New Year, New Yarn

I had some gift cards hanging over my head that I suddenly felt the need to use before I lost them! I exchanged a couple gift cards for this:



For some reason my husband has placed order with The Loopy Ewe before, but I never had. I got two skeins of smooshy sock yarn and since I had a little left over I decided to try some new lotion. It's the tin that has a pear on it because, it's pear scented. It's a solid lotion that you rub on your hands like a bar of soap - so far it's great! The sock yarn looks wonderful too, but it will be heading to the bins of yarn stash for the moment... I also love ordering from the loopy ewe (or watching my husband open his orders) because they always include just a little something that you didn't order - this time I got a card to keep track of my knitting needles and a couple of sample cards of other yarns.

I had also bought some green fiber for something for my son recently, but when looking for patterns I realised it wasn't quite enough, so I looked on etsy for something green and superwash and found this:



It also came with a little nice smelling satchel that I didn't expect. I love these internet orders that slip something extra in! The little Tomato was very excited to have me open a package and explain that it was eventually for him. It originally came in the mail as one long braid of course, but, since I want to spin them together into one yarn, without carding them completely together, I split them each up into little tiny balls of fiber which I will rotate through as I spin. So here's how they look together:

New Year Goals

Every year my family sits down, looks at the goals we had made for the previous year and makes new goals for the new year. 2010 I actually lost our list of goals and then found it two days before the end of the year, so our achievements (of those goals) were pretty dismal. I had made progress on all of my goals, but only actually accomplished 2/5. This year I have five new goals.

1. Make a habit of daily scripture reading
2. Read a majority (average a book a week) of my goodreads list
3. Spin at least 60 oz over the year
4. Go through toys - donate/toss/keep and in 1 or 2 places
5. Deep clean each room twice


I'm actually starting in the New Testament reading just one chapter each day, trying to make it more of a habit than an rushed goal of reading each book. If I stay on target I should finish the New Testament around the end of August, after that I'll hopefully move on to something else for a chapter a day.

I have a current list of 68 books I want 'to read' (well, actually 67 since I am reading one of those currently and haven't moved it over to that list). I had books on there that I originally added to the list last June, which doesn't sound bad except for the fact that I 359 books listed as read since last January. I give myself permission to just delete a book if I'm no longer interested in reading it, otherwise I want to read and work that list down so it isn't where books go for a slow torturous death.

I really enjoy spinning. I feel more calm and relaxed when I get to spin for a bit every day for a while - and while that is not exactly my goal, my aim of 60+ oz for the year is very reasonable. It breaks down into 5 oz a month which I could easily do within a couple of days if I just did it. I have a lot of braids or bags of fiber which are 4 or 5 oz each - so that would be nice to work through, but I also have a couple of larger lots (brown alpaca, grey superwash, more?) that I could spin up for a bigger project...

Toys.... We aren't actually over the top here, but we do have way more toys than we need - especially if you consider that we have three kids who spend a lot of their free time either reading, gaming, imagining, or playing with a couple specific toys.... I just need to psych myself up and go through them and decide and sort. ...and then go through again and make sure that they are stored in a way to make it easy to pull out and play with and put away again.

I am good about keeping the house neat. In fact, I actually kindof like keeping the house neat (especially when everybody in the family grabs a room and straightens and the whole house is done in less than an hour). I am not good at keeping it *really* clean though. Surface clean sure, but a deep scrub the walls and baseboards, mop and wax the wood floors kind of clean is very rare around here. I think that nesting is one part of my previous pregnancies my family really liked because everything got super cleaned and gone through (no, I am not pregnant and not planning to be pregnant, just realized that's the only time I've enjoy scrubbing).

So those are my goals for this year - and I think I'm pretty set for achieving them, as long as I don't lose the list again (which now that I've typed them in matters so much less!)

Christmas and New Years

For Christmas my kids gave me some wonderful presents! 'Curly' and 'Tomato' each gave me a skein of yarn:


The colors are a bit tricky to photograph, but they are purple and maroon. They are meant to be used together as the specific yarn used in a pattern on my new LOOM! :)




Unfortunately the new loom was missing a small hook (which arrived today - thank you webs customer service!) so I started warping it with some of my weaving cotton to practice and learn how this rigid heddle loom works. I look forward to having some fun over the next week or two and then hopefully warping with the new yarn!

My husband also gave me other presents, including a couple of knitting books - Wrapped in Lace by Margaret Stove and Knit. Sock. Love. by Cookie A. both look interesting. He also gave me Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day - which I love the artisan bread book so much I'm excited about these variations.

My other daughter 'Lily' gave me some coupons for extra chores around the house and a whole book of different things I can request of her (running some laundry, sharing with siblings, watching siblings, doing her school work quickly, etc)

I also received a beatles cd and an elvis cd, a gift certificate to webs, and some fun games to play with the family.

During our wonderfully calm (although disappointedly sick) vacation I also finished the fiber that was on the spinning wheel, so I now have this pretty yarn!


We also watched a lot of tv and movies (due to the sickness that travelled through the family) and so I spent a lot of time wanting to work on easy projects - the crochet blanket is pretty simple and straightforward, so I made a lot of progress on that. Currently it is almost big enough for a lap/couch blanket, but I have at least three more large-ish amounts to add and then I'll want to look through both my stash and my husband's for more sock scraps!


I also spun a little silk on the spindle last night, even though my hands are a bit dry it wasn't as bad as I thought and was actually pretty calm and fun.

Warming, in Green

I finally finished the last of the winter stuff for my kids... only about a week after it started to get cold enough for them. After finishing them I took a night or two and just watched tv without crafting before picking up another project to work on during my evenings.

First, the mittens:



Second, the hat/scarf:


I really wanted to make one of these for one of the kids - and the girls didn't need hats or scarves, so Tomato had to be talked into it. It didn't take *too* much talking, but every time I tried it on him he would freeze for a second, then feel with his hands where the knitting ended, and then really quickly WHIP it off while declaring '2 inches'. So, if I needed to actually measure anything I had to do it really quickly while he was frozen for 1.5 seconds.



I think he decided that he liked it though.



He really loves that it matches his mittens and that they are both green.


Speaking of green.... I found a really neat group on Ravelry that likes to barter - yarny stuff of course, but really anything. I swapped my many skeins of lopi yarn for four skeins of this:



At this point I'm not sure if it will end up being for me or for one of the kids, but I am really excited about making something with it in the new year!

Decisive Element

Happiness Project blog

I have this Goethe quote I find myself going back to:

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”