some research on more stretchy bind offs (there are so many!) and I might have found one that might work! I have to rip this last bind off out… but then I am going to try the suspended bind off and see if that works in the round… it worked flat…but that does not always translate to binding off in the round. Send me some good binding off thoughts, please! I need to move beyond the bind off and finish Sock One!

Painting Class Three is in the books and my home work has been turned in. Gentle Readers, let me tell you, the struggle with this lesson was real. My result was not my plan…by a long shot. And so I spent the weekend practicing some of the techniques that I wanted to be different that my execution of them. Can I just say that I have yet to find my brush “sweet spot” I have a variety of brushes and have spent some $$ on them… and I am just really struggling with all.of.them. I know that this is mostly operator error… and I am trying to be gentle with myself, but by Sunday I was just so darned frustrated.

To escape all the painting frustration, I queued up the latest bits from The Summer Pause… and realized that knitting is my fishing. And so I left the painting and eased into my knitting and lost myself in the Stream of Knitting Timelessness and got the fronts completed on my Marled Sweater and, per the pattern instructions, got said sweater got washed and blocked. Shoulder seaming is on my agenda today so I can depart for Sleeve Island! Thanks to Kay for sharing this smart shoulder bind off (I will be doing a bit of practice on a swatch before I do the shoulders!)

And lest you think it was all painting and knitting… nope! I also had huge success with Peter Reinhart’s Focaccia – this is close to the recipe I used… if you are interested in trying, let me know and I will send you the percentages, times, etc. I started the dough Thursday and baked on Friday afternoon. It is a bit fiddly on the Day of Baking… but that fiddly-ness resulted in a gorgeous focaccia. Crisp crust and such tender, open, airy crumb. It was a huge success and I will be making more focaccia in the future!

And with all that… my brain has been nicely decluttered. I am savoring the quiet of the morning… and I have my usual Monday Routine beckoning me. I hope your Monday brings you a clean slate and a week full of promise!

See you all back here on Wednesday!

 

 

Sometimes Monday | 4.10.23

Sometimes Monday… | 7.18.22

…brings rain! And that, my friends, is a very, very good thing!

My focus is still on keeping things simple this week, despite an incredibly unsimple event that might occur this week… Jury Duty. I got the summons a couple of months ago and this is the week when I *might* be called up to serve. Err, rather I need to “log-in” Wednesday night to see if I have to report on Thursday.

What makes this unsimple event a bit more troublesome… I got a notification from the Colonoscopy Office… if I get COVID between *now and the date of my colonoscopy* I cannot get the procedure…because of course, right? I am not exactly stressing… I will of course wear a mask if I have to report for Jury Duty but I don’t want to delay my colonscopy… at all. I am sort of hoping that my reporting group will not have to report.

To keep my mind occupied and not dwelling on a situation that I have no control over, I am going to continue in with my sewing theme. Okay, maybe not actual sewing, but rather the cutting out bits. I *thought* a lot about that part last week but did not do one second of the *doing* of the pinning out. That is the ONLY thing on my Start List this week.

And with that, I am off to begin my week! Happy Monday all, I will be back on Wednesday with a rather Whimsical Unraveled post!

Sometimes Monday | 4.10.23

Sometimes Monday | 7.11.22

One of the things that I am focusing on this month is to fill my days with simple things… which is not as easy as it sounds. Life is complicated… hard… painful… and these days, it seems that there is a daily new calamity to keep me anchored in that space.

Yet this month, I want my focus to be on ending the month by discovering what being full of the simple feels like… and gosh, it seems like complicated life just does not want to let go… amirite?

So this is my inspiration for the month:

Simple things bring infinite pleasure. Yet, it takes us a while to realize that. But once simple is in, complex is out – forever. — Joan Marques

And so I am going to use the remaining Monday’s in July to keep myself focused on the simple… a reminder for the week that will hopefully set me on the simplest path.

I wanted to give you an idea of what simple things are filling my days this month so here is a short list of my simple focus right now!

  1. Hand washing dishes. Yep, you read that correctly. This is a bit of necessity since the automatic dishwasher is not functioning currently, thankfully… the manual one never fails. lol But rather than complaining about having to wash the dishes, I am using the time to do a little meditation… I am freeing my mind of all the outside noise, and just being in the quiet – and yes – very simple moment of washing dishes. Honestly, I am loving it… but don’t tell Steve that, I also like the simplicity of loading the dishwasher and then heading off to do something else!
  2. The constant simplicity that the weeds provide me. Really, if they did not grow, would I spend as much time in my garden? Can anything be simpler than pulling weeds? I don’t think so… and it gives me a bit of a work out (those thistles can be a challenge to pull out!)
  3. Sewing. Especially the bits I don’t like… cutting out the pattern. However, there is a simplicity to that task… it is one that has not changed much, if at all, since my nana taught me to sew. I can hear my Home Economics teacher, Mrs Larr,  talk about this being the most important part of making…and she was so right. So I am going to focus on the importance of this task and savor it… or at least I am going to try!

So there you have it! My simple focus right now.

I hope your Monday is full of good things… and maybe even some simple ones as well! See you all back here on Wednesday!

Sometimes Monday | 6.13.22

Sometimes Monday | 6.13.22

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds. — Regina Brett

Summer solstice officially arrives tomorrow and though it felt like we did not have any kind of spring, I am hoping that these next few months slow down so I can savor these long days.

One thing I am going to be entirely lazy on this week are blog posts and though I won’t be sitting on any branches… I will do a good bit of porch sitting where I can watch the summer sky!

Yep, I am taking a bit of a break here… I will be back soon!

 

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