Mea maxima culpa, friends, I got behind. Again. But, I mean, each time I try gets me closer to actually getting down to this being a regularly scheduled business! Never failure, always LEARNING.

These last couple of weeks have been wonky. The kitchen was in shambles, dogs were nuts, snowmageddon hit and the days were full of my annual doc appointments because this is how I show love to myself and my family. I love getting older, there is something about just owning your own space in the world. The older I get, the more of it I happily take up. Also, I’ve been told I have a “really well-developed fuck-off”, which also seems to increase year over year. Because life is too short to care whether your presence/thoughts/opinions/voice/ideas/physical appearance/choices pisses other people off or not.

So, here is a quick rundown of what I’ve been up to!

Kitchen

The shenanigans continued, and after multiple folks coming in, we finally got the cabinet build, countertop installed, microwave installed and the cabinet painted. My kitchen is finally my own again!

And, lest anyone forget the trials and tribulations, please see previous posts on Big Red. She was beautiful and completely nonfunctional. Bye, girl.

So, what would be the first thing you would cook when you finally have burners again? Well, aside from the grilled cheese demanded of me by my uber-picky and super adorable 9 year old dude? The way I saw it, if you really wanted to test the new burners, you needed to have a recipe that demanded consistent temps. So, I made risotto. I hate risotto. I KNOW. I know it’s unpopular. I’m Italian and how dare I blaspheme like this? Well, friends. It’s true. I grew up eating southern Italian, but I also remember many holidays with my Nona, cooking this mushroom risotto. It was a thing that brings good memories, but also too rich food. I don’t like starchy food, I don’t like bread much, I gravitate to the vegetables. Give me eggplant any day over this mushy hot mess.

But, it did work, so the cooktop is magnificent. The husband and girl child loved it, the previously-mentioned dude did not. I predicted this, and since I also wanted to eat dinner, also made this quiche, with the world’s most gorgeous fresh eggs from a friend’s family farm. Scroll down for drool-worthy pics.

That does it for the kitchen stuff. Other than this atrocity.

Have I mentioned my son is a blessing? Oy, but when I go to the pantry and find what I think is an empty box (I still don’t understand why they leave empty boxes there, the trash is RIGHT OUTSIDE the pantry), and I roll my eyes and open it…to find…one. JUST ONE. What kind of a monster leaves ONE OREO?? My child kind, I guess. He was not ashamed. Not at all. He couldn’t, in fact, be shamed. He was proud. I have clearly failed in parenting.

SNOWMAGEDDON

But then he did this for hours when Snowmageddon hit here. We got a bunch of ice and then 8 inches of snow. And everything shut down a full 24 hours before the storm. It was 50 degrees and they closed schools, probably because they didn’t know for sure when the ice would hit. But it meant I had three days home with my demon spawn beautiful children who played video games the first warm day. But, then this happened.

Yall know my dogs, Mabel and Lester.

Well, Lester loves the snow because we rescued him when we lived in MN. Mabel didn’t know what to think of the snow. Until 30 seconds before this pic. She finally understood it was fun and started tearing around the yard. She’s kinda dumb, but she’s real cute. She loves her toys, and licking her people nonstop.

I also had time to do some reading, and finished this one! It was awesome. Highly recommend, felt a little M Night Shayamalan to me. But in the good way, not the bad recent movies way. You know what I mean.

FIBER STUFF

You can see my Fiber adventures here or I will post separately to a Year or Projects page specifically for the fiber goodness. If you don’t really want to read through my babbling.

First up: The Neifling Hat

I was so proud of this. I wanted to learn brioche. I also learned to fix a mistake or two at a time. I was chugging along so happily.

But then…three stitches in a row dropped. God, ya’ll. I tried for ages to save that. But i couldn’t. And ripping it back also wouldn’t have been salvageable in the end (I didn’t think), because the double knitted brim made it so hard to pick up appropriately. Please, view my sadness, and cry for me.

Next time I will throw lifelines in, because frankly, I can’t think of anything else that would save you if you make the same mistake. I recently got this GORGE set of Chiaogoo Interachangeable needles, and they have a built-in hole to run lifelines as you go. OMG. So amazing.

Next up: DRK Everyday Sweater

This one is chugging along beautifully. I might be in ribbing hell, but it’s nothing compared to brioche murder referenced above, or to sleeve island which I’m sure I’ll be on as well soon. But I love love love this yarn, the Purl Soho Good Wool. It’s sticky enough to know it’s going to bloom beautifully after blocking, but it’s nice to work with and not too smooth. I know it will soften, but it’s actually not a scratchy wool anyway. I’m glad I chose it for this sweater.

I love working with Andrea Mowry patterns, her notes help immensely and her videos save me hours of guessing. I do so love that helpful addition to more modern patterns. The cast on here is the tubular cast on, which is the same as the Italian Cast-on, and it really does give you a much more polished edge. I love it! You can see it at the collar here. I was aiming for a bit longer of a sweater because again, I’m Amazon sized, but looking at it makes me wonder if I should rip back and stockinette a bit longer before beginning the ribbing. But I’ll keep going first to see how long I actually like it, and then place some markers about where I think I’d like it to be instead. That way, it’s not totally ripping willy-nilly.

Next up: I will start The Satellite Shawl from Andrea Mowry. I am hoping I can master brioche in a bigger project when it just has panels of it, I think it will be good practice. I will be casting on this week! Stay tuned for updates on this one!

Also, I am all for taking out knitting books from the library, but there are some I know right away I want to buy. I love supporting these newer designers, and especially BIPOC designers. So, I got this beautify in the mail. I don’t knit with enough worsted weight, so I am challenging myself to try something from here to get more comfortable with the bulkier knits. It’s so worth your purchase, iif you can afford it, and our knitting community needs to be represented by all folks. There is so much room for diversity, and I look forward to supporting all of these designers! Also, I am likewise on a journey of radical self-care. This book spoke to me in many ways, even though our life experiences were different. We are all human, and we could all learn from each other.

Also, here is your local spotlight for the week! I stopped in at Persnickety Stitchers, Inc in Zionsville, IN recently. My husband is down the rabbit hole of embroidery lately, and I went to check this place out with my daughter, during our Girl Date. We stopped off at The Lemon Bar for the most amazing lattes and brunch, and then meandered down the old village streets. It’s such a beautiful, charming downtown!

This store was just amazing. It was quite large, had a ton of luxury threads/floss, a separate room for patterns, and then an amazing canvas section upstairs. They were super friendly, and even gave me a website they could order from if my husband wanted anything they didn’t have in stock. They showed us around and were super available for questions. I really enjoyed it!

What are your favorite local yarn/craft stores? How do you strike up conversations? Sometimes owners can be shy, but I have found that just asking them about their store, and what led them to open it, and what their favorite parts of their crafts are, you really get to know the owners and workers, and they get to share their wealth of knowledge, which is really why these people open these shops…it is usually a passion project. No one goes into owning a yarn shop for the money! But I say I’d rather give my money to them and keep it in our communities if I can.

So, anywho. Let me leave you with why I titled this post Coddiwomple. I saw this on facebook the other day. It spoke to me! THIS is what I am about right now. This is good. And it’s enough. Sometimes we feel pushed to be too productive, and honestly, I think I do my best writing work when I’m under pressure. But, the creativity/ideas/inspo doesn’t come from pressure. I have to be free to let my thoughts wander. That’s where I find my happy place, these days.

I hope you guys are finding some time to just be. It helps. It really does!

Happy Fibering!

Eileen