Snowday

In telling you about the life of the hat, I briefly mentioned our snow day, which turned into weekend. This is a thing I had started when my nieces and nephews were young.  I don’t know why I decided to do it, but it was probably some hippy anti-consumerism idea I had.  Instead of buying them junk, I would get them a disposable camera each, and we would go to the mountains and sled on some random by-road.

A couple of things I really appreciated about this is that I got to spend time with all these people, and create memories… and we have a lot of those. It also made the whole Christmas timing thing a lot easier.  With how families have grown, there is often a lot of stress about getting to all the Christmas functions without hurting feelings.  Snow day has to be in winter because…snow.  But otherwise, it can be whenever (unlike Christmas).  We’ve added to it, of course. Mo started coming when he came back from the Marines.  When my mom and Jane moved to central Oregon, it became a time we could meet up.  When Poopie and I got together, he and Things 1 and 2 came as well.

As everyone gets older, traditions are more difficult to maintain. Since Things 1 and 2 are adults and, therefore, no longer required to join me, they opt out.  My nieces and nephews have jobs, and significant others, and lives of their own.  This year had started out much larger, but one by one, people bowed out.  So, this year’s snow day was just me, Poopie, Mo, and O.  I think the snow day tradition may be dead, but that is how life goes.  You need to let go of things that no longer work for you, and it may be that snow day doesn’t work for them anymore.

We had fun anyway, though, and extended snow day to a whole weekend with a cabin! We were able to get to the snow Saturday morning about the time we are usually leaving the valley. Had Mo and Poopie not decided to hike around the lake, we probably would have gone out again.  I took several projects to work on.  The knit hat being one.  We also played board games.  O introduced me to a new tablet game, which I’ve already finished (as well as the three sequels).

You would be so proud of me, Dear Reader, I took pictures….many of which, my camera ate…but I salvaged a few. I’m not going to re-post the hat, but below is the montage of crafting.  You can see the several pairs of socks I had packed for keeping toasty.  Those socks were done on my CSM.  I’ll blog about the joys of CSM knitting at a later date.   There are also some gloves my dear friend Life After Work made for me last year (I don’t’ recall if it was birthday, or Christmas, she’ll remind me, I’m sure).

Here we have another project I am working on. I can’t show much yet, because it is a gift long in the making.  While I’m pretty certain the recipient doesn’t read this, I don’t wish to let the cat out of the bag. As you can see, I don’t limit myself to yarn work.  While it IS my main medium, it’s not my only medium.  I believe this project will be the first blog of what will become WIP Wednesday.  I’ll be adding more days to the blog.  More on that later.

Back to the hat and changes. You can’t tell on this hat, because of Fun Fur, but that cast on is called a tubular cast on.  When I first started knitting hats, I did the long tail cast on, because that was what I knew.  Then I learned the German twisted cast on, which gave much more stretch, so I used that.  I then learned how to do a twisted cast on in knit and purl, so I was able to maintain purls all the way down.  In fact, the hat Poopie is wearing in the featured photo has that cast on.  And now, I do the tubular cast on.  Which is my favorite so far, it has the same tension as the rest of the knitting, and is most like a cohesive fabric to me.  So, we change and grow in crafting as well as in life.

Speaking of growing, I’m working on expanding my empire! Buahahahahahaha   I think I mentioned initially I have no idea what I’m doing.  So, I’m following a writing mantra/belief/saying? One of those words is the right word.  As I understand it, the saying goes “better published than perfect”.  So, I started blogging without having all the support pieces necessarily in place.  I am taking you on my journey of discovery.  You can be total hipsters about this blog when I become disgustingly famous.  You can keep me humble by reminding me of all the missteps I’ve made.

To that end, I’m going to still only promise one post a week, but I will have different focuses (foci?) for different days. Thursday will be my gallimaufry day.  I’m working on a PodPledge Project Page.  (I think Chaz made that a tongue twister on purpose).  It is also up, but also in process.  I’ll be putting the knitted traveling hat up for sale on the merch page, and adding new stuff as I go along.  I’ve got a Facebook page as well that I have yet to do anything with.  I will also be taking a social media class at Madrona next month.  So, yeah, I am expanding, and working.  On top of normal every day crap.  I have no idea why I do this to myself.  Sooo many changes coming up.  This is exciting right?