Candice DeWitt

 

Earlier this month I took a trip of “firsts” – first proper vacation in my adult life, first airplane trip, first visit to the beach, first time trying real lobster, first time trying an oyster (and there’s video of it to prove it on Facebook, but spoiler: they’re gross), first ocean sunset, first 2-piece bathing suit in public without giving a damn… It was a blissful 5 days of food, relaxation, knitting, reading, shopping, and all of it kid and husband-free! I finished a sock and a book on that trip, which might be the first time I’ve finished anything in that short of a period in who knows how long. (That 2nd sock was finished the weekend after I got back – somehow my toddler managed to leave me alone long enough for me to knit it up to have a finished pair instead of a lingering single sock)

Sadly, those 5 days had to come to an end, and then it was back to the daily grind. But I made sure, like any good knitter, to hit up the local yarn shop for souvenir yarn before we left. We were in Sarasota, so we visited A Good Yarn. Now, I love my Ohio yarn shops. But this place? This place puts them all to shame. There was a room with a circle of chairs where people were spinning yarn on their wheels (be still, my heart!), plus people sitting around knitting and chatting, PLUS more people taking lessons. The yarn shop owner asked what we were looking for and upon hearing we were looking for “vacation yarn” directed us to a wall of yarns dyed and named for some photos of fish and sea life. Score!

There were too many pretties to choose from, and despite my desire to be more minimalist I fell hard for the two I came home with – Squirrelfish and Octopus Garden. Sock yarn isn’t supposed to count as stash, right? (Except it totally does when you already have plenty of socks… but maybe if I knit it up for gift socks it won’t be so bad?) This is where the “poor judge of my time” thing kicks in… because despite knowing my schedule sucks and knitting/crafting in general has been non-existent I still bought two skeins because I, crazy knitter lady, think I’m going to get to them this winter. Nevermind that I already have sock yarn lingering in my stash… or a laundry list of other knits I need to get to, first. Sigh. Maybe one of these days I’ll curb that yarn impulse shopping…

Next up on the knitting front… hats. One for the toddler for his Halloween costume, and two for a dear friend’s little ones once the yarn arrives. Hoping I can get them done before my annual knitting weekend so I can use that kid-free weekend to knock out the last knit Christmas stocking, which happens to be mine.

 

 

All it’s missing is a few buttons at the neck line on the side, but otherwise this little sweet sweater, aptly named Sweet William, is completed. It took me far longer to knit than it should have, but I’ve basically lost interest in knitting temporarily so it took forcing myself to knit on it to get it completed.

Life is busy, and exhausting, and mostly at the end of the day I just want to sleep than knit. So I’ve turned my focus toward decluttering more, because much like AA a recovering hoarder is always workign to stay on the wagon. The busier life gets, the easier it gets to let things go. Old craft projects that I never will finish, or fabric for projects that I’ve lost interest in, etc. We’re contemplating a major housing downsize – probably not anytime soon, but that’s the ultimate goal. Less room so we have less space for less junk that just sits and collects dust. And, ultimately, less money on utilities and maintenance so we can do things we would rather do, like travel. Experiences, not things as the minimalist mantra goes. So lots of this… stuff just needs to go.

This sweater is taking far longer than it should. All that stockinette should have gone like a breeze, and all in all it probably would have if I didn’t have to fight to keep a toddler out of my lap (or keep him from trying to “help”). For what it’s worth, my kid has his own knitting – a dishcloth project in progress that didn’t have much yarn left to tangle up – but what mama works on looks more fun, I guess? I not-so-secretly love that he wants to knit, though, and hope this keeps up as he gets older but I’m trying to keep my dreams in check because the reality is that he’ll probably do a 180 and not care about learning to knit once he discovers video games or something.

A photo posted by @candiceknits on May 29, 2016 at 11:58am PDT

Stitch by stitch I’ve muddled my way through the beginning of the pattern and am on the chart now for the sweet little rabbit yoke. And by “muddled” I mean that I read the directions, re-read the directions, looked up on Ravelry to see if there were any helpful notations on other projects, scoured for pictures to figure out WTF the button band at the neck was supposed to look like, read the directions for a third time, and then proceeded with caution because not only have I been brain-dead after work this week, I’m also a generally un-trusting person and didn’t trust that this pattern was starting out right.

I was wrong, by the way. But what else is new?

The bunny pattern is slow going, but I suspect that’s mostly because I’ve been ignoring “hard” knitting for these last 6 weeks and have focused on the most boring knitting projects I could get my hands on. And nap time knitting is always far too short time-wise so by the time I find my rhythm it’s time to put the needles down. But ever so slowly I’m chugging along on this, and each row of the chart gets me more excited to see this finished and on Danger Boy come fall.

http://candicedewitt.com/213-2/

… because it isn’t like I don’t already have 5 other projects I should probably be working on/finishing.

This is what happens, though, when you get your little minimalist dream in the form of a work uniform which then kills your desire to knit for yourself because you’ll only get to wear any sweater you make (at most) 2.7 days out of the week during winter and you already have a full sock drawer.

I think I discovered the key to minimizing your life… and that key is a toddler.

For years and years I had glorious free time. And in that free time, I was free to do whatever I damn well pleased. Which is why half our back yard is taken up with garden, I have a pantry full of canning equipment, a spinning wheel, more yarn than I really need, fabric stash to nearly match, etc. Free time meant I needed to fill it with something… and fill it I did.

Now that I have a toddler, I have less time for hobbies. Or cleaning. Or thinking, really. What I’d rather do at the end of  day, more than anything else, is to sit on the couch with a glass of wine and have everyone shut the hell up and leave me alone to watch a show on TV and decompress. #sadbuttrue

Having a toddler means every tiny piece of paper, Tupperware, pens, DVDs, books, etc all get dragged out – sometimes at what feels like the exact same time leaving one epic mess to clean up. Toddlers mean forcing you to clean up your clutter, because after about the 5th time of putting things away you finally realize that there’s zero point to having the items in the first place when all you do is clean it up/put it back on the shelf/etc. Having a toddler means they discover things you totally forgot about but swore you’d get around to… five years ago. Having a toddler forces you to acknowledge that you only have a certain amount of hours to your day, and only a fraction of those can be dedicated to any sort of hobby… and it forces you to start picking and choosing what kind of hobby you want to use that precious time on.

This clutter-reducing Candice is a huge shift way from the one pre-kids. It’s taken a lot of introspection on why I held onto things. And lots of blog reading on minimalism, decluttering, and pretty much anything else that repeatedly tells me that things are just things and not the memories they hold. And, honestly, I’m still dealing with that. I’ll probably always deal with it because it’s so ingrained in who I am.

But, mostly? Mostly I’m just lazy. And tired of cleaning up the same things over and over again when they otherwise sit unused, all because this tiny little terrorist insists on playing with these items instead of his toys. You know, which we bought for him to play with so he would be occupied enough to stay out of the rest of the house. Ha! Joke is on us, I guess!

 

 

Green, on the left, dyed with a ratio of 4 drops yellow to 1 green, with some of the darker bits 4 yellow to 1 blue. The teal in the middle was 4 blue to 1 green. The rainbow on the end, or “unicorn fart” as my friend Stephanie named it, was dyed with kool-aid on just one small chunk.

For Christmas I made my knitting friends little knitting bags. I made enough to basically have the construction concept memorized, so when I decided to make a smaller version for a Ravelry swap I’m in I basically winged it. 4″x6″ pieces of fabric and fusible fleece, a zipper, notching 1″ squares out of the corners… piece of cake, right? I mean, I’ve made at least 5 of these already so sizing the pattern down is no big deal.

Except it WAS a big deal.

Let me tell you: making this bag was a little like childbirth. In the beginning it was fun and exciting. “Little itsy bitsy bag for postage is going to be SO CUTE!” I told myself. The pieces went together so smoothly, even! Zippers = fun! And then… then it came time to turn it all right side out. I left my hole too small, and I knew it but thought I could make it work anyway. So I pushed and pulled and tugged and pushed some more. I knew it was too small a hole, but denial kicked in and I absolutely thought I could push it through. And then I had to face reality: an episiotomy of sorts was in order. I needed to cut into the bag to fix it. Ugh. The end result is stitches that make the overall product marred permanently, but you don’t actually care because you’re just happy it’s finally over and you have your baby to cuddle bag.

Maybe next time I should just leave off the fusible fleece so it’s a bit less bulky. If there ever is a next time for a bag this tiny.

Tomorrow I’ll post up my yarn dye results – it’s all still drying and making the home office a bit… vinegary.

 

My life is going to get a little busier these next few weeks as I go back to full time employment. Which means the sudden urge to craft has hit me since I’ll be losing my Mondays at home with Declan and my nap time craft time.

I’m kicking my weekend off with some yarn dyeing. 4 skeins of this yarn have lingered in my stash. I have a plan for a gift but not enough time to knit it. But since these friends are knitters,  too, hand dyed yarn seems more like a perfect alternative.

Stay tuned for how this process turns out. Hopefully I can capture some good colors that my friends will love.