Knitty Gritty Thoughts:

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Well hello there - that was kind of a long break wasn't it? Life has been busy, a lot of things came up in my personal life that I had to take care of. Anyhow I'm still decluttering but I felt like talking about knitting today so you get a brief synopsis of what I've been working on. Don't get your hopes up, it's rather brief, I'm still not in a chatty mood but I did want to share my little rays of knitting sunshine! =)

First up - I finished my may day socks, hurray! It feels so good to be done early (they were due May 1st)! Now I can find fun little treats to put in the bag and weave in those ends. They've already been blocked but sadly you can't see the pattern well because I can't use my sock blockers. My pals foot is waaay smaller than mine. But you get the idea.

The dream in color smooshy may have redeemed itself to me, the yardage on that skein is insane and it's very soft to knit with too!

Embossed Leaves Socks
All the rav details here

Here's my little WIP roundup and 1 FO too - all of these projects are so enjoyable to me, I'm having a hard time choosing which one to focus on first! =) Clicky for big.

1 - Butterfly jacket from the current wool gathering knit with 2 skeins of berrocco ultra alpaca. I love this knit, the garter stitch and simple shaping have taken on a meditative quality while knitting and I love the cute retro shape! Plus I always love when I manage to find something that few people are knitting, it adds to the fun! =) Rav dets here.

2 -Tiramisu baby blanket - super easy crochet pattern, if I only could manage not to lose my hook every 5 seconds! I'm off to buy another so I can finish it off. Rav dets here.

3 - Glee has been resurrected! The last time I talked about her I threw her in a corner due to concerns about fit, dye lot issues (well it really should be "year lot" issues. The two skeins were from different years of shearings and are 100% natural colored prime alpaca. One year is darker than the other. If I had planned ahead I really should have alternated skeins but on second glance it's not as bad as I thought it was. I'm planning on putting back in the needles I yanked out and give it one more try. Rav dets here.

4 - Cabled Rangoli Hat - very cute and helps with hat hair syndrome, who doesn't like that? I was SO inspired by Miss Nasseknits version - check out her photo here! This may be a hat I will actually wear! Ravelry dets here.

Anyhow have a great weekend all! =)

Thanks everyone so much for all the lovely, mindful comments! I'm afraid life has gotten away from me again from responding to them as I would have liked, I'm a little (lot) busy at work, and with another work trip coming up, MIL visiting for 3 weeks and a variety of other stuff I don't want to discuss here things are not slowing down anytime soon! =) Every one of your items is a inspiration to me, and I'm filled with all sorts of lovely, mindful ideas that I can't wait to try out!

In the meantime I've been "decluttering" my craft room *sigh*. It's exhausting. What I did was pull everything out, everything from the closet went on the floor. All my yarn and fiber went on the guest bed. I cleaned everything and scrubbed all the cabinets, shelves and desks and then only allowed items back in the room that I really enjoy or had a plan for using. Yarn, fabric and fiber went back in pretty fast. I did have about 3 boxes of yarn that I didn't have plans for and wasn't speaking to me so I'm going to pass them on to new owners.(Angelika, check your mailbox!) =) ;)

When I was done I was still left with that giant pile in the middle of the room. Everything in the closet was mostly "misc" crafts. You know, the other crafts that you've tried and then abandoned? Beads, calligraphy, 15 pillow forms, 3 bags of polyfill, extra, old fabric in patterns I would never wear. Rubber stamps, embossing powder, glitter glue, markers and paper (I can't draw to save my life), 3 boxes of ink pens, tracing paper, coloring books, half-done projects stuffed in a drawer, etc, etc, etc.

Plus the magazines, oh the magazines! I like to tear out pages to save ideas for later and then I stuff them in a drawer if I don't get around to cutting them out and gluing them in my inspiration book. Needless to say they pile up quickly.

Cleaning out my craft room is hard. I have a hard time letting it go. Every little bit of it is a part of my craft history which was changed and evolved to bring me to the type of crafter I am today. I know now I love fiber and yarn, I adore knitting and can't picture my life without it. I love spinning. I love dyeing fiber and carding fiber and making battlets. I love sewing. It's important to me to be able to sew with a machine and by hand. I enjoy embroidery, even though I'm not very good at it yet.

But when I started, I didn't know any of those things. My mom got me started early, ever since I can remember we crafted together but we didn't do any of the things I do now. We painted, traced, beaded, rubber stamped (a lot!), glued, and paper mache'd our way to fun stuff. I baby sat other children as soon as I was old enough and I always brought a backpack full of crafty fun from my craft room to play with them and they loved it! I was always a favorite babysitter.

I've been moving and carrying this stuff around for so long and I realized it's time to just let it go.

Declutter.

It's time to give it to a new generation of crafters so they can find something they enjoy doing. What I did was pile up boxes and boxes of stuff and let my nieces pick through.

Those bags and bags of stamps? On to a happy new home! The bead loom, beading kits, markers, pens and misc stuff that helped me find my inner crafter? Gone! I hope it will help them find their own creative muses and find the right crafts for them. And hey - if it's knitting I'll be there in a heartbeat to teach them! ;)

My craft room is almost finished and it feels so light and airy in there now, stepping in there makes me happy. I'm so happy I cleaned it out.

Aside from decluttering I've been busy. I spun up some beautiful (if I do say so myself!) yarn from my Deep End of the Ocean battlets. This is a dk/sportweight, 260 yards, 3.7 oz and very, very soft and oh so pretty! I love this colorway! If you are interested in this colorway I have just enough on my worktable to make another set and I'm happy to custom card it for you.

I also am part of the May Day sock swap. I haven't talked much about my sock here, I ran into some issues when I ordered yarn (3 colors of dream in color smooshy). The colors that arrived were NOT what I was expecting so I had to let it marinate for awhile until I could decide what it wanted to be. Happily I'm making progress. This is the embossed leaves socks. I love knitting this - it's beautiful, fun and best of all knits up quickly! These are going to be some cushy socks!