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Goat! Reading! Purging! Oh my!

June 1, 2015 Marie Leave a Comment

I can’t believe we’re in June already!

There’s not a lot to report around here. Friday the munchkin and I had a day out to the zoo with Nana which was very tiring for us all. He’s very much all about animals lately and wanting to pet everything – the dog, the neighbor’s sweet cat Callie (I need to get a picture of her, she’s seriously the prettiest), the wild bunnies in my parents’ yard when I drop him off in the mornings while I go to work, the the goats at the Zoo’s petting area… if it’s furry and moves, he wants to touch it.

The husband and I took some time Saturday to clean off the back patio and try to finish more of the garden. All the straw we lay down as mulch gets blown up onto our patio, making such a horrible mess. I’m not sure what a better option is – wood mulch is significantly pricier and lasts just about as long. Perhaps I’ll forever be sweeping straw off the patio? Anyway, it feels really great to have it cleaned off and now I can go back to using it in the evenings to knit, watch the birds, and have a beer. It’s something I’ve really missed this spring. Our clematis didn’t make it through the winter, along with several of our other flowers, so it’s not quite so cozy, but it’s home.

I downloaded Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things from my library’s online system and have been reading it every chance I get. I hate e-books, and very much prefer the real thing, but my local library didn’t have it available and I didn’t want to buy a book and bring something else into the house. It’s fascinating, mostly in that I can see a lot of myself in some of these chapters. I’m not nearly (ok, the husband would say not even close) to the level of hoarder, but I have a lot of tendencies to hold onto things longer than I need to and sometimes I find it impossible to part with things if there’s sentimental value. It’s interesting to see the feelings expressed by some of these people reflected in my own life. And it certainly has me thinking hard about my attachment to certain things and why I can’t seem to get rid of them. It has really helped me with learning to recognize why I’m holding onto something and then give myself enough of a push to just let it go.

I’ve been trying to keep track of my numbers of things I’ve removed (or have put in a pile to remove) from the house, and right now I’m over 100. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep up my 5 things posts horribly long when I’ve got this kind of motivation to purge all at once. Though, to be fair, right now I’m getting rid of the “easy” stuff – the stuff that I’ve held onto for too long, the stuff I’ve decided I won’t use and – if I do need it later – I can re-buy. Once I get this initial clear-out done, though, it’ll be much harder and that’s when a whole lot more of the soul-searching comes in.

Weekending in Yellow Springs

September 23, 2013 Marie Leave a Comment

Oh, how I do love that man I married! ♥ This weekend we celebrated our 6th anniversary and we spent our weekend in Yellow Springs. I have to admit, our weekend was less-than-stellar. And by that I mean that I was off-and-on sick all weekend. Bummer :( But it was still a weekend away, so I can’t complain too much!

Friday we checked into our rental, the Sunflower Cottage. It’s such an adorable little house and decorated in my favorite colors (my whole house is some combination of blue/green). There may have been a bit of day-dreaming about moving into a house exactly like it. I could just curl right up on that window seat on a rainy day and just read or knit the day away. I may also be drawn to how uncluttered the place is. Much like most cabins we’ve rented, the kitchen cabinets are lightly furnished, the refrigerator is empty for us, and the decor on the bookshelves is minimal. Coming from the chaos of my house (where I need to work on some serious organizing and de-cluttering), it was like a weekend in my dream home.

Saturday was Wool Gathering day, so we ventured north a bit to the dairy farm for yarn shopping. I only came home with one braid of roving, and two skeins of yarn. The roving is going to be spun up for a scarf for the Mr, and the two skeins were going to be gloves for my niece and nephew but now I’m not sure if I’m going to go through with it. Honestly, I wanted to shop for more. I had more money set aside than what I bought. I guess I just wasn’t feeling very… inspired? Don’t get me wrong, there were gorgeous yarns and fibers there. But nothing really jumped out at me screaming “BUY ME!” like yarn usually does. Oh well, I guess that’s what Etsy is for!

After Wool Gathering we stopped in town for food and then walked around the shops a bit. The shops were nice and fun to look through, but nothing there said “buy me” either. The downtown is beautiful, however, so it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Sunday found us up and out early, checking out the Glen Helen Nature Preserve. GHNP is home to the “yellow springs” for which the town got its name. The water coming out of the rock is beautifully clear and cold and tastes like well water (if you’ve never had well water then just imagine the taste of water with a very slight sulfur taste). It’s not the same as standing in front of the waterfalls at Hocking Hills, but it’s still lovely. And I still hold to my belief that nature is, to me, what religion/church is to others. As silly as it might sound, I wish I could have sat there for a bit by myself to close my eyes and just be.

So now we’re home and it’s time to ease back into the regular routine. I have a laundry list of things to do (including laundry, of course) so here’s hoping a weekend of relaxation results in a week of productivity.

Sublime socks for a Sunday

February 24, 2013 Marie 2 Comments

Another project crossed off my list (read the background on my goal here). They would look far better if I had a set of sock blockers, but alas I have none. I would rarely use them, anyway, because generally any freshly-knit socks tend to go on my feet right away (this pair is no exception). The pattern is Weeping Angel, and the yarn is Classic Elite Alpaca Sox. The yarn is dreamy. I have a feeling that this pair is going to become my ‘special’ socks that I wear after a bad day. The kind of bad day that requires a hot bath with a glass of wine, and then snuggling into bed with a good book and these socks. They’re hand wash, anyway, so they’re just not going to get regular wear like my other pairs do that can go in the washer.

Hooking it.

February 4, 2013 Marie Leave a Comment

I crocheted a thing! It was supposed to be the Purl Bee Granny Circle Placemat but… it came out much larger than expected. And that was with ending the cream portion early when I ran out of yarn – I can’t imagine how big this would have turned out if I had a 2nd ball of yarn to use. I have no idea what I’ll do with it. It was one of the projects on my list, though I believe I had intentions of making more than one. I’m not so inclined lately. But I’m happy to have one less project lingering around here.

The Lotus Hat & A Charity Knitting Project

November 10, 2012 Marie 2 Comments

A lotus hat for a friend, which may have ended up a bit too big since I used size 8 needles rather than the size 6 called for. Oops. Well, if nothing else it’ll be a really cute slouchy hat. Or I can thread some elastic into the ribbed band, I guess? Or just knit her a different one with proper needles and keep this for myself (because I’d wear the heck out of it regardless of the size).

I’m going on a hat knitting binge these next few weeks. An email came through the other day for a local charity. At the office every year we collect food for the organization to go to needy people in the community. This year, aside from the usual notice about the collection, there was a little additional line about hats and gloves being needed as well. Which reminded me so very much of Robyn over at She Makes Hats, who does a LOT of hat knitting (her goal is 10,000 hats for 10,000 people – isn’t that awesome?). She started off just wanting to knit 100 hats in a year, and the whole thing has bloomed into this amazing project.

Anyway. The light bulb clicked and I thought to myself, “Why not knit some hats?!” And so, a challenge has been set: 10 hats in 5 weeks. Two a week until the deadline of December 14th. Totally not up to Robyn’s hat-a-day-in-September project, but do-able for me with all the holiday rushing that goes on this time of year. And if I blow through those 10, that’ll be pretty damn fantastic :)