Coming Up for Air

I can’t tell you how nice it feels to be revisiting this space after more than two months of silence. I knew the beginning of the year would be tough with work after taking on a new management position. I had to wrap up a huge project for my old role by February 20, and then immediately turn around and build an entire new process/application for my new role by March 1. For a while there I was working 15-hour days; in the thick of it, 70 or 80-hour weeks were the norm and I even worked a 90+ hour week to get everything done. I am so glad to have those deadlines behind me so things can slowly settle back into a more manageable pace. While all of that was going on, Kyle went on a trip to Minnesota in early February and while he was gone, I tested positive with COVID for the first time (not surprising that my immune-system was shot after exhausting myself with work) and I was down for the count for about a week after he returned. We were isolating on separate floors of the house so he wouldn’t be exposed, and I recovered just in time to make my own trip to Minnesota at the beginning of March for an absolutely exhausting three days of offsite strategic planning meetings.

All that to say – I’ve missed it here. I have missed my free time, and my weekends, and the energy and mental capacity to be creative after shutting my computer down. God bless Kyle for being an absolute saint and incredibly patient for the past several months while I was teetering on the verge of complete mental breakdown, because I know it wasn’t easy. But things are getting better, and I’m starting to craft again.

Because I clearly didn’t already have enough going on before my trip to MN, I hatched a fantastic idea to sew my own shirts to wear for my in-person meetings. Three days, three shirts. Surely I would be able to find the time and energy amidst all of the chaos to pull that off. And so I dutifully picked out fabric from my stash, secured the raw edges, and threw it in the wash so it would be ready for pressing before I began cutting out pattern pieces.

I purchased each of these fabrics specifically to make button-up shirts for the office during the early days of the pandemic, before we realized that it would be years before returning to the office would happen, and before Kyle and I decided to move to North Carolina where I would work remotely – no need for button-up shirts when you’re working from home! A work trip to Minneapolis felt like the perfect time to use this fabric as I finally had a reason to set my hoodies aside. I returned to my tried-and-true pattern that I have used for almost all of my shirts so far and made a few adjustments to the pattern pieces to account for my post-pandemic figure. Then I grabbed the first fabric and it was off to the races.

Except the race was delayed by everything above – no free time, no mental energy, COVID… It wasn’t until about two days before my trip that I finally admitted I was in trouble. I had only just finished cutting out the pieces for the first shirt, but even then I thought I might be able to quickly whip up one or two. I didn’t have to be at the airport until 6pm on a Sunday, so that morning I dutifully woke up and immediately began sewing away, still telling myself I could finish the first shirt and even cut out pieces for a second. By noon I was shocked that the first shirt still wasn’t done, and by 2pm I realized I had to call it quits because I still had to pack and get ready to leave. It was really disappointing, because I was so close!

All that was left to do was attach cuffs, hem the bottom of the shirt, and make the buttonholes. Having given up on the idea, I had to quickly scramble to find shirts in my closet that still fit so I had something to wear on my trip.

I’ll still finish this shirt, and perhaps still make the other two, as I am now expected to be on video for most of my meetings throughout the day, but I was really disappointed that I couldn’t get this done in time. Alas, we can’t always win. I didn’t want to rush myself and make sloppy mistakes that I would be unhappy with later, so I’m glad I can now take the time I need to finish this shirt properly.

While the shirt remains unfinished, I did finish my first knitting project of 2024 at the end of January. These were meant as a February birthday gift for a friend, but I missed his birthday celebration due to COVID and I haven’t seen him since, which is just as well because I didn’t manage to take pictures until today. Now they will be ready to hand over to him when I see him next.

I think I tried maybe four different stitch patterns before I settled on this one. The others were either too busy, too boring, or were too obscured by the variegated yarn, but I think this simple garter rib is just interesting enough. These are knit using Polka Dot Sheep Tenderfoot 80/20 in the “Mallard” colorway. I love the way they turned out!

Another recent finished item, with slightly less satisfying results, is a skein of yarn I plied and washed in early February.

This is 100g of Tunis wool that I processed from a raw fleece. I finished the singles, then split it onto three separate bobbins and spun it into a 3-ply yarn.

I just realized I never even measured the yardage on the finished yarn after washing it, but it looks to be about a sport-weight and if I had to guess I would say maybe 250-300 yards.

Unfortunately I overplied the yarn slightly, which has reduced the loft somewhat and gives it a tiny bit too much structure (I’m resisting calling it “wiry,” but that’s what comes to mind.) I’m sure it will knit up to be a hard-wearing yarn, but if I were to do it again I would not add as much twist. You can see in the photo that the yarn looks almost uncomfortably energized, like it’s getting ready to kink up on itself the minute it gets a chance. I can tell that Tunis will wear well, and to me it feels pleasantly crunchy without being overly coarse – I’m looking forward to seeing how it knits up.

But before I knit with this fresh skein of handspun, I dove into my deep stash and pulled out some handspun that I finished spinning way back in 2013. I hadn’t knit anything since January when I finished the pair of socks, and it was time to get something new on the needles.

I spun about 36oz. of this fiber – hopefully more than enough for a sweater – and decided it was finally time to actually bring that sweater to life. You can see there’s a lot of color happening in here and I didn’t want that to fight with any complicated stitch patterns, so I decided to go with a simple, stockinette top-down raglan sweater.

I started about two weeks ago and am making good progress so far. It’s nice and mindless, and I can just knit around and around without paying too much attention. I’ve tried it on and it fits nicely, but the collar is a bit too tight for my liking so I may end up cutting that off at the end and knitting a new one with a larger needle size. I’m going to wait to see if it relaxes enough once I block the finished sweater before I do that, though.

I will share more about the pattern and the yarn as the project continues, but for now all I will say is – it’s nice to be creating again, and I am glad to be back. Happy Spring!