Magic Flute

I had a perfectly lovely day! It didn’t start out that way at all. And for that matter, it also involved a long drive through falling snow at night, so it had a lot going against it. However, the positives condensed into about 5 hours this afternoon rather overwhelmingly outweighed the negatives, providing me with a day I’ll remember for years to come.

1. A man waved me ahead of him at the bank when I was running rather late.
2. I started my second series of lace knitting classes at my LYS (an hour away) teaching students’ choice of Concerto or Symphony to 10 lovely ladies – good company, knitting, teaching, and income all rolled into one!
3. I got a Subway meatball marinara flatbread for supper – and they had plain Sunchips!
4. I got my first spontaneous compliment on a handknit shawl from a total stranger – and a potential 11th student at the same time!
5. When my Goals support buddy (aka dear friend Joy) came up with the brilliant idea of tracking our goals in a pocket planner, I immediately added one to my shopping list to pick up after class. Shortly after walking into my LYS, though, Arlene asked if any of us could use one of the pocket planners she’d been given – and one of them was green, no less!!!
6. Sharing some support/info/chatter re: CSM’s after class with one of my students who knows FAR more about sock machines than I do, I suddenly found myself totally shocked when she be handed a pair she’d produced, saying I could give them a test run – WOW! (This made me the “victim” of THREE RAK’s in one afternoon!)
7. And… I got a magic flute!

Okay… It’s not really magic – not the way most people would define that word, at least. For me, though, it’s total magic! You see, I’ve wanted a flute ever since I was 10 years old. I absolutely adored playing the flutophone back in fourth grade. It had been a required class for us, and for me it was a head over heels in love experience. I still l have my (totally unchewed) flutophone, and I’m not above getting it out to play four decades after my last class. I wanted to join the school band and play the flute in the absolutely worst way, come fifth grade, but my parents refused to let me, citing the very non-marchable piano in the living room, which, my mother claimed, would provide me with far more useful skills in the long run. From this side of history, I’m not sure that the skills of learning a very solitary instrument was as advantageous to me as being part of the social structure provided by the school band would have been, and although I still enjoy playing the piano, it’s never been a heart and soul sort of thing for me. I don’t regret my (very limited) piano playing skills, but to this day, I truly feel they should have allowed me a second instrument, especially since the spark of my passion never really waned.

A few years ago, it suddenly dawned on me (duh!), that there wasn’t a reason in the world I couldn’t still learn to play the flute. I’d bought 4 different recorders, a tin whistle, and a Native American flute in the meanwhile, but had somehow relegated my flute to the fantasy file. Then one day I had the opportunity to handle an antique ebony and ivory flute, and  my heart fluttered, fanning the embers of my dream into a full fledged bonfire. After checking the prices, though, I decided I’d best relegate it to my Christmas list.

For three years, it was totally ignored by my entire family. Then, after a third disappointment a week ago, I had another one of those lightbulb moments. Craig’s List + Christmas money! Within minutes, I found one I could afford listed in Dayton, which was convenient, since I was going to be teaching up there again starting this week. A quick phone call to set things up left me sitting and staring dumbly at the calendar, wondering how I was going to bear the 4 day wait until Monday!

Happily, I survived the wait, and between my afternoon and evening classes, I braved the snow and went to complete my very first Craig’s List transaction. Believe me, it was difficult to focus on my students for the second class with my brand new flute laying on the table beside me!

On the other hand, can you believe that Arlene’s husband was in the store helping with inventory, and it turns out he used to play the flute?! After class, he gave me a few pointers to get me started, and with a bit of experimentation tonight after I got home, I managed to play Mary Had a Little Lamb without too many extra squeaks and whistles.

And then I did what any new mother would do. I took pix! I love how the light made it look golden.

The picture directly above shows why my little finger is now totally exhausted. There sure is a lot for it to do on these three keys!

This is truly my magic flute. It’s made a dream of more than 40 years come true! How much more magical could it be?

As for that New Year’s goal about making music for at least as few minutes each week? Week one – accomplished and logged in my new pocket planner. I had a wonderful day!

Goals Post – Forward to 2010!

Perhaps this post should be titled “Living in Dreamland.” It’s unquestionably the most ambitious list of goals I’ve ever set out at the beginning of the year, and I’ve not ever completed my shorter lists, but my philosophy of goals remains that having a higher target means I hit more, even if I don’t complete them all. The most important factor for me is to remain realistic in that I remember it IS an overly ambitious list, and that anything I do accomplish is a victory; it’s not a defeat to not do all of it. These are goals to help me stay on track, not requirements that identify whether I’m a worthwhile person!

That said, here are my goals for 2010:

My online miniatures group is doing a goals based project, and we were asked to spell out five mini goals, so I will start with those:

1. Finish the interior and/or exterior of Friendship Cabin, a Real Good Toys Adirondack Cabin that we started several years ago, but which has languished untouched since sometime before the beginning of 2009. Here’s the album where I chronicled our first days working on the project.
2. Finish my Gail Wilson Hitty, which was started with enthusiasm during the online class, worked on for three nights, and now has the rest of the girls giving me “the look” for not getting their sister done. I have a little glitch in the painting, and since this is a challenging project for me anyway, the moment I encountered a problem, I put her away for a time when I could really feel relaxed. ‘Nuff said? :S
3. Finish my Teresa Layman Cottage By the Sea project – actually barely started, and a massive project for someone who really doesn’t like embroidery or French knots. This will be a rug for Friendship Cabin.
4. Finish my Boat Sampler – stitched on silk gauze – lots to go on it, but most of the hardest part is completed. Like the Layman project, I started this on our last cruise. Unlike the Layman project, I loved working on this one, so I did quite a bit more of it. Also belongs in Friendship Cabin, and perhaps will be finished on another cruise…
5. Knit something tiny – size 4/0 needles or smaller – probably something for my future miniature yarn shop

Fiber Goals:

1. See #5 in the miniatures
2. Publish at least 4 knitting patterns – should actually be more than this, as I have 3 projects that just need the paperwork part of this goal in order to be ready. The paperwork is the hard part of course… I’m knitting my next shawl design right now, and I’ve promised another KAL for the spring, so I’m going to be busy with this!
3. Finish my spinning wheel – I can’t believe this sat untouched for an entire year. Where on earth did the time go??? The staining is about half done, but it’s an involved project. Once that’s done, I need to finish and assemble it.
4. Learn to use said wheel
5. Knit a project from wool I’ve cleaned and spun, using a pattern I’ve designed – I have a bit of a jumpstart on this, as I’ve cleaned a goodly pile and picked some of it already.
6. Stash all my yarn on Ravelry – yes, maybe I’ll get it completed this year… – Starting with 550
7. Get competent purling continental. I think I need to have a dedicated project for this… maybe a washcloth.
8. Make another 2 pairs of socks for myself (maybe I’ll get the next done before I wear holes in what I have?) This was one pair until a friend twisted my arm and said I should try for two – and one pair has to be top down, to boot! Bad thing here is that I also promised a pair to my daughter, so this means three pair this year, when I’ve never done more than one. Gulp!
9. Finish at least 3 of the projects currently languishing in my WIP/UFO tubs – items started before July 1, 2009. This one will also be a challenge. I love the stuff in my UFO tub, even though it’s all pretty good at inducing guilt. I’ve found that designing really slows down the knitting, though, especially on other people’s patterns!

Other Creative Goals:

1. Finish at least one of the remodeling projects… sigh… Acceptable candidates are the kitchen (which is in the impossible dream category), painting the door to my future studio (easy), or finishing the nook, laundry room, or my sewing room. Nook and laundry room both depend on hubby – most especially the nook – though I have a load of work to do in those two areas, too.
2. Organize my computer photos, then print and label as I think necessary. I’m rereading this and laughing at the thought of actually getting it done, but…
3. Spend at least a few minutes every week making music – LOVE doing this, but I’ve really ignored this part of my life for the last few years. Looking for a flute – like I need more instruments around here?
4. Learn my new camera – for starters, needing to know why I can’t take a decent close up with a camera that cost this much!
5. Make up a Gail Wilson kit – see mini goal #2
6. Finish Reba – poor thing! Her sisters were finished in 2006 (pix in this album) but my teacher suddenly stopped classes with Reba just one firing away from being done. Every attempt I’ve made to get her fired since then has ended in failure. Need to get a kiln up and going here so I don’t have to depend on anyone else.
7. Make a pair of socks on my CSM – This could be anything from amazingly easy to a terrible headache, based on things I’ve heard. First task is getting the new needles and such that I need.
8. Probably crazy, but I joined a Navajo style weaving Yahoo group, and now I have the bug to weave something, even if it’s small. I’m torn between tri-loom and Navajo style, but would adore trying both. One item is enough to qualify.
9. Move one of my dolls from hospital patient status to display status – maybe Aaron, so he can show off his adorable knitted romper? He is on this page.

Personal Goals – and these tend to have a very familiar ring to them:

1. End the year 25 pounds lighter than I started it. Why is this so hard?!
2. Read 100 books
3. End the year debt free – both money and promises made
4. Go somewhere new – state or country. I have a life goal of visiting all 50 states and all 7 continents, and I need to keep at it if I’m going to succeed!
5. Clean out one of my email accounts – frighteningly big project, but I’ve made a lot of progress already in the first two days of the year. It’s amazing how quickly this can fall behind again, though.
6. I have a challenge with a friend to blog at least once each week
7. Solidly memorize the scripture verses on my calendar
8. Get the treadmill inside – Sounds like no big deal, but it’s going to need cleaned up, and the area where it belongs is packed solid with things that don’t belong where they are – which aren’t where they belong because their spots are filled with stuff that doesn’t belong where it is, which… well… you get the idea!

Goals Post – A Recap of 2009

What happened to 2009???!!! I remember it seems like just a few weeks ago that I posted my goals for the year, intending to blog monthly updates on my progress. When I found myself halfway through February having not done so, I decided that quarterly probably made more sense. By mid-May, I realized that semi-annually was clearly a more reasonable idea, and by September, I realized the end of the year was so close that it probably didn’t matter if I did an interim post.

Most of the year I thought I was doing a terrible job on completing my goals, but looking at them now, I realize that although I didn’t shine spectacularly, I didn’t do nearly as poorly as I’d thought. Here’s the final tally…

• Be Debt Free by the End of the Year – Okay, this was definitely a failure in every way – probably my worst, as I think I might be worse off than at the beginning of the year, due to a horrible bout of therapy shopping. That makes it totally my fault. On the other hand, I did take a few steps in the right direction – primarily in the opening of my Etsy store. I’ve been too busy the past 3 months or so, meaning I’ve not been able to get much stocked, but I’ve had a fair number of sales in relationship to how much I’ve listed.
• Get My Email Under Control – Another failure, though this one doesn’t rest as heavily on my shoulders. I’m also farther behind than at the start of the year, but the busyness and the computer problems were contributing factors.
• Make a Gail Wilson Kit – Well… Poor, dear little Hitty! I’m still painting pieces – as in first class. I have an oops to repair, and have had a problem finding the time for it. I’m not as comfortable with a paintbrush as I am with knitting needles, so I have to be at my best and have some spare time both. This seldom happened in 2009. I’m farther than I was at the start of the year, but no where near success.
• Finish Reba – This is a big zero again this year. With no kiln set up and DH not feeling driven to finish the floor in the laundry room… and then the play date that would have resulted in her completion being canceled by the other party involved… She’s no further ahead nor behind…
• Complete Sewing Room – Not completed by a long shot, but I did get all the shelves painted and loaded, and the mantle is done, plus some smaller bits and pieces. That’s solid forward progress, just not enough of it.
• Complete Laundry Room – Other than one section of floor tile laid, the windows scraped, and the bougainvillea hung, this went nowhere this year – extremely depressing. DH needs to have a tile cut, and he’s not overly motivated to do it. On the other hand, there are things I could have done in that room, but I didn’t do them either.
• Lose 25 Pounds – Lost 14 pounds quickly, then didn’t drop another the rest of the year. While that means I didn’t succeed, the really great thing is that I held steady at the lower number, so I’m ahead of where I was last year this time – so a partial triumph on an important goal.
• Learn to Do Entrelac and Knit Backwards – Since I didn’t say I had to finish the project, this would be a total success. I’ve knit far enough on my Autumn Entrelac Shawl to prove I’ve nailed the two techniques, and having learned to knit backwards paid off by making it easy to teach a lefty who showed up at the Knitogethers I hostess at the library. I get a nice star on this goal.
• Go Somewhere New – This is the first time in many years that I’ve failed this goal. I actually had 3 different cruises planned at various times, any one of which would have qualified this goal, but each time, the other party involved canceled. With no invites and a lean year financially, I had no place to travel, and other than a couple of visits to a friend in PA, I had a no travel year – rather abnormal for me.
• Become Comfortable Spinning – Hmmm… No qualifiers on this one either. I didn’t do what I’d pictured at the beginning of the year, but I’ve played with my spinning a fair bit, and I’m able to produce fairly consistent yarn on my supported spindles finally. I’m definitely pleased with my progress.
• Read 100 Books – Click here for current status. Total success, but just under the wire! I thought this was a shoo-in, but all the changes over Christmas week were nearly the death of this one! With hubby’s support, New Year’s Eve saw me listening to the last 4 disks of my 100th book, which I finished just before 10:00 pm – a bit too close for comfort, so far as I’m concerned!
• Knit Another Pair of Socks – Did it! I don’t think I’ve blogged them, but they are here on Ravelry, finished at the end of September, and I’m wearing them almost constantly.
• Stash All My Downstairs Yarn on Ravelry – Well… I didn’t get this one finished, but I did work on it. I had 244 at t he beginning of the year, and 550 now, so I nearly doubled what is done. Lots to go! It would help if yarn didn’t keep wandering into the house…
• Do a “Difficult” Lace Pattern – It wasn’t what I’d planned to do, but I did qualify to consider this done when I made my three little cobweb lace shawls. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I blogged them either. I’ve not done so well at blogging my knitting this year.
• Do Something/Anything with my CSM – Qualified this one, too! It wasn’t much, but I’ve knit tubes on my machine now, so I know it’s in working order. I need to spring for some parts and tools before I can do much more, but I’m thrilled to know my machine is functional.
• Take Steps Toward Designing Knitting Patterns – Laughing – succeeded on this and then some! I’d say I more than exceeded my expectations.

In my knitting this year, I tallied 12,660 yards of yarn knit – comfortably over 7 miles! This doesn’t count several projects, like Spitzbergen and Beauty’s Song, for instance, as they are difficult to total while in progress. It also doesn’t count the massive amounts of yarn knit into swatches for my design work. Once I started designing, I was startled to see how much my yarn consumption decreased. I never thought about how much longer it takes to knit when you aren’t using someone else’s finished pattern… but slower or not, it’s worth it.

Things that happened that took me totally by surprise this past year:

• Being the speaker for the Dayton Knitting Guild in March.
• Publishing two good knitting patterns and getting 3 more to the point of being just a few hours of work away from being ready to put out.
• Teaching knitting classes for hire.
• Hostessing a KAL – and with my own pattern to boot!
• Having new friendship blossom
• Having to reconstruct computer files, etc., after being offline 3 weeks due to a computer virus
• Discovering how difficult it can be to cope emotionally when one daughter experiences a fractured wrist, an earthquake, two armed burglaries, the kidnapping of a church member, and a political coup all within 6 months’ time, and all incurred at a distance that made it impossible for me to do much beyond pray

In the end, it wasn’t a bad year, though it was insanely busy. I’m looking forward to seeing what 2010 has in store for me and for those whose lives are a vital part of my own.

May you have a year filled with many blessings and the eyes to see them all!

Happy New Year!

Travel Logged…

Noodling about on Ravelry, looking for a finished project a Yahoo group member shared, I stumbled upon the coolest thing! She had a map of the world marked with the countries she’d visited. I’ve kept a color-it-in chart of the states to which I’ve traveled for many years, but to find an online log – wow! I wrote to her instantly to find out where I could get my own, and not only do they offer a world map, but also a U.S. map, and even better, there is a count and percentage visited. My maps are now happily filled in and residing on a page link in my side bar – or just click here: Travel Logged. Happiness is!

Now for my next trick, I still need to figure out how I’m going to color in a new state or country before the end of the year…

Looking Forward; Looking Back

I think I’m officially the last person in the entire blogging world to do this, but it’s been percolating so long that I can’t quite bring myself to not do it. Besides, I feel like I need to, if only for myself, so here goes – my New Year’s Day post!

I never was real keen on making New Year’s resolutions, as it just seems like the perfect way to start off the year with a resounding dose of failure. Sometime around the end of January you eat that piece of turtle cheesecake, miss 3 consecutive days of exercising, or realize you are already a week behind in your read the Bible in a year program, and you promptly brand yourself a loser, throw hopeless hands up into the air, and say, “Maybe next year…” I just don’t need that sort of thing in my life. I’ve fought hard to get where I am emotionally, so I have no intent to shoot myself in the foot by setting myself up to 334 days of each year thinking uncharitably about myself. However, like most of the people I know, I do feel that fresh start excitement that comes with the scent of a January calendar page, and a couple years back, I came up with an idea that is working much better for me – New Year’s Goals.

New Year’s Goals have very few rules, though last year they did need a few more than they had. They have to actually be possible. I’m not allowed to beat myself up if I don’t accomplish them. They have to be well defined. Two of those three rules were added this year. Having goals instead of resolutions gives me an entire year to succeed, and they help focus my ecclectic brain on a little bit narrower range of possibilities. Another benefit is that it sets some things before me that I have heard myself say, “I always wanted to” so many times I’m sick of hearing it, but without a steady reminder, I find drifting out of my mind when I have the time.

Last year’s goals were not too many:

• Knit a Pair of Socks – This one was accomplished with my Coriolis Socks, which I absolutely adore!
• Master Lace Knitting – This goal would show you just how little I knew about lace knitting December a year ago. It’s also totally undefinable in reality. Just how does one know they’ve “mastered” lace knitting? Should have been “Become Very Comfortable Knitting Lace.” That I definitely accomplished.
• Go Somewhere New – I didn’t think I was going to get this, but when I ended up with a nearly last minute trip to Honduras, which included a side trip through Guatemala into Belize, I found I’d accomplished it well beyond my original dream.
• Read 100 Books – Somewhere around June, I added this, which has now been classed as an illegal move on New Year’s Goals. I didn’t succeed, but I might well have made it had I not read th e entire Outlander series. Books with 48 CD’s take a good bit longer to read than your run of the mill 6-10 CD offering.
• Make a Gail Wilson Kit – Considering the collection I have of the kits, I thought it was time to put my money where my mouth is – or my hands where my money is, or some such thing. Thinking is as far as I got with this one. Oops!
• Finish the Laundry Room Remodeling – Well… Perhaps this would have happened if my dear daughter hadn’t offered to help get the sewing room started, then hubby hadn’t suddenly revived his nook project and added allowing me a studio door. I was spread too thin with those four projects to complete even one of them, though I don’t regret the progress that was made on all.
• Be out of Debt by the End of the Year – Total flop. ‘Nough said?

My list for 2009 is much longer and definitely more ambitious, but I’m doing some things differently, and I’m feeling quite positive about a lot of them. The biggest change is that this year, I’m not settling back in January and thinking that I have a whole year to do this stuff after all, so why rush? There have been a fair number of serendipitous occurrences to help me move in the right direction, too, so I’m off to a great start! I don’t really think I’ll be able to get them all done, but I’d sure like to surprise myself, and I’m not going to aim low!

• Be Debt Free by the End of the Year – I hate having to have this goal. This also includes non-financial IOU’s. I’m going to have to have a miracle to pull this one off. I need to sell an awful lot of books if this is going to happen – and my knitting pattern needs to be a smashing success! I also have several projects, including a quilt to finish for this.
• Get My Email Under Control – This is another one in the miracle category, but who knows?
• Make a Gail Wilson Kit – Sound familiar? Serendipity is that Gail is currently running a Hitty class, I have the kit, and the fee wasn’t very high. I’m far behind the front runners, but I HAVE actually started my girl.
• Finish Reba – The most attainable of the miracle class of goals. There is little to do for her to be complete, but it involves a kiln, learning to fire bisque, renewing my acquaintance with bisque painting, and getting up the nerve to put my beautiful, nearly done head in for a last firing.
• Complete Sewing Room – Mid-range in terms of difficulty. I’ve done an awful lot in there, but I still have oodles of sorting and organizing, along with quite a bit of trim painting to do – like the bookcase and two casement windows. This isn’t a gimme!
• Complete Laundry Room – Another mid-range sort of project. As much as is done in there, the floor tile is a bothersome, time consuming project, and I have some trim painting to do. Really challenging would be that I have to stop knitting long enough to crochet the curtains!
• Lose 25 Pounds – This is going to be easier than I thought. I’m already half the way there!
• Learn to Do Entrelac and Knit Backwards – I’m really looking forward to this one. I have the pattern and yarn to do Autumn, and a week or so back, I finally found a tutorial that made knitting backwards suddenly easy. I’m still slightly awkward at it, but a little bit of practice and it’s going to be second nature. Biggest challenge here is just to actually break away from the temptation of so many interesting KAL’s and do this piece.
• Go Somewhere New – Looking very challenging at this point in time. I had two cruises planned for this year, both to new places,  both depending on other people, and both fell through already. So much for this goal being a gimme. All the states within decent driving distance I already have, and I don’t currently have any good set up for a low cost visit in a new state or country – and there ’s that “out of debt” business… Stay tuned!
• Become Comfortable Spinning – Easy? Well… First I have to finish building my wheel. Then all that remains is finding time!
• Read 100 Books – I’m really cooking on this one already! I think I just listed book 15 – or was it 16?
• Knit Another Pair of Socks - This is more desperation than goal. I adore my socks and I hate it when I have to take them off to wash them! I need more hand knit socks!!! This is a “just do it!” sort of project, and I’m sort of hoping that the SHP KAL is enough to jumpstart the process.
• Stash All My Downstairs Yarn on Ravelry – This would be much easier if the stash would quit multiplying! That said, I’ve already been working hard on this. I’m currently at 244 in my regular stash, so ignoring minor fluctuations due to usage, it will be interesting to see where I am on Dec. 31.
• Do a “Difficult” Lace Pattern – Challenge here is just focusing on doing it – ignoring some of the other rabbits dashing across my path constantly. It’s tough to do that with something like 7 shawls on my  needles and two KAL’s imminent…
• Do Something/Anything with my CSM – I’m not even aiming so high as a pair of socks at this point. I just want to sit down with someone and find out for sure my machine actually works! Socks would be a nice side benefit to the process, though. ;o) A circular sock machine is too valuable to just hold down the floor, in my opinion, and that’s all my lazy contraption has done for about 3 years now.

Now that I type this all out, I’m thinking it’s a very good thing I have a solid start on so much of it. This is quite a list!!! I think I’m going to make a separate page listing the goals in the sidebar here on the blog, then update as things happen…