Monthly Goals: August 2016

Happy August! I feel like summer just started and it's already August and Little Man starts Kindergarten in a couple weeks! GAH! What happened?!

Enough about that. We're here because it's August 1st and that means it's time for the Monthly Goals update post thingie.

As always, let's revisit the previous months' goals:

Fibery Goals

1. Work on the following (and maybe finish something): Wink,  the Caffe Macchiato Socks, and the Gex Sweater.

2. Tour de Fleece (July 2nd-24th): I have a couple braids pulled out and that's lovely :)

3. Partake in a fibery endeavor at least 4x/week.

4. Yarn Diet (clubs don't count).
5. Design work.
6. Clean out the yarn closet.
7. Anything else that comes along.

My sweater and socks remain untouched but I have worked on the little Gex Sweater. I've finished up the yoke, separated the sleeves, and am working on the body at this point. If I keep going, I might have it finished before the end of Ravellenics (that's my goal, anyway). 

I survived Tour de Fleece. I even posted all the finished yarns on Friday. I had a couple braids pulled out....I was so cute. What the hell was I thinking?! I needed more than the couple I had pulled out. Seriously, if you haven't seen the post, you should go look. I spun over 2.5 lbs of yarn, which turned out to be something like 1.3 miles. Crazy! I also started another spinning project, which will probably go unfinished for a bit because I did plenty of spinning in July. 

My yarn diet went to the toilet, as well. I've been relatively good outside of clubs. This past month, I only acquired five more skeins of yarn. The post about that is here. I haven't posted about it yet, but I also fell into a yarn store this past Friday afternoon. In the four years that we've lived in California, I've seen at least three yarn shops close (that I can think of). A fourth will be closing toward the end of the month, hence going down there. I may or may not have come home with things...I'll post about that later. 

Other than a lot of spinning and a little knitting, not much else happened this month. Woo!


Non-Fibery Goals
1. Reorganize in Little Man's room.
2. Finish cleaning the buffet.
3. Go through the pantry & cupboards.
4. Gym and/or some other form of exercise.
5. Work on the weight loss shit (woo).
6. Keep up on the (new) bullet journal.
7. Work on recipe journal(s).

Little Man's room has not had any action but Stormageddon's has had some things done. It started with our need to find a better way to store all of Husband's beer making supplies (some of which are quite large like a big cooler and brewing pots and a carboy and such). We've been meaning to do it and then we discovered that one of his most recent homebrews basically leaked out of the keg and into our carpet in the back room. Five GALLONS of beer. Dark beer, on top of it. So, we discovered it pretty quickly, within a few days of it happening, it had juuuuuust started to mold a little. We pulled the kegorator out and the shelf we had the beer supplies on (that wasn't working) and I washed the carpet probably five times, each time the water coming out absolutely filthy. Eventually, the carpet looked mostly normal and we let it dry out. We decided now was a good time to find a better solution for the beer supplies. Off to Ikea! We picked up a shelf for the beer stuff and because the closet in Stormageddon's room currently houses things like the vacuum and the carpet washer and the fancy table leaves, we decided he needed some sort of a closet system and bought one of those as well. Unfortunately, we all got sick at the end of July and, as a result, his armoire is still in boxes. Sooooon. We also took the shelf that used to hold the beer stuff and put it in his room for some storage (diapers, wipes, etc.). 

Other things remain undone or untouched or.....pantry, buffet, cupboards, the recipe journal. Yeah, haven't done any of that. The weight loss and the gym and the bullet journal, on the other hand, seem to be working out, at least in some respects. So, we'll just keep on keeping on :)


And now, we need to look ahead to this month:

Fibery Goals

1. Work on the following (and maybe finish something): Wink,  the Caffe Macchiato Socks, and the Gex Sweater.

2. Ravellenics (August 5th-21st): probably making a cowl from some handspun and hopefully finishing the Gex sweater

3. Partake in a fibery endeavor at least 4x/week.

4. Yarn Diet (clubs don't count).
5. Design work.
6. Clean out the yarn closet.
7. Anything else that comes along.

Non-Fibery Goals
1. Put the armoire together in Stormageddon's room & organize.
2. Go through paperwork on the buffet & cookbook shelf.
3. Go through the pantry & cupboards.
4. Gym and/or some other form of exercise.
5. Work on the weight loss shit (woo).
6. Keep up on the (new) bullet journal.



Happy Monday!

Monthly Goals: Mid-Month Update

Happy middle-of-July! It means I need to get a mid-month update finished :)

Fibery Goals

1. Work on the following (and maybe finish something): Wink, the Caffe Macchiato Socks, and the Gex Sweater.

2. Tour de Fleece (July 2nd-24th): I have a couple braids pulled out and that's lovely :)

3. Partake in a fibery endeavor at least 4x/week.

4. Yarn Diet (clubs don't count).
5. Design work.
6. Clean out the yarn closet.
7. Anything else that comes along.

I've only worked on the Gex Sweater these past few weeks, and honestly, not much knitting has been done....in favor of Tour de Fleece spinning. I have done so much spinning. I actually kind of ran out of projects to spin. I had planned for two of them with loose plans for a third. The first was to spin some white merino to ply with some previously spun purple merino/silk. That was completed first. But, wouldn't you know, I still had some leftover bits and bobs. So, I did some plying of random bits. One is some previously spun kelly green merino plied with some of the purple merino/silk. I also did some test spinning of some merino before I worked on my rainbow gradient. So, I have a couple of mini skeins of rose pink & navy blue and hot pink & grey, and because I had other bits leftover, I have a mini mini skein of hot pink & purple merino/silk and a different mini mini skein of hot pink & navy blue. After I finished clearing all the bobbins, I spun two rainbow gradients (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, and white, in that order) and then plied them together. It turned out pretty well, actually. Soooo, all those have been washed, snapped, thwacked, stretched, and dried (except two of the minis). Then I got around to my loose plans and did three bobbins of  4 oz singles from Fat Cat Fibers (merino/tencel blend), did a 3-ply, and then chain-plied the remaining bit of the last bobbin. 

Then I was out of plans. So, I pulled out fiber I had hanging about: 5.9 oz of white merino (the same from the white & purple noted above), a braid from Happy Hands, two braids from Corgi Hill Farms, and some BFL I found with one of my drop spindles. So, everything has been weighed, separated, and I'm ready to go for making all the two-ply yarns. In other words, I planned out five projects. I started the white merino, as Stormageddon chose that one. 

I've also broken my yarn diet. I should be getting four skeins of MadTosh Pashmina and a skein of MadTosh MCN Worsted, both in Molly Ringwald (Pretty In Pink Molly Ringwald, not Sixteen Candles Molly Ringwald). I've also signed up for another club: StevenBe's Inappropriate Club, which starts mid-August. 

But that's it, I swear!


Non-Fibery Goals
1. Reorganize in Little Man's room.
2. Finish cleaning the buffet.
3. Go through the pantry & cupboards.
4. Gym and/or some other form of exercise.
5. Work on the weight loss shit (woo).
6. Keep up on the (new) bullet journal.
7. Work on recipe journal(s).

I've done some cleaning and sorting in Little Man's room but that's a forever-ongoing project. The buffet is a mess. The pantry is a mess. I've been going to the gym and keeping up with my journal but my weight is hovering and the recipe journal is doing nothing.

Oops.



I hope you're all having a lovely day!

Monthly Goals: July

Happy July 1st! Here in the US, we're gearing up for our Independence Day celebration.....or, rather, our version of Brexit. But we ditched the British instead of the other way 'round. With that said, people are planning to shoot off fireworks and make drunken idiots of themselves this weekend. Monday is an official Federal Holiday so Husband will be home...blah blah blah.

It has occurred to me that I've been doing this for a year now. Actually, June 2015 was the first month I did this...and now we're a year out. Woo. Moving along...

Let's talk about Monthly Goals! Well, let's visit my June Goals first and then we'll get to the July Goals :)

Fibery Goals

1. Work on the following (and maybe finish something): Wink, the CashSilk Fern Scarf, the Gex sweater, a Bridal Shower Lace dishcloth, and the Caffe Macchiato Socks.

2. Finish plying the Finn & Suffolk blend.

3. Partake in a fibery endeavor at least 4x/week.

4. Yarn Diet (clubs don't count).
5. Design work.
6. Clean out the yarn closet.
7. Anything else that comes along.

Gex and the Bridal Shower Lace dishcloth were finished this month. Wink has remained untouched, entirely. I haven't even pulled out the project bag. I have worked a few rounds on the socks but nothing major. The CashSilk Fern Scarf was, unfortunately, frogged. I managed to lose a stitch somewhere, I tinked back two rounds to find it, didn't find it, and it wasn't looking very good to me....so, I frogged it.

Oh well.

I also finished the Finn & Suffok blend. It's even been washed and skeined and such. I had some leftover so I plied it with some of the kelly green merino I had leftover from another spinning project.

If you stalk my Instagram, you can find a few more photos that aren't in Ravelry, including what the green merino & the blend looked like after I had plied them and taken them off the Niddy-Noddy.

I also managed to start another Gex sweater, this one for my currently-incubating niece (she's tentatively scheduled her debut for November 5th but my brother and sister-in-law are hoping for October 31st). I'm not very far along as I only started it a couple days ago. But, it's smaller than Little Man's so I'm hoping that it goes quicker. We'll see.

Other than that, a couple club items arrived but that's about it. I've not been knitting much, preferring to write, instead. It's fine. I did manage to finish a few things :)



Non-Fibery Goals
1. Reorganize in Stormageddon's room.
2. Clean the buffet.
3. Go through the pantry & cupboards.
4. Gym and/or some other form of exercise.
5. Work on the weight loss shit (woo).
6. Keep up on the (new) bullet journal.
7. Work on recipe journal(s).

Stormageddon's room has had some work done. I hired a sitter (via UrbanSitter) for a working interview this past Monday and while she was here, I hid in Stormageddon's room and took care of a few things. I switched out the clothes, packed things up, hauled out the next size so I don't have to dig later (that was in Little Man's closet - it's now in Stormageddon's room). It wasn't much but it helped. 

I also did some other cleaning, though I didn't do the buffet as much as I wanted to, and the pantry is still a mess (I've gone through things, though, and that helps). 

I've been trying to go to the gym on some sort of a regular basis and I'm doing okay with it. I do need to get control of my eating habits because my calorie count for a day is 1700, which only lends to eating my meals and that's about it. So, I need to get a handle on that. The weight is hovering, at this point. 

The journal is, of course, fine. The recipes, however, are not. Oh well. Someday I'll get around to it.

So, that's it for June. 

July's Goals.......

Fibery Goals

1. Work on the following (and maybe finish something): Wink,  the Caffe Macchiato Socks, and the Gex Sweater.

2. Tour de Fleece (July 2nd-24th): I have a couple braids pulled out and that's lovely :)

3. Partake in a fibery endeavor at least 4x/week.

4. Yarn Diet (clubs don't count).
5. Design work.
6. Clean out the yarn closet.
7. Anything else that comes along.

Non-Fibery Goals
1. Reorganize in Little Man's room.
2. Finish cleaning the buffet.
3. Go through the pantry & cupboards.
4. Gym and/or some other form of exercise.
5. Work on the weight loss shit (woo).
6. Keep up on the (new) bullet journal.
7. Work on recipe journal(s).

Happy July!