Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Happiness is Strawberry Jam

and food from the grill and the garden, handmade pie and buns for the burgers, bright colors and good music and melted cats asleep on the couch or in a puddle of sunlight Yesterday was a really good day, and today's turning out pretty nice as well, with iced coffee and making people laugh and tending my plants, just waiting for the strawberries to peak (they look SO good). I think this weekend I'll go to the farmer's market--I want some fresh eggs and more berries and breads.

Now if I can just beat this program into shape and make some science happen, then I can go home and knit all evening with a light heart.

Friday, May 22, 2015

Still feeling lost

Transitions are hard, and the end of this semester was a tough one. I'm not taking classes, so at least I didn't have exams to worry about. But I was teaching three night-labs a week and pretty much went full-on nocturnal by the time April rolled around, sleeping from 4am to 10am. This led to a lot of grading and teaching getting done but not so much on the research front, and my attempts to eat reasonable food went right out the window (sleep deprivation does not make it easy to plan ahead and take care of yourself).

After the labs were over, I had grading for a week straight. Then I immediately went to visit some friends. Then it was graduation. then I went to see my girlfriend. Now I am at the tail end of a week of quick-hang-out-with-friends-who-graduated-before-they-leave-forever, and I love them all to bits but I am burned out pretty bad. I've spent two or three days in the house trying to get my brain to turn on again and the high-level anxiety of "OMG ALL THE THINGS MUST GET DONE NOW" to turn off. Today was a decent work day, and I pushed past the anxiety enough to end it with a productive meeting with my boss (although as I entered his office I had to fight the urge to just stand with my back to the door and burst into tears).

What all needs doing? ugh. I can't even articulate it here, there's a steaming pile of to-do lists and single items all up in my brain, and I thought I paid off all the bills but a couple more cropped up and one of them I missed so I'm getting urgent notices about it.

And I fell down at the post office two weeks ago and a bone in my wrist still hurts, so that's probably... pretty bad.

Let's think about knitting, shall we? something shiny and distracting as a reward for a hard day's work. Stash Dash 2015 has begun, one of my most favorite events of the year because it requires planning and checking off boxes, my favorite (you know how much I enjoy making lists). Today is the first day of the event, in fact. This year you can choose which goal you are working towards (3k, 5k, or 10km of weaving, spinning, knitting, or crocheting). I'm going for 5k. I hit 5k last year but only because of a laceweight-held-double shawl and held-double doesn't count this year, so I'm going to try again.

I have good odds: I've a slew of things in progress. if I finish them all, I'll be at 4460 meters, and I've got some spinning that isn't yet counted that should be able to put me over the top. In fact that's what I've finished so far today.

My 2015 Stash Dash list:
1) **done** spin dried flowers yarn from Spinnerettas
2) **needs plying** spin purple-and-green chilean wool
3) knit myself my first sweater
4) finish the Rothko blanket
5) finish a pair of socks for my twin
6) finish a hat for L
7) finish mittens for L
8) finish sky-blue cowl for me
9) finish my Clapotis out of Handmaiden Casbah Sock in the Masala colorway
10) **done** finish a hat for me out of my chilean yarn
11) knit a pair of fingerless mitts out of the rest of the chilean yarn
12) finish some gift knitting for L2

if I have time, I'll also add in:
13) knit 3 pairs of best-yarn-ever mittens (twin, sister, me)
14) start xmas present for twin
15) start next pair of socks for twin
16) work on spindle spinning for spin-the-bin

of course, Stash Dash is only 12 weeks or so, so 12-16 FOs is a lot to ask. Yes, many of these are in progress, and some of them (the hats) are almost done. But the sweater is going to take a lot of time, and I'm not sure if I'll have the patience to finish it. Still, we will see.

Do you have summer goals?