Although I've been spending a lot of time relaxing while I'm here, I've also been giving my sweater-in-progress lots of attention. I'm doing my best to get as much done as possible now, when I have time and energy to devote my full attention to it, because things are bound to get crazy again once I'm back home and back at work. We took a little side trip to the opposite coast on New Year's Day (coming back yesterday), so I had lots of time in the car to work on it, especially as Rainbow was very considerate and slept for most of the trip both ways. I'm now done with the body but for a couple of finishing rows and am working on front bands/collar. Because of the way the sweater is constructed, I have to do this section first before I can finish the bottom (I thought it was a rather clever way of doing it, and it has the added bonus of minimizing the number of ends I have to weave in).
It's really exciting to me to knit up something that seemed to work on paper and have it also work in practice. I'm under no illusion that I'll finish this before we leave here on Saturday, but I will have gotten most of it done; at most, I'll just have to knit the sleeves when we get home, which shouldn't take me long at all to do. Then it's just a matter of working out the numbers for the other sizes, writing up the pattern, and sending it out for tech editing. My goal is to get this ready to be published by the end of February/early March.
As I settle back into reality in a couple of days, I'm going to do my best to stay in this low-stress vacation mindset. In the year ahead, I want to continue to be productive in my knitting, spinning, and designing as well as in my full-time job, but ideally I'd like to do so without getting so stressed out that it begins to affect my health. I don't usually like to make new year's resolutions because they are so easily broken, so instead I'm sticking with the idea of a theme for the year -- specifically the theme of "stress less." There are things that are important in life, but none is as important as my health and my family. Knitting, spinning, and designing are my hobbies and the things I do for stress relief, so I hope to be able to devote enough time to them in the coming year to help me maintain my balance.
I hope that whatever you're hoping to do or be in the coming year is something that will make you happy!
I think our goals are aligned. Metaphysically speaking... Can't wait to see this sweater. It's been inevitable watching you go from socks and mittens to shawls. Such a knitterly progression.
ReplyDelete