A little depressed, a little jealous, a little inspired...

 

Okay, I know.  Super weird title to this blog post.  I am losing it a little bit this time of year. Too much work.  Lots of meetings and sporting events.  Very little sleep.  I have had to put the blog on hold due to being a wife, mother, and teacher.  Which has got me a little depressed.  Because I haven't had much time to be creative.  In fact, I have had precious little time to be creative.  I think I have knit one washcloth, knit 1/2 a cowl, knit 1/2 of a chunky cable hat (that is gonna be cute!), and ordered yarn to knit some completely cool fingerless mittens from the Purl Bee.  Oh, and I knit two pair of baby booties that I need to put little buttons on.  They are adorbs.

Here is the cowl I am knitting:

And here is a picture of the fingerless mittens I am going to make:

 I have been doing some good cooking.  But not enough, because I am NEVER home.  I have made several good things from Pinterest lately, including this:

 

I have read some good books.  Including The Dinner (super fast read, read in one sitting on a plane from Chicago to Denver), Broken Harbor (you know I am obsessed with Tana French!), and Gods of Gotham (Loved! Can't wait for her next book to come out).

At last count, I had graded more than 900 essays.  And that was in March.  I am sure I am well over 1,000 now.  Between my senior writing classes, my AP English classes, and my junior World Lit class, that's a lot of writing.  Most of the essays average 3 pages.  So that's a hell of a lot of reading and commenting.  My writing callous is ridiculous. I am the super hero of writing callouses.

I am a little depressed because of some of the above, but I am also proud and happy because I am a happy wife, a happy mom, and a happy teacher.  I am trying to do good in the world every day.  So there's something.

I am also a little jealous and a little inspired because I was on Pinterest (avoiding work...) and I saw a delicious recipe, which led me to a really great blog, which I started reading, and then I just read that the author of the blog is going to write a book, which she describes as a "family/food memoir with recipes," which is EXACTLY WHAT I WANT TO DO.  In fact, she says that she was "discovered"on her blog.  WHICH IS WHY I STARTED BLOGGING.  But, she actually did it with some regularity.  And I did not.  Which is why I am only a little jealous.  Because I am also a realist.  And I am pretty sure that she has not graded over 1,000 essays this year, because I think that blogging is her full-time occupation (along with being a mom and a wife).  Sooooooo, I can't be too jealous.  So instead, I am going to be a little inspired...

I can't wait for summer!

F.O.s (Finished Objects)

I have been a bad blogger!  January really kicked my butt.  We went back to school on January 3, and it was the end of the semester and final exams.  Because I teach English, and my courses focus on literature and composition, all of my students had end of unit essays they were working on and turning in, plus all of my final exams have an essay component as well.  That meant over the course of three weekends and two work weeks I had to grade 300 essays, plus teach, plus enter grades and get report cards completed by the end of January.  Whew!  It was all I did and I was plenty sick of it when I got to the end of the month.

I have been taking pictures when I can, and I have few things to show you.  Over Christmas break I started a new project: fingerless mittens.  When I drive I listen to audiobooks on my iPod, and because iPods and iPhones have touch screens you have to take off your mittens or gloves to get them to work.  I got sick of taking off my gloves every time I wanted to play or pause my audiobook, so I decided to knit some fingerless mitts.  I found some gorgeous yarn from one of my favorite yarn brands, Manos del Uruguay, which means Hands of Uruguay in Spanish.  Manos del Uruguay "is a non profit organization which assembles over 400 artisans in cooperatives scattered throughout the countryside of Uruguay.  The aim of the organization is to bring economic and social opportunities to rural women."  I first used Manos yarn on Tiny Dancer's legwarmers and loved the feel and the way it knit.  That yarn was a cotton blend.  For this project I chose a beautiful multi-colored Merino wool.

You can see the first mitten, in progress, perched atop one of my favorite Christmas gifts.  My mom gave me this handmade pottery knitting bowl (I guess that's what you would call it...)  It is so awesome - you put the yarn you are working with in the bowl and then feed it out through the opening.  You set the bowl next to you and then it just smoothly feeds out through the opening as you knit, instead of rolling off the couch.  Plus, it is a nice was to contain a small project and looks fairly decorative sitting on the table next to my couch.

Here are some close up shots of the yarn and the bowl.  I just love the way this looks together.

And here is a picture of one of the finished mittens, my first F.O. of the new year!

The fingerless mittens are my January Finished Object.  Then, in February, in knit a matching hat. 

This hat is called the Sweetie Pie Hat and I got the pattern from my favorite knitting, crocheting & sewing blog, The Purl Bee.  The hat was so easy to knit and I loved making the baby cable.  I liked the pattern so much and I love my new fingerless mittens so much, I am thinking of combining the two and making a pair of fingerless mitts with the baby cable pattern.  Stay tuned!

Here is a pic of one of my other cute knitting-related Christmas gifts from my mom.  It is a tape measure.  Isn't it cute?

Here is my new yarn for my next project.  I am hoping to have another F.O. in February.

This is a yummy angora/wool blend yarn called Lush by Classic Elite Yarns. 

I can't wait to get started.  I have a pretty busy Sunday.  I have to take Tiny Dancer to the mall to go jeans shopping with her competition tap team (They are wearing sparkly corset-style tops and matching jeans for their costumes.) and I have to go in to work to make lesson plans for tomorrow.  Our entire English department is going to an all-day writing conference.  I hope that it is good & we learn some new ideas.  I hate being gone from my students, but it is worth it if I come back with some new teaching ideas.  Perhaps tonight, after a bit of grading, I will be able to get started.

Creativity

This morning the Cute Puppy woke up at 6:00 am.  This is much better than the 3:15 am wakeup the other morning, and her usual 5:00ish on all of the other days of break.  She is used to waking up with me on work days between 5:15 and 5:30 am.  She can't help it.  She is growing so fast and is hungry all the time!  I took her outside to go potty, fed her breakfast, and then we went back upstairs.  She went right in her house and I got right back in bed and slept until 7:00.  Ahhh... much better. 

Since 7:00 am, I have been lost in blogland.  I decided to go through my list of "Creative" blogs, read them all, and decide if there were any to delete.  So far, I am about 2/3 of the way through, I have deleted one, and added two more.  I am also feeling extremely lame and not creative after checking in with some of my most inspiring, favorite creative blog ladies.  While I read, Cute Puppy played happily with her toys.  She makes up lots of games, her favorite being "I am going to hold a big toy in my mouth while I try to pick up my other toys but it's really hard and I can't do it so I try and try."  After about an hour of this game she got bored, so I helped her out.  I put two big dog biscuits inside her Puppy Kong, and for the last 20 minutes she has been trying to chew them out.  Here she is, happily working on her job.

I am currently working on a little knitting project for Christmas.  I can't show it to you yet because it is for someone who reads this blog.  I will take a couple of pictures of it in progress and finished, and share after Christmas. 

While I was happily browsing in blogland, I came across the most cutest little knitting project ever.  I am going to for sure knit a whole flock of these little guys to decorate my house and to give as gifts.  I have always had an obsession with tiny little creatures like this... fairies, elves, and gnomes.  (Remember the gnome craze of the late 70's/early 80's?  Yup, I had that book!)

I am a huge fan of painter, Rien Poortvliet, and I was obsessed over this book for years.  I wonder what happened to it?  Hopefully, it is still on the bookshelf at my mom and dad's house.  I am going there later today to drop off some gifts, so I will definitely have to check for it.

Here is my next craft.  I can't wait to get started!

You can find the free pattern here.  Hopefully, I will be able to show you a picture of my little elves soon!

Finally an F.O.

For those of you who may not know, an F.O. is a Finished Object, and it is definitely a cause for a mini-celebration for someone like me who is not the most speedy knitter in the world.  You may recall I posted a 1/2 F.O. post back in January.  (Click here to see the post!)  Well, I finally finished the other half and the legwarmers for Tiny Dancer are complete!

She is wearing them right now at Nutcracker practice and they are very cute and very soft.  I got the pattern from one of my favorite blogs, The Purl Bee, and I ordered the yarn from them as well.  I loved the yarn - so nice to knit with - and would like to use it for another project.  The legwarmers were really easy to knit, just really looooong, so they did take a while. 

Now I am working on a baby sweater that my sister started.  My sister gave up knitting about 10 years ago, and she gave me all of her yarn, needles, and half-finished projects.  Slowly but surely I have either ripped out the half-done projects and reused the yarn or I have finished the projects.  I think is the last one of hers that I am going to finish.  It is a really cute color, but I am worried that the finished sweater is going to look a bit '80s... (cuz that's when she started it!) The baby she was knitting it for is now a grown-up with babies of her own! Hopefully I will find a retro baby who will love it. :)

On the Needles

Here it is Saturday again.  I had hoped to post again last Sunday, but the cold took a serious turn for the worse.  I snuffled and coughed my way through the entire weekend, finally ending up awake in the middle of the night Sunday night with serious ice-pick-to-the-cheekbone style pain in my sinuses.  Finally at 4:30 in the morning I got up, went online, requested a substitute teacher for the day, and typed up lesson plans to send in.  I hate missing school, but there was no way I could make it through the day in the state I was in.  I stayed home on Monday, talked to my doctor, and started on a serious regime of steroid nasal spray to reduce the swelling in my nasal passages, mucous thinners, and neti pot.  (If you have sinus issues and have never tried the neti pot, you must go out to the health food store and buy one immediately!  It really works!) I was skeptical.  I thought I would need antibiotics for sure, but the doctor said to give it 48 hours of the above treatment and then to call back if there was no improvement. I went back to work on Tuesday, still suffering. Well, sure enough, by Wednesday I was starting to improve.  Thursday was a little better. Friday a lot better. And now, here it is Saturday, and I am much improved.  I am still blowing my nose and coughing a bit, but I feel I am on the mend. So - that is my testimonial about using methods other than antibiotics to cure a sinus infection. I am a believer.

On to more creative topics - knitting!  Here is a picture of my first FO of 2011.  (Is it cheating to call it an FO when there is a pair and I only have one of the two completed?  Hmmm....)

This the first of a pair of legwarmers that I am knitting for my Tiny Dancer.  My 13-year old daughter has been dancing on and off since she was three years old, and dancing quite seriously now for the past four years.  She takes classes in ballet, tap, and hip hop, and also does competition tap dancing with a team and participates in her local dance company's production of The Nutcracker each year.  The dance studio is called the Dance Asylum and is where I also take tap, ballet, and jazz classes (though I am nowhere near as good as Tiny Dancer!)  The people at the Dance Asylum are absolutely amazing - really the best part of it all, if you ask me. The pattern for these legwarmers is from one of my favorite blogs, The Purl Bee.  I also ordered the yarn from The Purl Bee, and it is everything they promised it would be.  Easy to work with, soft and cozy, and beautifully hand dyed.  Love it!

I finished the first legwarmer (they are very long!) last Saturday night.  On Sunday morning I wound the second ball of yarn and got started on the second of the pair. 

I didn't have much time to knit on this during the week between work, grading papers, and being completely exhausted from being sick.  Here is what it looks like today:

I had to put it on the floor right next to the back door which opens onto our deck - east facing - to get a shot that wasn't completely dark.  It is January-grey here, with a few snow flakes in the air.  I wish it would REALLY snow - much more exciting that what it is doing right now, which is next to nothing.

Hopefully later today I will do some cooking.  I have been craving chicken and dumplings for the past three days and I have a dill bread recipe I am itching to try.

Hello!

Hello! I have been wanting to start a blog for over a year now but kept putting it off for one reason or another.  I planned to start it January 1st of 2010 - something about starting a new blog on the first day of a new year appealed to me. I even took pictures of what I was doing that day to chronicle the event.  But then I didn't do it... and knowing how way leads on to way... I found myself at the beginning of another new year and still no blog.  I thought about doing it again on January 1st of 2011, but again - something got in the way. (Probably college football, knitting, and my intense desire to stay on the couch all day under a blanket, doing very little, and not thinking about going back to work on Monday.)  So now it is the weekend AFTER the first of the new year.  I have been back to work for a week, have a terrible cold, tons of papers to grade (I am a high school English teacher) and suddenly decided that I would not put off the blog creation any longer.  So, here I am.  My hopes for this blog are the following:
* it will inspire me to write more
* it will be a place to showcase the things I love to do in the very little free time I have: knitting, sewing, reading, and cooking
* it will be a place where I can record the funny things that happen around me that at the time I think I will never forget, but I most certainly have forgotten by now

I need to be realistic about my blogging.  It will probably happen only on the weekends during the school year.  I think my fear of not posting regularly enough was one of the things that kept me from starting. But now that I have noticed that many of my favorite bloggers have gaps and take breaks once in awhile, I am over that fear. So here goes... I am excited, a little nervous, and looking forward to a new project in a new year.

Here is what I was working on last year on New Year's Day 2010.  This is one of the last strips of knitting that was rolled into a flower, felted, and then sewn onto a purse that had also been felted.  This project took a lot longer than I anticipated.  For one, when you knit something to be felted it has to be MUCH bigger than the finished project turns out to be.  And second, these roses (24 in all) were more knitting than I thought.  Overall, I was happy with the way the purse turned out.  I felted it, sewed on all of the roses, attached some cute plastic handles, and lined it with fabric from Anna Maria Horner.  I would post a picture, but after I started using it this holiday season, some of the roses started to pull off the purse and so it needs a little first aid before I can show it to the world.

This is what I was reading last New Year's Day 2010.  I read the first four of the Harry Potter series out loud to my son beginning when he was five years old. (He is 16 now!)  After that, he could read himself and I stopped reading the series.  A year ago, I decided to finish and I read the fifth and sixth books. This Christmas break from school I read the seventh in the series at my daughter's urging. (She is now 13 years old.)  I was a little nervous to read it, because I didn't know how the series was going to end and I was afraid I would be disappointed.  J.K. Rowling did not disappoint and I loved it.  Someday I will have to read the whole series over again - perhaps when I am retired and sailing around the Caribbean.  Sigh.

Besides having a terrible cold, it is a beautiful winter day.  It snowed all night last night, and we woke up to a fresh blanket of snow and the sun just hitting the tops of the trees to the west.  Here is the view out my kitchen window of my backyard.  I am obsessed with the birds, and I have been extrememly disappointed that there have been so few over the past few weeks. (The snow melted over New Year's, and I guess they could find food elsewhere.)  Today, with its fresh blanket of snow, cold temperatures (it was 8 degrees when I got up, and is now up to only 16 at nearly noon and with bright sunlight) they are back! These little things make me so happy.

The view out my kitchen window.

The birds are back!

Well, I think that is enough for my first post.  I am so excited to finally be blogging, I don't want to stop!  I hope you enjoy a lovely Saturday.  Maybe later I will be feeling well enough to go out cross-country skiing.  Fingers crossed.