November Challenge Complete

Since it’s the last post of Nablopomo, I feel like I should have something profound to say. But sometimes there are just no words. There are those times when we have so much to say and so many emotions swirling around in us, but when we open our mouths to speak or put our fingers to keys to type, none of it comes out. This is where I am today.

What I can say is that I am thrilled to have completed the blogging challenge for November. I’m sad that I didn’t get much novel writing done for Nanowrimo, but I’m okay with that. I’m still trying to determine in what direction my writing will go. Until then, I’m not going to stress too much about it. What’s important is that through the daily blogging, I was able to get some writing done.

My posting frequency will probably slow down now, but I have so many things to share with you over the next few weeks that you will still have plenty of content to absorb. Thanks for sticking it out with me this month.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about my first giveaway!

No Knitting

Instead of knitting, I have been catching up on blogs in my RSS reader. Basically, I am procrastinating. I need to start getting ready for another life change. Actually, I guess this is more like a life backtrack or reset. I’ve been on the road for work for almost two years. Over Thanksgiving, I decided it was time for me to go home. This was a difficult decision to make as I met my fiancé on the road and can’t yet take him home with me. :(

But I’m excited to be going home. Spending so much time with grandma in front of the fireplace didn’t help at all. But, it’s time to go. I’ve been loosing money (oh, what we do for love!) and now I’m passing a timeline that will throw me into a tax bracket that would do me more harm than good. It’s amazing to know that there is a point when making more money just takes more money out of your pocket.

So, I need an exit plan. That’s what I will be doing over the next few days. My list will include

        ❑        Sending a notice to vacate to the apartment

        ❑        Make a plan for finishing out all the projects at work

        ❑        Start packing

        ❑        Cancel all the crap I have to pay for (i.e. cable, gas, power, etc.)

        ❑        Figure out what to do with the furniture that is not going with me or the fiancé

        ❑        Throw some crap away

        ❑        Goodwill giving

        ❑        and a lot of other stuff that is not coming to me right now

I’m sad to be parting from the fiancé for a while but I am happy to get back home so I can get the house ready to go from a single girl dwelling to a home for two.

What changes are coming your way for the new year?

Week 1 Update

*This was supposed to be a 1 wk check in. Now, it’s two. Time is flying!*

The first week of November has been a busy one so far. Even though I haven’t done as much as I would have liked to by this point, I’m happy with the progress.

Nablopomo

This is my first year attempting Nablopomo. This is also the first year that Blogher has hosted the event. I am going to attribute the technical difficulties to the fact that they are new to the process. I signed up. I have my welcome email telling me what to do. I set up my page, added a profile picture, posted my first post and added my blog to the November blogroll. all was well. The following day, all the links to the site seemed to be broken and my login to the site would not work. If you’ve spent any amount of time on the Blogher site, you know how congested and ad heavy it is. It is also very difficult to find the right person to email with a problem. Eventually, I gave up. I didn’t want getting bogged down in technical difficulties to keep me from the actual task of writing.

So, you can find me on Blogher (I’m #1085 on the blogroll) but I think my involvement with Blogher won’t go beyond that. What really upset me was that a user on Ravelry had the same issue and actually managed to get her username reestablished. So, the Blogher team is full aware of the issue, but no information to that was given in the update email. And that’s another thing. I’m still getting the emails, but the site tells me it doesn’t recognize my email address. Really Blogher???

Nanowrimo

I have barely done any novel writing this month and I’m actually not upset about it at all. With this blog and my November Prayer Project, I have actually been writing quite a bit, just in a different form. And I’m happy with that. November is about writing and my progress in that is evident. I still check in on the Nano site whenever I can to see what my connections are up to. They’re not writing either, it seems. But I know that will change. There are a couple of them every year that seem to slack in the beginning but then attend a few write-ins at the end and manage to catch up. It’s really amazing that they can do that. Who know, may I will too. :)

How is your writing progressing this November?

Nanowrimo? and other things

Okay, so it’s 7pm on day 1 andI have yet to write a word. Honestly, I’m not very motivated to do anything at the moment except wash my hair. But before I get moving on that, I want to make a few announcements to start off the month.

1. I am participating in Nablopomo in addition to Nanowrimo so you will (hopefully) see at least one post a day from me for the entire month. yay! I promise I will come up some interesting things to say. Unfortunately, the Blogher site that is now hosting Nablopomo seems to be having difficulties so I’m glad I got today’s post in last night (early this morning, technically).
2. During the month of November, I am running a side project that offers prayers for those that need it. I will do a full post on that after my shower. If you want to get a jump on things and put your request in early, please email your prayer request in to upliftmewithprayer(at)gmail(dot)com. We all need prayer from time to time and we need to stop being so shy about asking others to lift us up.
3. Please, please, please follow the blog. If you have the blog in your RSS and you are not on the follow list, please leave comment to this post and let me know. Why? Because I am going to do my very first giveaway!!!! I have a shiny new toy from Amazon on order and I will be gifting it to one of my lovely subscribers. So, do what you got to do!!! It’s a HOT item and I’m sure you’ll want to be eligible. Sorry to my family--you are not eligible.

So, there you have it. Three very good reasons to stick around with me for the month. Comment and let me know you’re here with me.

A Fresh Start

I wanted to start the month off right by finishing a project that’s been on my to-do list for way too long. Now granted, I have plenty of unfinished projects, but this one was for my grandmother.

Back in July, she requested that I make her a shrug. Of course I said yes. This is the woman that supplies me with really beautiful homemade quilts. I couldn’t say no to her. Plus, I really do like sharing something that I made with her since she has been making things for me since I could remember.

We searched around on Ravelry and came up with this pattern for the Sequoia Shrug (Ravelry link). She picked a very pretty yarn from my stash and I started on it right away. What I didn’t realize at the time was that to get the ribbed pattern that was shown, you would be crocheting this entire thing through the back loop. That slowed me down quite a bit. Crocheting through the back loop is easy but not as quick as just a regular crochet stitch.

Every few weeks, I would see this project in the apartment and pick it up out of guilt to add a few more stitches. Finally, in the process of preparing for Nanowrimo and Nablopomo, I decided to bite the bullet and get it done. I’m happy to have my first post of Nablopomo be a celebration of finishing. Maybe I will even write a crocheter into my Nano novel. ummm. I really haven’t planned that through so that will be another post for later. For now, I am happy to be packing this up to ship to grandma. This is a great project for new and seasoned crocheters alike and the finishing is minimum so that is great. You are pretty much just crocheting a big rectangle and then stitching to get the shape.

Sorry I don’t have any model shots for you. I’ve never really liked the look of shrugs on my body type.

October #12--Conference Recap

Conference Recap, a photo by aldorris105 on Flickr.

There were so many great tips and ideas that came out of the Blogalicious 11 conference. I'm taking the time now to type them all up in my Google Docs for a inspirational reference that I will use to improve my online presence over the next year (until the next conference).

I will be sharing the gems of what I learned and doing some product reviews from the amazing swag that we received. Stay tuned. We have a lot to talk about.

The month is almost over. Are you ready for Nanowrimo and NaBloPoMo?

October #11--Progress

The month is almost over, but I have made quite a bit of progress in my goal to make 36 posts this month. And it will continue. Progress seems to be the ongoing theme for this next phase of my life. Everyone that knows me knows how much I like to be on top of things. This is not always so easy to do when you feel like a fish out of water. I don’t feel as prepared as I would like to be. I don’t feel as confident as I usually would. But through it all, I am making progress.

You will continue to see progress from me as I head into the crazy month of November. I will be doing Nanowrimo again. I am very excited going into this year. I have a fantastic idea that came to me one day in the shower. Over the next week, I will be rough outlining. I am also doing National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) this year. This is going to be a big push. Posting everyday is a challenge. I am constantly amazed at the blogs in my RSS reader that post up to 3 or 4 times a day! I will be outlining for this as well and using the technology in front of me to prepare. It’s not about being perfect. It’s all about making progress.

I am looking forward to hearing about the progress you are making in your life.

October #1--Hello Again

Sometimes the best laid plans just don’t work out. And honestly I shouldn’t say that considering it was just a thought and not exactly a plan. Leading up to this month, I kept thinking the best way to get myself ready for the hustle of Nanowrimo was to get writing on my blog during the month of October.

So, in my head I made the “plan” to write a blog post for each day of the month. Even though the word count would be much less than the daily goal for Nano, it would still get me accustomed to sitting down and putting thoughts to paper on a daily basis. Well, the first of the month has gotten away from me already.

Today, the 2nd of October starts my Nano readiness effort. Since I missed the first day, I am not going to bother with trying to post daily. What I will do instead is set a goal of writing at least one post for each of my years of life. I celebrated my 36th birthday in September. I am a strong believer that every birthday should be celebrated. I love getting older. I love the new things and new places and new people I am able to experience each year I am here and I love where I see my future years taking me. I have never been sad about a birthday and I am definitely not going to start now.

I have been away from this blog for months for a number of reasons, but it all comes down to me letting life take away those things that I love so much. I started this blog to get myself used to letting others read what I have written and what I am thinking. There is not much point to writing in journals for years and years, not knowing if your point of view resonates with anyone. But I have let myself down and I have let you down (those of you who are still around). But here I am, shouting to the world that I have something to say and this is my journey into getting those words out into the world.

I hope you all are still with me and I hope I can welcome new friends to my blog. More than anything, I am just saying hello again to the girl that wants to write her own world.

HELLO AGAIN!

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.

Slowing Down

I didn’t get a word written yesterday. I just couldn’t bring myself to write anything. We even lost our server and internet connections at work yesterday and couldn’t get much work done without them. I could have used that time to get a little writing in but no. At home, I chose to finish “The Girl Who Played With Fire” by Stieg Larsson instead of write. The good thing is that I’m still ahead of the target word count but my lead is shrinking. In a week, Thanksgiving madness starts so I have to get back ahead or the last week of Nano will see me being a madwoman. Wish me luck.

How are you all doing at it?

Updating You

Hello all!

Nanowrimo is going well. I now have 14,512 words. Two years ago my ending word count was a little over 13,000 so I am thrilled beyond belief that things are going so well. I slowed down a bit this weekend but I’m hoping to get back in gear during the week. The Nano revolution has spawned all kinds of spin-offs. While I can’t see myself ever doing the knit a sweater in a month challenge, I just may have to try to blog everyday for a month. One of the bloggers in my reader feed is doing this for the month. It’s too late for me to do it this month but I just may do this in December. This will give me the platform to share a little bit of what I wrote during Nano and let you see what I am going to do this year to get ready for Christmas. I have no idea what’s in store for Christmas but I’m looking forward to planning it considering it’s the first Christmas for me and my fiance. Hopefully I won’t bore you all to death. Please come back and join me and add me to your favorite rss reader so you don’t miss a word.

Hope your month is shaping up well. Temperatures are dropping and Thanksgiving is around the corner.

Welcome to Nanowrimo

Another November and another foray into the world of Nanowrimo. I’m doing pretty good today. Currently I’m sitting at 3622 words which is pretty good. My goal per day is 2044 to account for the non-writing days around Thanksgiving. I hope some of you are joining in. Let me know if you are so I can keep up with you on the site.

Happy writing, my friends. Too bad the 79 words of this post don’t count. Oh well, back to writing.

What Are You Reading

IMG00035-20091208-0919.jpg
Originally uploaded by aldorris105

I am trying to get back into reading. I had slowed down as I went through the job change. Now that Nanowrimo is over, I am more inspired to get back to it. Today, I spent a little time loading my kindle with some book samples to look into. I am probably most excited about Omar Tyree's new title, "Dirty Old Men". Just hearing the title makes me think of the men around when I was growing up. Ha! You just ignore them and laugh them off as the dirty old men you know them to be.

I am also very happy with the progress I made during Nanowrimo. I have started developing what I think will be a really great novel. I wrote a total of 26,253 words. My 2008 total was a little over 14,00 so I saw a vast improvement. My dialogue has improved greatly and I am much better at story development. I am looking into increasing my writing over the next year. My first step was starting the blog and I have done quite well with it I think. Look for more general writing from me in the next year as well as a lot more crafting. I am in the process of developing more classes to teach at my local quilt shop and I'm looking at picking up a lot of those kitchen skills that I have been avoiding, like bread making and canning.

TwentyTen is going to be a fabulous year and I hope you all will continue to follow me on this journey.

You Could Be Happy

I keep listening to this song by Snow Patrol over and over again. I love it and it cheers and depresses me at the same time.

...most of what I remember makes me sure. I should have stopped you from walking out door.

Oh, the memories that come to mind. Let’s see if this makes it into my nano novel.

...don’t think just do.

Nanowrimo

Nanowrimo has officially started and I am officially behind--yes already! Good luck to all of you participating this year.

Nanowrimo

No, I didn't finish or win Nanowrimo by writing a 50,000 word novel, but I made a good stab at it.  It was my first year participating and between the business travel, Stitiches, and Thanksgiving, I was lucky to get out as many words as I did.  I finished with a total of 14,443 words.  I didn't do the standard novel.  Instead I decided to do a memoir and it was the best thing I could have done for myself.  It really does help to write things out even if you never intend anyone to read it.  And who knows, my secrets just may become public one day.  But the experience has gotten me off to a good start on my writing and I hope to get some personal, fictional and professional writing published in the next year.

To that end, I will be participating in National Novel Writing Year (www.wriye.co.nr).  Since it started, they have dropped the national as it is more like international and also dropped the novel since people are interested in writing all sorts of things.  So, you set a goal and work on it throughout the year.  I will be working on a series of short stories and engineering/project management papers.  I have no idea just yet what my word count goal will be for the year, but I will not be waiting until next year to start as I've already got plenty of ideas.

And just to give you a bit of visual stimulation, I am including a picture of my niece and nephew who I adore greatly when they are not being bratty as both are prone to being at times. :)  She is 17 and he is 1.  Also by different siblings.

Thanksgiving 2008

Hello all.  I know it's been quite some time (a month!) since I've blogged.  November was a very busy month.  I was on business travel in the Pittsburgh area for the first half of the month and I attended Stitches East in Baltimore and I participated in Nanowrimo and I hosted the family at my home for Thanksgiving.  That was a lot people!

Stitches East was fabulous but I didn't take any pictures so I can't show you any of the greatness.  I took two classes--one on I-cord edging and one on color/texture combining of yarns.  I enjoyed them a lot.  I went with my friend Mandy and we have already reserved our hotel room for Stitches South 2009 in Atlanta.  And because I have so many points from all the business travel I've been doing, I was able to get our room free so we have more budget for classes and yarn, although I'm looking to spend on the classes.  I bought way too much yarn during Stitches, but most of it was spent at 2 of the local shops rather than at Stitches itself.  But there was one vendor at Stitches that had a $15 bag special.  You are given a paper bag of good size--it was by no means a small bag.  You could fill the bag up with as much yarn as you wanted and it was only $15.  I got so much yarn in that bag!  And nothing was single skeins.  I was on a mission to get 2+ skeins of anything I purchased and for the most part I stuck with that.  I did buy single skeins of two colors of Valley Yarns Northhampton from Webs but that was just because there is so much yardage in a ball.

A lot of the knitting I've been doing during November was swatches of stuff I learned during Stitches but I did manage to get some felted boxes done.  They are more bowl shaped because I left them in the washer for a full cycle and just threw them in the dryer to dry.  I didn't bother trying to shape them.  And actually I like them better this way.  The fabric is much more stiff than if I had shaped it like I did a box I made some time back.

I did a three box/bowl set and will take two to work to contain all my paper and binder clips. The goal was to get rid of the 100% felting wool in my stash.  For the most part I achieved that.  I still have a little bit left from which I'll probably knit and felt a coaster for my bed side table.  I hate putting a glass of ice next to my bed at night and waking up to a puddle of water under the glass.

Before the family arrived, I spent some time knitting up some chenille hand towels.  Mandy had given me four skeins of Lion Brand Chenille and having no idea what to do with it, I went on a search in Ravelry and found a pattern for washcloths that I

thought would work well since I had two contrasting colors.  I've done three of them so far and I'm working on the fourth but I still have enough yarn left over to do at least 1 to 2 more.  

Upon seeing the felted boxes/bowls, hand towels and all the burp and wash cloths I knitted up for my friend Ching Sia's baby, my mother decided she wanted to re-learn to knit.  Now she is the one that taught me to knit so it was a bit of an adjustment to teach the teacher.  I gave her a set of needles and some cotton and walked her through the pattern and she picked it up rather quickly, finishing two wash cloths before leaving.  I'm so proud as I've been pushing her to pick back up a hobby in her old age (okay she's not that old but I want her to have something better to do in her free time than shopping).  She's off to a running start.  

I sent her home with another skein of cotton and some 100% Vintage Fisherman's wool all of which I got at Stitches East.  She is going to do more wash cloths and also the Felted Boxes from the first Mason Dixon book.  She wrote the pattern down but I went and bought her a copy of it at the fabulous Thanksgiving sale at Krazy Knitz in Dalton, GA.  I just need to get the book in the mail to her.  Okay more to come later.  This post is already long enough.

Too Much Going On

There has been a lot going on in my world the last couple of weeks. The main thing is that I am gearing up for Nanowrimo 2008. I will be attempting to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. It's going to be a push considering I'm starting the month off with Stitches 2008 and ending with hosting the family for Thanksgiving. But I will be writing and I will be striving for that goal. You'll see additional changes to the blog as we approach the start so check back often.