Winding Down

I’m blessed enough to have the week off from work. The entire week is a holiday for the company I am on assignment with and since they have the holiday, I have the holiday. How great is that. I’m spending time this week finishing up a lot of things that have followed me through the year. Today, I finally made it through all the posts in my RSS reader and I completed a few knitting and crochet projects, although those haven’t necessarily been following me all year.



My mother and I have been doing a lot of similar craft projects this year. She is currently crocheting towels and suggested I try this pattern from the makers of Peaches and Cream. Of course I made it in Sugar and Cream. It’s a great pattern and I will do more of them as I have tons and tons of cotton left.




I redid the mobeus scarf and I am very happy with the outcome this time. I knit it on size 8 needles. I think I’m using a 40” Addi. I don’t know how many stitches I cast on. I cast on enough to join the work in the round without stretching. It’s probably a little longer than it needs to be but it wraps around my head 3 times so it’s perfect for blocking out the wind coming off the river on my walk to work. I’m actually blocking this so I will take more pictures after it is dry.



Right now I am trying to figure out my planner/journal needs for the new year. The Life Tracker system from DayRunner that I adopted last year has been discontinued so I am looking at other solutions that will allow me to continue using the binder from the Life Tracker system. I picked up a BlueSky planner from Target today along with some post-it notes that will help me to keep everything organized. We’ll see how long this lasts as I am notorious for changing planners often throughout the year. I’m also trying to make sure the planner/journal system works well for planning the wedding (must get started on planning the wedding!).

How are you all doing on finishing out the year?

Sick Sunday

I have a headache that won’t let me go this weekend. I get a little dizzy when I move too much so for right now I am sitting in bed. I’m trying to read some of the blog posts in my RSS reader and watch a little Doctor Who.



I’m always amazed when I open my RSS reader and I see that one blog has put up 10 to 20 posts in a week. I find myself skipping a lot of these posts. Some seem to be more about volume rather than content. For now, I won’ be expelling anyone from the reader but it takes a lot of time to keep up with the good content when you have to surf through all the fluff.

Hope you all are having a headache free existence.

Good Morning

My fiance just left for work so I decided to get a quick post in before going back to sleep. The weekend has been great so far. I hope you all can say the same. We had dinner last night with friends at the National Harbor at a restaurant called Ketchup. I won’t link the restaurant because I don’t recommend it at all. The food was decent but the service was horrible. Don’t waste your time. And if you plan to spend any time at the National Harbor, go early and plan to stay long. The wait at every restaurant was at least 3 hours. Ketchup was about an hour and a half. Possibly more if the bad service kicks in as it did with us.

I think I’m going to do some more crocheting today. I tried to do a little knitting last week and it completely failed. I attempted to do a Mobeus scarf. I did the mobeus cast on and started with 300 stitches on size 6 needles.



Things went well in the knitting. I even took it off the needles a few rows in to make sure it would be long enough. When I finished, I hated it. It started curling immediately and only got worse. It completely curled in on itself and it would take too much blocking to make it worth keeping. And it was too short. It made a cowl that was too long and a scarf that was too short.

I will re-do this with a few changes. I will knit on bigger needles for a looser stitch. I think I’ll go up to a size 8 needle. I’ll go up to 400 stitches. I bought a cone of this yarn but only brought a little of it up to Virginia with me. I think I’ll just put all of the yarn I brought with me into it for a nice and full scarf.

Knitting this scarf in one piece is definitely the way to go. The traditional method of knitting 6 to 8 feet of fabric and stitching together gets so boring. Knitting it in the spiral is much more interesting. I found directions for this cast on through YouTube. Love YouTube.

Happy Sunday all. I’m off to bed now since there is nothing on TV at 5 in the morning.

Nothing Changes In a Week

One of the new things going on with me has to do with my hair. I have decided to go natural. This means that I have decided not to chemically relax my hair anymore. For now I am still coloring it, but that may soon change as well. The chemicals have become very harsh to my skin which seems to be getting more sensitive as I age. That means my hair is not looking it’s best these days. Honestly, it was not looking good before I started transitioning and I am doing all I can to repair the damage while nurturing the new hair that is growing. I got a little bit cut off before Thanksgiving and this did not please the fiance at all. He loves long hair and has been trying to get me to grow it out. Deciding to go natural requires a reset on length so I am getting shorter until all the relaxer is cut out and then my natural hair can grow.

Well, he has been complaining about how short and dry my hair is and how much it sheds. He’s now gotten his mother into and I felt completely attacked this weekend as they both decided to give me an intervention on my hair. This is not a fun experience. I am incredibly hurt. Hair is personal and when your hair is not where you want it for whatever reason, you tend to feel a little vulnerable. Hair on the floor is a particular pet peeve for him and his mother so I was afraid to comb my hair at her house for fear that I would leave an errant hair behind.

He knows I’m hurt so today he attempted to tell me how nice I fixed my hair today. I made sure I pointed out to him that he didn’t like it last week when I fixed it the exact same way. Nothing changes in a week when it comes to someone’s attitude and I doubt my hurt will go away in this next week.

We’ll see. I’m happy to be seeing videos posted on YouTube from many, many black women who have taken the same steps towards hair and skin health. In the future I will share some videos and tips that I find.

More than anything, I think all of us should remember that there are times when Love can hurt just as much as Hate.

Happy Holidays everyone. I pray you all have strong support systems among your loved ones for whatever changes you decide to institute in life.

The Best Laid Plans

November didn’t go as well as I had hoped in terms of Nanowrimo. I did really well the first couple of weeks and then life got in the way. I was unable to continue but I am really happy with the quality of the writing so everything will get expanded over the next couple of months and hopefully turned into some solid projects. One of the things that I hope to do during this last month of the year is to share a little bit more with you all in blog land. Life seems to be running away with me and I need to force myself to sit down and focus and evaluate all that has come to be in this last year. What better place than to do that here with you.

I’ve been spending a lot of time watching YouTube videos and reading the numerous blogs in my RSS feed. There are so many great people out there saying interesting things and I want to share some of that with you all. Hopefully what I say or link to can help you through what you are going through in life. Times are tough my friends, but with a little help we can all make it through.

I’m excited to share with you all the crocheting that I have been doing. I’m thrilled to be able to crochet for long periods of time and not have to worry about my hands hurting. yay! As a result, I cranked out a lot of towels over the Thanksgiving week. I don’t know what I will do with them all.



But more on that later. I have tons more cotton left over and many more towels to make. I will be on the road this weekend with the future husband and his mother so I will continue making these to get me through the slow times down in the country.

Have a great Friday and a great weekend. Congratulations to all of you that were successful in Nanowrimo. Congratulations to those of you that tried but just couldn’t make it for whatever reason. The important thing is to have written something.

Take care all.