10 days of (trying to be) deliberate

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Suzanne

I wish I could say, after 10 days in the new year, that I was seeing all sorts of life-changing things happening thanks to my new found “deliberate” mindset. Not that I expected to, but I just want to make sure it was clear that nothing magical had happened yet.

I think about the word a lot, and find myself asking if whatever I was doing was a deliberate choice, or just the easy way out. Unfortunately, the answer continues to often be that I am just taking the lazy choice, rather than deliberating doing something that furthers one of my goals, but I figure that acknowledging my laziness is half the battle to conquering it.

One thing I have done deliberately is to begin actively seeking out the training I have been thinking I would like to do in the field of web design. In the past, I have bought a book here, fiddled with Dreamweaver there, poked around in the code of my various websites, but I’m just faking it. I would really like to actually KNOW how it works, and the only way to do that is to actually dive in and learn it. I paid for a month’s access to Lynda.com and am on my third training course (Dreamweaver CS5 Essential Training, in case anyone is wondering). I am thoroughly impressed by the quality of the instruction, the quality of the videos, and the depth and breadth of the available courses. This current course is a little slow for me personally, but I’m the kind of student that sits in the back of the class and fiddles around and jumps ahead in the handout and figures things out by myself, so the course itself is probably just fine, I just have to struggle with being who I am. It’s a trial, some days.

But! I am deliberately making myself listen to the entire course, even if that means I have to knit while he’s talking, in order to keep my hands busy, so I can concentrate. I’ve already learned a bunch of things I didn’t know before and have clarified some things I already sort of knew. So far the fee to Lynda.com has been worth every penny.

How about all of you? Is your new year off to a positive start?

Half a pair of mittens

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Suzanne

I did’nt look like I was being very productive today: I was camped out in my bed, with my laptop and my knitting pretty much all day long. I only emerged to:

Shower and get dressed and eat my breakfast
Use the facilities (several times)
Eat dinner ** (a meal that Mark prepared)
Try Mark’s mitten on his hand (many times. sometimes i made him come to me. the time I dropped the ball of yarn over the railing was pretty funny.)
Eat popcorn and watch the original Tron

Lest you think I was being a complete slacker, I was watching a video course on HTML, and spent part of the time doing the exercises for the course. I may have also watched an episode of Sanctuary at some point.

It was, frankly, a pretty awesome day, and I’m a pretty lucky girl to have a family that is self-sufficient enough that I can actually have a day like today.

I was even more of a slacker yesterday, and while I started the mitten, I only got as far as the cuff. I couldn’t really tell you what else I did — oh wait! I cleaned the kitchen! And freaked Mark out when I told him I had an IDEA for the kitchen. He got one of those “Oh crap, how much is this going to cost me” kind of a looks, but luckily for him, it’s more a labor thing, than a spend a lot of money thing. It’s a cosmetic change, and in the morning, when it’s lighter, I’ll take some before pictures so you can see what it is I want changed.

Not that it will happen any time soon, as we’ll hit the ground running for another busy week, and we should probably do the kitchen remodeling that my Mom’s kitchen needs before we touch our own kitchen.

We also went to Marshalltown to hang out with some friends, and that pretty much killed the whole evening (and I use “killed” in the positive sense, in that we had an awesome time, and wish we did that kind of thing more often).

And now, since I had such a busy day, I should probably head to bed. You know, since it’s been so long since I’ve seen my bed.

**Dinner = lunch. The popcorn was our supper.

Now I Need Mittens

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Suzanne

Pattern is Winter Leaf Slouchy Tam (<–Ravelry Link). Yarn is Cascade Cash Vero DK, a Merino/Cashmere/Acrylic blend. The pattern was pretty straightforward, and the yarn is so yummy to work with. There were a couple of spots where the written pattern was slightly different from the chart, but it was minor stuff and I just did what I thought was best.

It is symmetrical, it was just sitting slouched funny on the ironing board.

I should probably make Mark’s mittens first, though. And it sounds like I have plenty of people that would let me knit hats for them, but I’m not knitting one for my Mom. She can knit her own.

I’m working on this super-cute applique quilt today. I just discovered, though, that the bird on the right — his tail feather is missing it’s machine zigzag. Of course, I didn’t realize this until he was completely surrounded by quilting, so I’m waiting to see how my customer would like me to proceed. It needs yellow stitching, adn the back is yellow, so if it goes through all of the layers, I don’t think it will be that noticeable.

I sent an e-mail — and she might read my blog, so, Linda, if you are out there — read your e-mail!

Moving On

Posted on January 6, 2011 by Suzanne

No burned food today: we ate leftover ham, so no opportunity to screw anything up.

I was hoping to get the Super Secret Quilt done, but my border problems caused me to step back and realize that I really need to get some customer quilts done, so it’s been pulled off while I ponder and this quilt is now finished:

The color is not true, its much deeper and richer in person. The fabric is not Cherrywood, but it’s something similar. Very yummy.

And thanks to some late night knitting sessions, I’m racing through my hat. Hats! Faster than socks, really practical, and tons of options: I see more knitted hats in my future. I refuse to hand-knit socks for people: if I’m going to go that much work, I want to wear them, but hats? Not that I know that many people that actually need hats.

Hmmm.

Hats in every color of the rainbow, to suit my mood and/or outfit. Plus, if I have lots of knitted hats, maybe I can actually find one when I need one.