New Normal and What I Did the Past Two Weeks

Things that I have been doing/done in the last two weeks:

I took Lisa Congdon's class at Creativebug focusing on line drawing. I'm a drawing fool. I highly recommend taking her four-week class. If you subscribe to Creativebug (I think it is just under ten bucks a month), you can take as many classes as you want. Highly recommend.

The thing that I really enjoyed about this class is that Lisa makes it all so simple. You truly don't have to be an artist to come up with something fun. It's not life drawing or anything. It's just straightforward principles of doodling. I'm no artist but I kinda like what I did with that picture of Rocko.

I also did some sewing. I used to sew almost all of my clothes. I remember when I was in high school, by then, I was sewing up a storm, and in home economics class I told the teacher that I wanted to sew a bathing suit as my first project. She laughed at me. But about three days later when I held up that bad boy she let me do whatever I wanted. I remember my then boyfriend's mom giving me the evil eye while I wore it in their backyard pool. Now that I'm nearly her age, I believe I'd give a 16-yr old girl the same side eye if she wore a bathing suit like that in my backyard. Olivia Newton-John in her "Let's Get Physical" video, anyone? Yeah, it was cut like that, except the top had a bit less . . . fabric.

Alas, my taste has changed. So I made a simple shift-type blouse out of some wonderful cotton lawn. It has the same hand as Liberty London for those of you who know. There are three little black buttons down the center but I'm going to remove them. They don't make sense to me. If you want the pattern, it's a free one and totally wonderful and has a nice size range. It is by Collette and called Sorbetto. And, if you're like me and love to make home-made bias tape, you'll love it even more. Although the pattern calls for a regular hem at the bottom, I had enough leftover that I used it there as well as the armholes and neckline.

I sprained my back.

I didn't know that one could sprain their back.

The old(er) people I volunteer with at the museum tell me that yes, you can sprain your back. "You can sprain all sorts of body parts!," was all I heard when I told them.

I have almost finished a second Shady Cove Cape Cowl. I love this color. According to the folks at Pantone, this is the color of the season. Me? I just happen to like it anyway.

The next thing on my list is to release a neat and easy cable cap that is totally unisex and top-down. I'm going to call it Cable Down Easy. I will post pictures soon.

Life has been an adjustment.

The pictures are blurry.

My resident photographer is away.

We still miss our Chuck.

BTW: More sorta-sadness. A dear friend of mine has been ill. She is a life-long knitter. And we all know, that as fellow knitters, we have stashes. A month or two ago, she mentioned that she had a stash to behold, but knew that there was no way that she'd ever be able to knit from her stash--except for maybe a few things. I went to her house for lunch to check it all out.

Friends: You have no idea.

I helped her make decisions on what she could concievably knit and what she might want to sell. I told her that I would take her yarn and photograph it and do some de-stashing for her here on Knit and Tonic. Every lot of yarn has been kept in a plastic tub. Every lot of yarn is enough to make a large sweater or vest. It is amazing. It is all nice (although I will say that Fancy Nancy likes her mohair, ribbon and fiddly). There's a LOT of it. Stay tuned. I will collect any money from the sales and give it back to her to help pay medical expenses. I have been given clearance to price yarn so that it will sell.