Just do the things.

I attended an online fiber people hangout this afternoon.  A hundred or so of us gather most Sundays at the invitation of somebody we support via Patreon, to chat and to see what he's been doing (brocante-ing, or a vendor show, or developing a pattern, or whatever), and if you don't feel like being "live" you can sit and work on a project and let the discussion flow past.

Today our host showed some yarn he has been spinning, and said that he'd been stuck for a while, but it's Tour de Fleece season and he hoped he still remembered how.  Yes, he does, and we ogled the purple-with-flecks-of-pink two-ply yarn wound on the niddy-noddy.  Discussing how he approached it, the host said he let go of the need for perfection, and focused on just doing the thing, and relaxing into the rhythm, and simply making thread, and yarn.

This reminded me of a memory that FB showed me, from this date in 2013, when I posted:

It's not quite the same, and yet so very similar.  Sometimes loving what you do, and being inspired to do something, don't align, and sometimes they do, and sometimes it's not the main thing you're supposed to be doing, but doing a bit of it can be refreshing - and soul-satisfying.

So I have my job, and do as I should there, and next week I find out how well they think I am doing (annual review time = report cards for grownups), so it's a time of tension and wanting to do some things and not others, and well.........

I volunteered for a couple pattern-test projects.  One I didn't finish, but there was no deadline, and I have been working on it this weekend.  This is for the Center for Knit & Crochet, and I offered to do either pattern, since I knit and crochet, so they sent both.  I decided to use some leftover yarn, and then realized I was doing the knitted bear in the same colour they had used, so I restarted and now have twin blue bears.  I'll do a separate post about them when CKC allows me to do so.  I did find a bunch of errors in the patterns, so scan and emailed the corrections, as well as emailing one immediately in case others had a question.

The other is socks and fingerless mitts for a designer whose patterns I've looked at, and purchased a couple, but she is very big into using beads and I am not big into beads.  This pattern is heavily cabled with NO beads, so it is right in my pleasure place as to knitting.  I don't like working on a deadline, and had those bears first, so I am behind the others.  On the upside, this means several of the errors in the pattern, or places where clarity is lacking, have gotten sorted.  However, the designer wants to see the socks and get feedback within three weeks from the cast-on for the socks, and the mitt a week after then, so I need to catch up.

I had a problem in that I generally don't buy solid coloured sockweight yarns, because I'd rather do plain quick socks which means a patterned or wild yarn works quite well for not-boring socks.  I found a skein of blue semisolid from Bombshell Dyeworks that will not hide the pattern, so onwards to the testing!  This will also be a blog post once we're permitted.

I've also been making soaps again, as some new moulds arrived.  A friend on KnitTalk posted about his designs because she makes chocolate, and he advertises for that purpose, and she saw some with knitted designs.  I looked and saw they are large enough for soaps, so:

I am also trying to finish that purple-and-pink blanket so I can leave it with my friend to deliver to Warm Up, America! at DFW Fiber Fest.  I'll see her next weekend, and can work on some of it while we're socializing, but it's large and unwieldy and won't do for theater work.

Time to get back to knitting - things are on deadline!