My wheel has been tucked into a closet for months upon months. I honestly don’t remember the last time I spun on it, but at some point I started spinning some fiber I dyed on one of my annual knitting weekends. The yarn is thicker than I normally spin it, but that’s on purpose – I just don’t have it in me to spin and knit something lace weight right now with my limited time. And, besides, thicker/squishy knits are just as lovely as the lightest lace.

I find myself coming a bit more each month out of a… fog of sorts. Maybe it’s just finally getting into this motherhood thing 2.5 years in, maybe it’s the new job that has given me purpose again, or maybe I’m just learning more of who I am now that I’ve changed. I’ve put aside a lot of my old fantasies in my life, like all the handmade sweaters and clothes I imagined I’d make for my son. He’s already outgrown a lot of the projects I planned on, and he’ll most likely outgrow the ones left on the list before I get them made. We pulled most of the garden up this fall, and this year will be tackling a much smaller, more manageable plot. I donated a large portion of my fabric stash that I won’t ever get around to, or are from projects I’ve decided to move on from (like making my own clothes, which is especially unnecessary with a work-provided uniform).

I’m at a point in life where I feel like things just need to change and evolve. I tend to make things more complicated than it needs to be, and I’m learning to embrace simplicity in a way I haven’t embraced before. Less is more, these days – meals are basic and nothing to really write about, our schedules are less busy partially by design, but also partially because we’re in that winter germ-fest that leaves at least one of us sick week-to-week, and life is, generally, pretty boring. I get up, go to work, sometimes hit the gym, and then come home and cook dinner and let my son watch more cartoons than I’d like to have 20 minutes to cook in peace before we settle in, eat, take baths, and snuggle up for bed.

I miss the times where I felt like I had something to say and write here. The photos I used to take and share as I went about my day. The things I used to do to fill my time. And now, today, I wonder how I had so much time to do any of that when just making coffee some mornings feels like too much work.

The tattoo on my back is a tree, with the word “grow” underneath. The older I get, the more meaningful that becomes. My roots are still here, and my heart is still in it, but as I grow older and move through these seasons I shed leaves and branches and new ones take their place. As a tree grows and matures, so do I.

My Tour de Fleece is kinda sorta done. Well, mostly done. I plied together everything I had spun and all that’s left is the single left on the one bobbin, which I now need to wind into a center pull ball and ply together with itself. It only took me far longer to get it done than I thought it would… so much for pushing myself to spin more during the race.

Fiber is Malabrigo Nube… indecita colorway, I think? The baby toddler found the tag and I’ve since lost track of it, but looking online it looks to be the right color. Final yardage (and subsequent final knit object) to be determined.