Transitions

I have not fallen off the face of the earth, despite what the lack of blogging may lead you to assume.  It's just the last several weeks have been that of upheaval and transition.

I think I've mentioned in the past that last January things transpired such that my mother in law moved in with us.  It was a fairly quick decision to have her come here, but we tried to make it work, feeling it a better option for her than a personal care home.  Unfortunately my MIL passed away on January 7th after a incredibly short two day illness, just shy of one year since moving in. It was completely unexpected in the manner that earlier that day she had been fine and talk was of her coming home from the hospital within a few days.  Needless to say it was a shock to get a call from the hospital three hours later asking my husband to come back as quickly as he could as she was in severe respiratory distress.

I also, of course, started back to work full time just three days prior to her passing away.  As a result of everything going on, I'm exhausted, have not even remotely figured out how to balance working full time and obligations at home and my creative side has been starved.

I know it'll all settle down, we will all adjust to the new routines, 5:00am won't seem quite so ungodly and I'll get the hang of things at work and feel like I'm making headway instead of floundering continuously as I navigate through inventory programs and figure out the differences between machine parts and gain some confidence. At least I know my way around the place now and am not too much at risk of getting lost anymore. It does help that I work with my husband and he often drops everything to come to my rescue with answers. (and directions along with a thorough tour those first few days)  Maybe some day I'll be able to stay awake past 8:30pm again.  Maybe some day I'll also be able do a bit of sewing or more than a row or two of knitting.  I just feel completely overwhelmed at the moment.

But I'm sure no one comes here to read about my whining and feeling sorry for myself. So moving along. I have done a very teeny bit of knitting since Christmas and I have big plans to get reacquainted with my sewing machine this weekend... I hope.

I made a pair of mitts.  They were more a necessity than anything.  All my mitts somehow ended up with holes in the thumbs at the same time (how does that even happen???).  Rather than do the quick thing and just re-knit thumbs, I decided a brand new pair would be much more fun.  And since I was in it for the fun, I thought colour work would be brilliant.

I chose Wolastoq, a pattern that caught my eye earlier in the fall when I stumbled across it on Ravelry.  I had lots of colours of Patons Classic Worsted in my stash so I didn't need to go yarn shopping.  Better yet was it gave me a reason to finally use a tiny ball of cashmere dk weight yarn I'd been hoarding in my stash for years since it was gifted to me.  My mitts have a gloriously soft pop of colour in the inner cuff thanks to that cashmere!

My only gripe about my mitts are that they are really thick (sounds like a good problem to have right?) so they do not easily fit under my super tight cuffs of my parka and either fold down or don't go on all the way making them like huge monster mitts on my hands.  I need to find a solution so that they are a bit more comfortable to wear.   Just to be clear it is totally a parka problem and not a pattern problem.  I've run across this particular nuisance with every single pair of mitts I knit that are thicker than fingering weight and lets just face it.  I live on the prairies.  Fingering weight mitts are never going to cut it in -45C.

In other knitting news, I've started knitting a new cardigan for myself as part of Andi Satterlund's Untangling Knots annual Selfish Sweater KAL.  I'm knitting an apple green Henriette in hopes I'll have it finished for springtime.  (Well, hopefully I finish it for the KAL deadline of mid-February, but since I'm barely knitting these days I'm not holding out much hope in all reality).