Well this Monday through Friday job I have is taking me to The Big Apple! A couple of weeks ago, I went there Monday through Friday to do some trainings. Off I went on the train…

With my knitting of course…

I haven’t been to the city in quite some time and it was EXHAUSTING learning how to get from Manhattan to Queens each day on the Long Island Railroad and subway. But overall it went well and I’ll be heading back in the months to come.

I did have a great Thai meal one night and, another night, I tried Shake Shack!

The burger was excellent. The shake?….meh. I’ll skip that next time. One of my co-worker’s tips was to buy what meals I could in Queens because it is cheaper. I don’t know if there is a Shake Shack in Queens, but that meal right up there was $17 at Penn Station in Manhattan. Good thing I have an appropriately-sized meal per diem from work!

In other knitting news, I finished the knitting of Paul’s felted slippers.

Now I need to sew up the bottoms, weave in the ends, and then felt them. Right now, that seems like a big task, so I’m working on my Sweet Pea-turned-Moorland crochet blanket for a while (which I’m not showing you because it virtually looks the same, with just a few more stripes. I’ll show you an update once I’ve made some substantial progress).

Although, I’ve been getting “discreet” hints from you-know-who that his current slippers have holes in them: last night the hint was Paul laying on the couch with a blanket only covering his slipper-clad feet because they were cold from the draft getting into them….

Aaaaaaanyway….. in other news, our back yard looks like an asteroid landed in it.

We are having our pond dug out and re-graded because the cattail reeds were overtaking it and we couldn’t see the water or the turtles or the frogs. And we want to put koi fish in it. They had to drain it in order to do the digging and we have no idea how long it will take to fill back up… stay tuned.

Come on spring!

I have no idea where to start. There is so much to tell you since the last time I posted and the longer I waited to post, the more there was to tell you and then I just froze. FROZE! And I’m not talking about the fact that we are FROZEN here in upstate New York. I mean that I just couldn’t get to the blog.

Then, today I decided to just start and tell you some things and if I don’t tell you everything that is fine. We will all survive!

So, in knitting news… I have decided that this year I am going to focus on finishing my many works-in-progress (WIPs). I have approximately twenty. TWENTY!

So, first up was to take out my not-very-far-along Memories Sweater.

I’m making this with Malabrigo Rios which is one of my very most favorite yarns to work with. And I love this colorway – which I would tell you the name of but I can’t seem to locate the skeins in my messy-totally-unorganized stash. More on that later.

I pretty much decided to make this because of the detail at the bottom of the sleeves which has a thumb hole so the sleeve can act like a fingerless mitt. So great, right???

Next up is my Moorland Blanket which I started with a crochet-a-long with the Attic24 blog TWO. YEARS. AGO. This is how far I got….

Five stripes. I loved the idea behind this blanket. Lucy at Attic24 had a beautiful picture of the Moorland near where she lives in England and she designed the blanket to mirror that picture. Here is the side-by-side she posted on her blog…

That picture does not show the wave pattern that actually became the pattern stitch for the blanket. You can see the wave pattern in my 5-row sample above. And it’s REALLY pretty. The problem was that I’m not a great crocheter and keeping track of the wave pattern was difficult for me. Unlike with knitting, I have a very hard time “reading” my crochet stitches. So, since it was hard, I just stopped or, more likely, got very easily distracted by a new pattern.

Fast forward to 2019 and Lucy is hosting another crochet-a-long for her very pretty Sweet Pea blanket. And she designed it specifically so beginners would have no trouble following along. Hooray! That’s for me! So, I decided to use my Moorland color pack of yarn and crochet it using the easier pattern of the Sweet Pea blanket…

And voila! I’m 19 stripes in already. All double crochet and very easy to “read” my work.

A good start to finishing some WIPs.

The other task regarding my knitting that I am working on this year (hopefully this month??) is to organize my stash. It’s a mess. I have an IKEA cube shelving unit that has 16 squares with cubes made out of fabric that sit inside and hold all the yarn (and roving) and it is mostly full. JAMMED. And I can’t see any of it. I have no idea how much I have and where it is. I as mentioned earlier, I can’t find the next ball of yarn for my Memories sweater at the moment and I need it. So frustrating! That means for now I’m just working on the blanket.

Marie Kondo and her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing are calling to me.

What else? Oh, today is the Super Bowl that we don’t watch but we make food for! I made a snack and a dessert….

Both are Smitten Kitchen recipes. Perfect Blueberry Muffins to which I added raspberries. SO. YUMMY. And Spicy Brittled Peanuts from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook . SO. ADDICTIVE. I also made pizza dough so pizza will be the main dish. So excited to not-watch-but-eat-goodies!

Ok, that’s it for now. Except for a picture of Smudge from the holidays…

…because he’s cute.

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Well, my traveling for work has ramped up this month and I’m traveling one or two days a week for 5 out of 6 weeks.  Wow!  A little tiring but so far I’m still enjoying the job.  Just got back from Buffalo, a fun 4 1/2-hour drive. Luckily things slow down around the holidays and I can re-charge a little.

Speaking of traveling, Paul and I were able to get away for a weekend to Ogunquit, Maine a few weeks ago.  Aside from being surprised there were So. Many. People. we had a nice time.  Somehow, we assumed in September, no one would go there anymore.  Ha!

Lots of time sitting by the water….

And a trip to L.L. Bean to spend our credit card points on some Adirondack chairs.

I’ve also been trying to figure out some good hotel knitting.  I’ve settled on starting the Ribbon Wrap since it is easy knitting (so far anyway) and I don’t need too many brain cells at the end of a long travel/training day:

And I’ve got my Fish Lips Kiss Heel sock, left over from the class I taught, to keep working on when I get tired of the wrap:

My at-home knitting is getting to work on Sam the Ram which I’m knitting along with some friends:

Plus I have become re-obsessed with the Spice Pumpkin, since I gave all the ones I made away!:

They really do make a cute little gift.

Ooh! And I finally finished the college blanket for my nephew Matthew!

University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, CT and he is playing soccer there and is doing great!

P.S. If you know him, it’s not a secret anymore because I sent it to him. 🙂

I’m also all into the pumpkin spice, as you know, so I made these totally-super-yummy-you-have-to-make-them Pumpkin Doughnut Muffins from Martha:

My knitting class / knit shop peeps loved them!

And finally, some Smudge pics, because I can’t not….

How have YOU been?

I love Swedish Fish.  They are awesome and tasty.

I don’t get them often but on my stroll at lunch today, I went to CVS.  After asking Paul if he wanted anything and getting his usual request of Raisinettes, I saw the Swedish Fish on the shelf. I am trying to eat healthy but I didn’t eat my lunch yet (mistake number one) and I was hungry and they just seemed like the best thing in the world to get and they don’t have any fat in them, right?  I then proceeded to eat 3/4 of the bag while watching/supporting a web-based training my co-worker was doing.  Then I was in a sugar coma and had a headache.

So I texted Paul this picture and told him what I did and how I was feeling…

I texted him for two reasons.  One, I was feeling guilty because I’m supposed to be eating healthier and that is just NOT healthy eating and so I felt like I had to come clean to someone.  Two, if I told him I had them, I knew he might like some and seeing how I already ate 3/4 of them, I would then feel obligated to not eat any more so I could bring him some. It worked.  He will have 1/4 bag to eat for dessert tonight.

Other things going on around here involve a lot of knitting!

I taught the beginning of the Fish Lips Kiss Heel sock class recently:

And here is my progress so far for the next class which is in a week or so…

I need about 5 more inches before I’m ready to teach the heel.  And in the meantime, I’ve got other things happening…

Me and a few knitting friends are doing a casual knit-a-long to make the adorable Sam the Ram:

That is my progress so far in the bottom of the picture. Ha! 11 rows.  But I can’t really get going until I’m done with this:

I’ve been going full tilt to get it done before it gets cold.  It was supposed to be done before the start of the first year of college for this guy:

(#12 in the white)… so I’m really late at this point.  It still needs another foot in length and then some colorful border-y parts. If you know him, don’t show this to him.  He basically knows he’s getting it and knows the colors but he doesn’t know what it looks like.  I think he’ll like it! (Those are his school colors.)

Smudge has been trying to help with it:

And THEN, these adorable things totally distracted my knit-a-long group:

So we are already planning another one.  SO. CUTE!

I think that’s it for knitting.

BUT THEN…. this is also all-things-pumpkin-all-the-time season you know, and I always jump in full throttle.  I have found a couple of new pumpkin-y things to obsess over.

Pumpkin Joe-Joe’s from Trader Joe’s!  OMG. Don’t get these unless you want to go back and get three more boxes.

Pumpkin soup – a yummy recipe my friend Pam devised, trying to replicate the one she loves at Panera.  It is excellent!

And I’ve had a million iced pumpkin spice lattes from Starbucks.  And once it’s chilly out (some day) I will get the hot ones. I love them so much. Pumpkin bread is in the very near future as well.

And lastly, another picture of Smudge because he is so stinkin’ cute sitting next to my new books:

And here is his cousin Nikki because she is stinkin’ cute too:

That’s all. Stay tuned for more knitting adventures and some traveling adventures too!

Well then.  That was a long break from the blog.  But, there is a reason.  There is a really good reason.

There is a reason why you haven’t seen these finished knitting projects:

Jadis Shawl

Winterlong Cowl

Buds & Bumbles Shawl

(Thanks to Mari at The Spinning Room who came to my rescue to send me pictures of my projects because my brain is a little fried due to The Reason!)

There is a reason you haven’t seen pictures of this guy:

There is a reason there have been no book recommendations like:

The Great Alone: A Novel by Kristin Hannah
My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrick Backman (love, Love, LOVED this one especially!!!)
Summerland: A Novel by Elin Hilderbrand
Badlands: A Novel (Highway Quartet) by C.J. Box

There is a reason there have been no garden updates (and still no garden pictures to show you).

There is a reason you haven’t seen the picture of the Frank Pepe’s pizza we got as we passed through New Haven in a roundabout way to get to our vacation in Cape Cod:

There is a reason you didn’t see my yarn-purchases-in-a-garbage-bag-because-I-went-a-little-nuts-at-the-sale from WEBS:

There is a reason you haven’t see any food pictures like my recent so-happy-to-find-it-in-August pumpkin spice finds:

And here is The Reason:

I got a job.

An honest-to-goodness-five-days-a-week-Monday-to-Friday-get-a-paycheck-like-clockwork-full-time job.  I haven’t had one of those in ten years.  TEN! YEARS!

Since 2008 I have owned a yarn shop, sold a yarn shop, became a part-time nanny to my niece and nephew along with teaching knitting classes, then added proofreading on the side to those two jobs, then they went to school so I had proofreading, knitting classes, selling on eBay and being an office manager for my friend’s business.  Aside from the nannying, none of the jobs had a regular, predictable paycheck.  And it finally wore me down.  So, I looked for a job.

Now, I’m an Education Specialist at the Professional Development Program at The Research Foundation for SUNY.  I teach the NY State child welfare workers how to use their case management computer system.  The great part is that I LOVE IT!  It’s right up my new-in-the-past-ten-years-loving-to-teach alley and I can still use my social work skills without being out in the trenches. It will soon involve travel so hopefully I will still love it once that ramps up.

Needless to say, no longer having an incredibly flexible schedule seriously put a cramp in my lifestyle.  Oh my gosh, the things I’ve had to adjust to:

1) Waking up at the same time every day.

2) Leaving the house at the same time every day.

3) Getting home at the same time every day.

4) Having to schedule any kind of appointment for the hours that I’m not at work (at the same times every day).

5) Doing every kind of errand on the weekend.

6) Not having vacation whenever I want. That one is seriously a bummer.  I have to accrue time.  I have to wait until November to take it since I just started.  And I can’t have as much vacation as I want. Unlike my husband who has been at his job for almost 20 years and the company now has a permissive time off policy where they just take all the time they want.

I totally realize that these are things that most people go through, and I even went through them myself for many years, a very long time ago.  It just took some adjusting.  Just ask Paul…. he’s trying really hard not to roll his eyes every time I say something like, “Well, I would do that for you on Tuesday at noon, but I can’t because now I have A JOB.”  Or, “I’d love to take a couple days off with you to go away for a long weekend but I can’t because now I have A JOB.”

And it truly is fine.  I feel very lucky to have a job that I like, with a like-clockwork paycheck and good benefits. (And I do still have a second job – my knitting classes!  The Jadis Shawl and Winterlong Cowl are both upcoming classes at The Spinning Room.)

So, hopefully I’ll be back to somewhat regular blogging for those of you who have missed reading about my adventures.

What’s new with YOU? : )