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Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Next!

Life is about beginnings and endings and beginnings and endings and beginnings and...well, you get it.  Call them phases, chapters, segments, whatever you like.  They can be painful, and they can be beautiful.  Often, they are both.

About 10 days ago, we celebrated the beginning of my youngest daughter's adventure - moving away from home to finish college.  She took her Gen. Ed. classes at a local community college (always fiscally responsible, that girl) and is finishing her degree at university, away from home, so she can get the whole "college experience".  While moving away marks the beginning of her adulthood, it also marks the end of her childhood.  That's painful for a mama, a mama who wants the best for her children, but also who misses them terribly.  The transition was more painful than I had expected, and it's taken me a lot of tears and a lot of self-lecturing to get me over the hump.  But I think I'm finally there.  I haven't cried at all today - well, hardly at all. 

So now what?  What's next?  I have a hectic and, sometimes, very stressful day job.  I try to squeeze in trips to the Y and am dabbling in running, having just "run" my 8th 5K.  Although I haven't blogged, recorded any new podcasts, or updated Ravelry in longer than I'd care to admit, I've been knitting like there's no tomorrow, spinning a little, and teaching, teaching, teaching - everything from beginner knitting and crochet to wet and dry felting.  So, again...what's next?

Well, I've been told by a couple of my knitting students that I should do more video tutorials.  I have 4 basic tutorials on YouTube for my beginner knitters so they have something to refer to when they get home from my class and suddenly can't remember one of the many skills they've just learned.  I get it.  When you're a beginner, remembering all the steps to a slip-knot, cast-on, knit stitch, purl stitch, and bind-off can be daunting until that muscle-memory kicks in.  Then it's like riding a bike.  Anyway, so I think I'll put up a few more videos.

What else?  I'd like to teach more classes.  I love love love teaching beginners.  It makes me all giggly inside when I see that light bulb go off over someone's head, when it clicks, when they get it!  I'd like to do some more felting classes.  I led a workshop a couple of months ago at Ewe and Company where we made owls (my spirit animal - ha!) from Woolbuddy kits.  That was loads of fun.  I took a sock blank dyeing class at the Smoky Mountain Fiber Arts Festival in April, and I think I want to put together a class for that.

And, who knows?  Maybe I'll resurrect the podcast.  Once upon a time, I hosted a podcast that had a small following.  It was mostly me just rambling about what I was working on, things I wanted to try, fiber events I'd gone to.  I enjoyed doing it, but it became harder to keep up with and it faded away, and then my content got deleted from the hosting site (the horror!).

So, that's what's stirring around in my mind.  We'll see where it leads.  For now, I'll just post a couple of things I'm working on:

The Crown Wools Mystery KAL:

Yarn:  Frabjous Fibers (I love their fiber and their name is fun to say) 12-color kit, custom-dyed for this KAL.
Photobomber:  Henry, Sketchy, Jake, Kit (name depends on who you ask around here)



Vanilla socks:

Uneek Sock Yarn - I'm using Color 56.



I was a sucker for the packaging - a little box containing 2 balls of sock yarn that promise to make a matching pair!  Who could resist that?