Summer Summation

For all you people complaining that school starts in three weeks, take note. My professional development starts this coming Monday. As I reflect on my lack of productivity this summer, I realize that I have had a decent amount of time to relax, which has been good. 

My companion has been Whatever is Lovely: a coloring book for reflection and worship, which has been a huge help for me in terms of relaxing. (Follow me on Instagram if you are interested in more) 

I have also been knitting some mitered squares for a sock blanket, and will intersperse with crocheted mitten ornaments to break the monotony. 

What has your summer been like? 

Joining Ginny's yarnalong today

Finished Finishing

Despite the chaos that can be found in the month of August, with back to school and all that, I have carved out a bit of time to prepare for my fall craft shows. My aunt and I have added two additional shows this year, both of them closer to home for me. I did some scoping last year, and both have great potential.

My preparations have included lots of tracking inventory, and lots of finishing. The crocheting part is most definitely my favorite, next to actually getting out to the craft shows and selling. Finishing my product always seems to come last. Something about the tedium always gets to me. Due to my tendency to leave the finishing until the last minute left me with nearly a dozen hats to be finished this past week.

My favorite is this delicate one:

Silver blue with bright pink rose

It's perfect for a little baby girl! I try to keep a variety of hats on hand, but the sweet flowered girls' hats are my favorite. There are a couple of bears and birds to appeal to those who want something more boyish or neutral.

You can find more pictures of my finished hats (and other items!) on my Facebook page here. I'll be hosting a giveaway there soon, to celebrate my second wedding anniversary and my baby boy's first birthday, so you should definitely like my page :)

Twofer

This past week, I kept busy by finishing two blanket projects. Neither were huge, but it still feels like a good accomplishment.

3x5 Sunny Spread 

My Monochrome Sunny Spread turned out quite lovely. I joined using a 2-dc cluster instead of my usual granny join. The border is 3 rounds of dc. While not a large blanket, I am hoping the recipients will appreciate the effort that went into its creation. 

22-row round ripple

Finishing (and declaring finished) the round ripple was a bit more difficult. I really wanted to add a few more rounds, but it was really getting to the point where I wasn't enjoying it. This one measures about two feet across, so for a baby, it's a good size. This one is for my sister-in-law who is due in November. I'm including with the gift a set of prayer cards.

Linking with Ginny.

Progress and babies.

A couple of projects going simultaneously right now, and deadlines approaching faster than originally remembered. 

Cloudy mornings mean colors are difficult to capture

This red & brown round ripple is a gift. After I finish with the brick red rounds, I'll add one more of beige and a border of the gold. Using Vanna's Choice yarn means the matching has already been done for me. I love the way these particular colors work together. 

Still working on my gray monochrome sunny spread, but as its due date is closer than nearly all my other projects, it's taken precedence over everything else. Just last night, I squared up a third of the circles, so I'm really optimistic about finishing-- maybe as soon as the end f the week. 

While this scarf didn't have a deadline, it's been a forever WIP. I decided to bite the bullet, frog the last section and weave in the remaining ends. The variegated sections are Alpaca Sox, which is lovely and fuzzy and warm. The solids are Knit Picks Palette, definitely a workhorse yarn, and one of my go-tos. 

Little Munchkin is ten months old, and just starting to toddle along. His 'signature move' is the three step plop-- just my funny way of saying he takes three to five steps, and then plops on the floor. He's still working on the balance thing. 

Linking with Ginny!

Summer Days

When you're a teacher, typically you dream of summer as your time off. Even though the reality is not always that way. Luckily, I'm still on my "mandatory" two weeks off from school-- before slowly starting to do prep-work for the fall. 

lots and lots of ends

For those of you who have made granny squares before, you know what I mean by ends, ends and more ends. I work in phases for my grannies-- crochet a whole bunch at once, then weave in a whole bunch of ends at once. It may not be the best method, but it is the one that works for me. As you can tell from above, I'm on the massive amounts of end-weaving stage. My Kindle is hiding in the background, but I'm not reading anything new. But you can check out my brief unofficial review of The Secret Daughter of the Tsar, my latest finished read. 

can you resist?

These sunny summer days are my temporary adjustment to being a SAHM. The munchkin and I are still figuring out our schedule, but I'm not crazy yet. We think he's teething, which is making everyone edgy, but hopefully something will break soon.

What are you up to on these sunny summer days?
Ginny's link-up here.

Keeping Busy, Staying Joyful

One of the last days

Books I was reading

Finished Grannies

Little guy helping me read my new book

Progress on the Monochrome Sunny Spread

Busy would accurately describe my last few weeks of school. Collecting the final papers, grading exams, cleaning up my classroom, not to mention everything happening at home. My husband is on the final leg of his schooling this year, which has him doing 36 hours of clinicals plus 2 shifts at work. So all three of us are adjusting to a new schedule. Luckily, my husband brilliantly suggested that I do no school work until I've been done for at least 2 weeks. So crafting and cooking and cleaning and reading new books are the only things for me to do. Plus baby wrangling. All fun stuff. Still very busy. But onto my crafting and reading.

Reading:
I jumped on the bandwagon and read Marie Kondo's book The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up. Other than her new-age/zen ideas about talking to your possessions, I felt like she had some solidly applicable advice. This blog gives a great review on keeping one's faith in perspective while still using some of Kondo's advice. Overall, the idea of joy that Kondo talks about really struck me, and that's what I'm apply the most to my life.

Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus was a book I had heard about while listening to Catholic radio on the drive home from work. This was the second time I had checked it out from the library, and I still didn't finish it. The perspective of the author is fascinating, and I'm hoping I can get it again-- third time's the charm, right?

My new novel is The Secret Daughter of the Tsar, and I haven't started it yet. Hope to get a start today.

Crafts:
Working on a granny square swap for the next few weeks, so pics of my grannies will be popping up here and there.
Making a monochrome gray "Sunny Spread" for a gift for a friend, and am just starting to square up the circles.
Also, I'm the crazy one who is thinking ahead to Christmas already, and I have 5 bigger projects tumbling around in my brain for gifts. A new nephew arrived in early April, and he never got a gift from me, and there's another new one coming mid-November, so baby blankets for sure. :)

Happy life, busy life.
What are you all up to?

Ginny's yarn along link up

KCBW 2015: a bit about me!

Today we take a look inside the lives of one of our teachers. So unusual, we see them every day, and never really give much thought to their personal lives. Obviously, we think that they eat, sleep, and breathe school. But that is not always the case. Underneath that "teacher look" is a person, someone that we might grow up to be.  

State your name, age, occupation: Mrs. G, older than you, teacher-- duh!

Baby selfies all day!

What do you like about your job?: I really love the material that I teach, and I truly enjoy students. Teenagers are funny sometimes, and definitely lovable. But I must emphasize the importance of being involved in extracurriculars. If I didn't help out with the school musical or MUN, I would not get a chance to see the students on a different level.

our little Tigers fan

What do you do in your free time?: Right now I spend a lot of time with my little one. He's the best, and being a mom is great, but also very busy. When I have free time other than that, I tend to read historical fiction, and crochet a lot of blankets and hats.

My reading has been less as of late, so if you could recommend some books-- I've been taking after my husband quite a bit, reading books that I can learn from, so mainly how to start an at-home business or raising farm animals. I glean a lot from blogs that I follow too.

one of my current projects

Tell me about your family: I have three siblings, plus 4 siblings on my husband's side. JT is one of 10 cousins, with an eleventh on the way. Right now, our immediate family is just the three of us, but both my husband and I would love more kids, if God wills it and we can handle them.

teacher work-- getting creative!

What do you dream about?: Weird stuff, sometimes being back in high school. Lots of flying.

teaching JT to bang on the table

No, I mean what do you want for your future: Oh, that. My husband and I would love a farm, with a few animals and such, but right now we're in no place for it. I dreamt once about being a librarian, but that was also coupled with being a stay-at-home mom, or raising alpacas. I'd love to open my own yarn shop some day, sell my finished pieces and my handspun wool. But I'm so far from that right now. It all seems impossible, and can be quite discouraging.
I really love teaching, and I love my students and my job, but home life has always called to me. Having some home business, being able to raise my kids, bake bread, make cookies. That's a dream.



Stay tuned, folks. The next few days are going to be a bit chaotic. Tomorrow, a picture is worth a thousand words. Thursday, we will be looking at what exactly teachers carry around in the bags they carry. Friday, we'll be sharing a video. And Sunday, a teacher's place of refuge. 
Thanks for hanging out!! The Mystery Student

Sophie

Sophie's universe crochet along in Vanna's Choice--colors-- duckie, radiant orange, terracotta, dusty purple, eggplant

Trying to get my mojo back.

WIP Wednesday

I hope everyone's been enjoying the cold weather!! It was zero degrees yesterday when I got up for school, and it barely got warmer than that.

My students are taking exams all week, so my teaching is minimal, and I've had a little bit of spare time to crochet. I started a Juliana again, this time with the proper yarn. It is definitely turning out better this time, and I love the colors. I'm using Knit Picks Palette in Mulberry and Chroma in Gossip. I doubt I will use all the yarn up, so I'm planning what to make next. I really love this Chroma colorway, and I'm sad that it was discontinued. You can't tell from the photo, because I hadn't gotten far when this photo was taken, but the pink in this colorway is AMAZING!

When I need something a bit more brainless, I go back to working on infinity scarves. I'm in the middle of my fifth this month. Making infinity scarves is an ongoing project, and I really hope to finish up many more between now and graduation.

My fiance was over this past weekend, and brought a book with him-- he thinks I have time to read. Oddly enough, he's right, as I've been able to read nearly 3 chapters of Service, by Marcus Luttrell. Luttrell is a Navy SEAL who lost his team and wrote about it in his first book, Lone Survivor. This second book is much more palatable for me- one, because my fiance is no longer deployed, and two, because I'm not walking into the book knowing that everyone dies. E keeps bringing around these military books for me to read, to help me understand what he went through. It's eye-opening and sometimes scary, but we really do need to face what our military personnel go through to defend our freedoms.

Linking up with Tami for WIPW and Ginny for Yarn-Along.

Productivity

I've been working on a wide variety of projects lately. With 2 "cold days" off from school, I managed to get more done, but also start more things that need to be finished. A few sewing projects here, a bit of crocheting there. But it feels good to practice a bit of both. 

g-diaper inserts

afghan squares for a swap

little pants for my boy

my coffee table at 6 am.

my little guy helping with the fabric

a stack of nearly finished burp cloths

The sewing is all very new to me, but practice makes perfect, right?

Mail Day

Packages in the mail are the best. 

More Monochrome

Working on a monochromatic afghan means I have to have something colorful and small on the side to relieve the "boredom". 

still having color problems

I'm making half the squares using the Sunny Spread pattern, but still am searching for a pattern for the other ten squares. Luckily, I have tons of time to finish. The debate is between going with all circular designed squares, or to have the others be more square. My top contenders are Spiky Circle, KISS-fist, or Cat's Claw. 

This week, I read a great post about taking better photos. As you can see from the above photo, I'm still working on some of the ideas--- I tried the "uniform" background (kind of), but obviously still need to work on it a bit. My biggest problem is my broken digital camera. I only had a point and shoot, but I dropped it on the beach over the summer while on vacation. And my iPhone takes fine pics during the day.... So a new camera investment may be in my future... We'll see. 

In other news, I'm likely to be staying in my current job, unless a middle school position opens at my home parish's school. My principal may be getting me into some Advanced Placement training this summer, and as that's something I've been interested in since high school, I'll be staying where I am for now. But my husband and I are looking at houses closer to my job, and we would love continued prayers in that area. 

Christ's Blessings,

Mary

Snowy Wednesday

Running late sometimes has its benefits. If I had been on schedule today, I wouldv'e been halfway to work by the time I received the call that school was closed to snowy weather. Now I get to spend a lovely quiet day home with my munchkin, a bit of school work, and my yarn.

He wants to eat the phone

I'm working on afghan blocks right now, partly as a way to use up some giant skeins I bought, but also for gifts. The greys are for a monochrome afghan for one of my husband's military friends who is getting married this summer. I figure if I start now, there's more of a chance that I'll have it finished in time. The beige and gold is the start of another afghan, this time for a swap. I will be participating in my first swap with the Vanna's Choice Fan Club group on Ravelry. I'm pretty excited :)

I have a few more projects on the hooks right now, but this is my project for today. Well, this plus some school work prep. So thankful for this day off to work on a few things :)

 

Linking with Ginny. 

Monochrome

WIP

A slouch hat and a pair of convertible mittens, in shades of grey, are in my project bag for the week. Hoping to finish them soon so I can move on to something more colorful in these dull winter months. Though the greys do match my mood as well as the snowy, frosty trees.

In the midst of exam week, so reading is limited to lesson prepping and essay reading. 

Linking with Ginny. 

No School

Day one: Below zero temperatures. Definitely not what I want to deal with. Luckily, school officials thought that below zero temperatures that hovered near -20 F warranted closing school for the day. So I get a day with my snuggle bunny, a gas stove, and warm tea. Well, and exam prep, but we'll pretend that's not there for a while...

Who can work with this cutie around?

Day two: snow snow everywhere. Last night I closely watched the school closings, and I dreaded the morning as I saw many school districts along my 40 minute drive to work announcing that they would be closed. Luckily, my district also decided to close for this snowy and cold day. 

So another day to get things done. But day two gets to be more interesting than day one. 

As part of my 6000 g weight stashdown, I present dryer balls

Wool dryer balls are a great way to use up stash that just appeared in your closet. No, the yarn didn't just appear, but I never had a plan for it-- a co-worker was destashing, and I find it hard to resist wool. I'm contemplating offering these for sale in pairs, but am struggling with the best way to market them. 

Mitten Cuff

I'm working on mittens for a friend who requested them in time for cold weather. Oops. The cold is already here, and the mitts aren't done. Patterns were eluding me, so I'm adapting several to fit my needs and vision.

That's all for me on this pair of snowy cold days-- off to do less glamorous (but totally necessary) chores like laundry and dishes. :)

God Bless!

Something like Progress

This has been a busy week for me. My students get their semester exams next week, so this week has been a push to wrap up material and review. As I didn't get as much done over break as I had hoped, I've been quite swamped with work. The students are also holding their breath for a snow day, which makes them out of sorts. And JT's been fighting off something yucky, so my sleep schedule is completely off.

But progress still happens:

This blanket is snuggle size, though still not finished. Maybe this weekend....

January 1, 2015

The first day of a new year doesn't always feel different. Last year, we already knew we were expecting a new little one in our lives. This year, I know I am hoping for something a little more low key. To be honest though, I don't have many expectations for this year. But I can have a few hopes and dreams...

• homeownership
• new job for my husband- or at least a promotion
• expansion of my home business
• a renewed teaching contract-- I'd love to work another year at my current job
• debt reduction-- college loans are still looming, and we'd like to get them down significantly this year, especially since we are still house shopping
• expansion of garden-- we grew a few of our own veggies this year, but because I was heavily pregnant/dealing with a newborn during harvest time, we were not as successful with our crops as we could've been. Hopefully we will be able to put more up this year.
• good health all around-- back problems and migraines have plagued me throughout 2014, and we'd like to find a solution for them soon

While I've  known other people to choose words or themes for the coming year, I've never done it myself, but this year one found me. I have a habit of writing quotes on notecards when reading, especially if something good strikes me. I found this one while cleaning:

Notwithstanding my weakness, I am no longer afraid. 

I have placed my confidence in God, who can do all things 

and from whom I hope all things, for I rely not on myself. 

~St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

So I'm adopting that as my theme for the year, and plan to continue to pray and reflect on how best to place confidence in God.

Blessings in the new year!

Love,

Mary

Busy Elf

I said the painting would return. I got inspired Sunday night, and put my inspiration into action during JT's afternoon nap yesterday. Last year, I received as part of a gift exchange a multi-media Christmas canvas- "O Tannebaum" would probably be the theme- and I was really struck by its beauty and simplicity. As mentioned before, Michael's had canvas on sale- plus I had a few that I had snagged from my little sister- so all my supplies were on hand. These are planned as gifts, though still incomplete at the moment. All of them will have some form of crocheted embellishment added plus maybe some paper or fabric. 

in need of some pink hearts

I may add more yarn to this one

in need of a border to create balance

Painting hasn't been my only adventure since Christmas break started. I've been struggling to finish some blankets, and the first one is nearly done. There are a few ends left to sew, and the possibility of a bigger border, but the largest part is complete. The pattern is Sunny Spread, and is quite enjoyable. Full notes on my Ravelry page. I really hope it will be received with as much love as it was made with.

a sunny snuggly lap blanket

The next few days are going to be extremely busy, with lots of traveling. E is working Christmas Eve, and the day after Christmas, but we will be able to attend Mass as a family on Christmas Day before adventuring to my parents' for celebrating with my family. JT and I will be celebrating with my aunts on Friday, and Saturday all three of us will celebrate with JT's godparents. Sunday will be a busy day with all of my husband's family in town. I love having a season of celebrating, though it sometimes can be a struggle to remember to slow down, too. I'll get reminders of that, I'm sure. 

JT's favorite snack: his hands

If I don't get back before Christmas, I want to wish everyone a safe and blessed holiday. Thank you for you love and support and encouragement this year- it has meant so much to me!!

Love, 

Mary

Cutting it Close

Christmas gifts for this year are still in progress. I was swamped with a few custom orders right at the end of November, and was struggling to find time to crochet for me.

I'm getting close to catching up now. 

The painting's a new thing. I thought I would try my hand at another artistic outlet, and while it's not Picasso or anything, I'm mostly content. Bob Ross was great inspiration. 

Michael's had a great sale on canvas yesterday, so a few more things will pop up here over the next few weeks, I'm sure. 

Promo and Giveaway

I've just reached 200 likes on my Facebook page- facebook.com/mary.crochets - and to celebrate, I'm giving away one ready made item of your choice! 'Like' my page and comment on the giveaway post with what you would like to win. For an extra entry, 'share' my giveaway post.  

My ready made items are in a separate album on my Facebook page, if you are looking.  

I'm offering it to anyone, and I only have about 20 entries so far, so your chances are still high!

I'm also offer $2 off any item that is ready to ship for the next two weeks! 

Check it out, you may be a winner!