Friday, Friday: 6.12.2020

I am entering this weekend with much clearer eyes and a heart that is filling up. I have heard stories of people who are learning, I’ve seen myself learn, and I know that we will continue to call others into the work of anti-racism and equity in this country. I’m also really overwhelmed with the positive response to the Paeonia shawl - if you were interested in testing you should have received an email from me this week, please let me know if you haven’t or if you have other questions about this design!

This week:

• I really believed the saying for the first time, “The more creativity you use, the more creativity you have.” I have two other design ideas in my brain I’m excited to work on this weekend.
• B graduates from his residency program! Parts of this spring have felt very “normal” with his pending graduation because he is continuing on in a fellowship at the same hospital where he did his residency, but we have a virtual ceremony tonight and I’m sure it will all start to feel very real.
• We scheduled out our lunches and dinners ahead of time and it took so much pressure off our daily schedule. Will be doing this more in the future.
• We ate homemade pizza bagels (a revelation).
• I found joy in going outside to check on my newly planted rosemary plant every day.
• I got back into playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is just truly a gorgeous game.
• I read up more on how to think intersectionally about gender, farming, environmentalism, and the work I do every day.
• We said a hard goodbye and a new hello.
• We went to Costco and didn’t lose our minds.

We will be at a house at the beach for the weekend celebrating B’s graduation and enjoying the sunshine (and hoping to be semi-solitary as we do so). I wish you a weekend of book-reading, learning, knitting, and joy.

Friday, Friday 5.29.2020

It’s the last Friday in May, and what a journey it has been. My heart is breaking this week and is simultaneously so angry for the injustice in our country against people of color. I know I have so much work to do as a white woman in the South and moving in white spaces I am seeing just how far so many of my peers have to go also in understanding and combating racism today. It can feel overwhelming at times but it is our burden to carry. Love for our neighbor means action.

This week, I fought a mostly winning battle with the vegetables in my fridge that I’ve been accumulating from weekly pick ups from a local farm and it has spurred me on towards several new-to-me recipes that I have loved: honey-glazed spicy turnips, zucchini fritters, and blistered snap peas, kale and a soft-boiled egg over rice vinegar noodles. I feel as though I am just now understanding how much I love turnips just as turnip season is coming, and balancing this by trying out zucchini recipes just as its season is beginning. We have been consistently keeping a jar of herb-y yogurt sauce in our fridge to spoon on top of fritters, for crudités, and to dollop on top of proteins throughout the week and WOW I am going to deeply lament the end of fresh dill season. I’m also contemplating the acquisition of a dehydrator to extend the life of these glorious herbs and wonder if anyone out there has experience they would like to lend to this effort?

The making this week has been slow and meditative. I am making great progress on my V-Neck boxy sweater and hardly any progress on the new design I am working on, thanks to some brain-scraping work loads induced by squeezing a five-day work week into only four which left only room for rounds and rounds of stockinette. My printed patterns from PDF Plotting arrived this week but aside from being unrolled, have as yet remained untouched. (But admired, longingly, from my desk with much anticipation.) I am also loving briefly, before bed, wandering into Avonlea with Anne of Green Gables now that I have it in paperback rather than attempting to make progress with my iPad. Her adventures and misadventures have consistently brought a smile to my face and have given me dreams of tea time and simplicity and endless blossoms.

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you get the rest that you need this weekend, so that you can show up and advocate and act the way that we need right now. But please, take care of yourself first.

Friday, Friday: 5.15.2020

Happy Friday!

This week felt SO LONG to me. The beginning seemed slow, at least, and then yesterday and today sped up with meetings, activities, and mask-making for work in advance of some community food distribution tomorrow. In the middle of it all was some really good stuff.

This week:

We polished off the last of the BEST strawberries that a wonderful friend had dropped off.

B and I had some great conversations and are making exciting progress towards achieving some goals we’ve had for a while.

I started a new personal finance book that has made me laugh out loud multiple times (in a good way).

I made great progress on my Things of Spring cross stitch and finally feel like I’m getting in the groove with those tiny stitches.

I got two more succulents in the mail!

I ventured way outside of my neighborhood to pick up some decent sushi for the first time in two months.

I made a bunch of recipes from the Nom Nom Paleo cookbook. (Yum)

One of my elephant bush plants that had started to wither started making a comeback with a little more sunlight. There’s likely a lesson there.

I have plans for a pretty productive weekend, but we’ll see how that goes! I am really stoked for our local farmer’s market to re-open with socially distant vendors and to pick up some pre-orders I put in this week. I miss our local market so much.

Happy weekend everyone!

Friday, Friday 5.8.2020

Happy Friday!

This week was the first full week of Me Made May, and I think I managed to wear something handmade almost every day this week. The weather here has been unexpectedly cool, so I even got to put a few sweaters into the rotation before they get packed away for the summer, tucked into their bins and awaiting the fall and its golden days.

This week:

• We switched up our eating habits a little bit and it felt pretty great not to eat sandwiches every day.
• I took a chance on an old website and managed to find an embroidery kit out of stock most places in my hands by Friday and ready to be stitched into something amazing.
• I committed to sewing some masks for students that I work with and braved the curbside pick up at two craft stores.
• I slept really well.
• I started a new project that’s been on my heart and mind for, oh, years! I can’t wait to share more.
• I discovered a vine growing on my window made it to the inside and I’m temporarily counting it as a new plant baby.
• I started sewing a dress.
• We went on a walk near our neighborhood and picked some wildflowers.
• I watched my cats continue to snooze their lives away.
• I remembered the amazing excitement of stash diving.
• We drank pour-over coffee almost every day.
• I caught up with a dear friend.

All things considered, not a bad week at all. I hope you are doing well and have lots of wonderful things on deck. And happy Mother’s Day to all of the amazing moms out there (especially mine)!

Friday, Friday 5.1.2020

WHAT A WEEK.

Demotivation and a crazy week do not a happy person make. But we made it!

This week I made some fun progress on my Things of Spring counted cross stitch. Still only about halfway done and trying to set some goals around this project so I’m done before summer arrives :)

This week I walked over 8 miles all thanks to the reminders of my trusty FitBit.

This week I made plans to celebrate a friend in a socially distant and responsible way.

This week we made progress on some personal financial goals which in the midst of all of this craziness felt really good.

This week is also the start of Me Made May! This is the first year that I think I’ve had enough wearable handmade garments to actually realistically participate in showcasing my handmade wardrobe and I’m excited to finish two other garments that have been on my list for a long time as well. More details on that this week with my sewing goals for May.

Happy weekend friends, and may it be a restful one.

Friday, Friday 4.1720

This week was a pretty tough one on the motivation front, I felt a real slump in my mood and general feeling going into five weeks of quarantine. Various news sources (with varying reliability, I will admit) have predicted that here in NC we’ll hit our peak for the virus as early as two weeks from now, as late as mid-June, but either way, it is clear that this is not going to be a three or six week situation here. We are in this, and in it for the long haul.

Despite some panic and a decent amount of struggle, here’s what made this week good.

A friend is helping me to become a respectable plant mom and I can slowly see my aloe plant, long neglected, start to perk up.

I’m definitely going to finish my Wool & Honey sweater this weekend.

I looked through all of K & C’s wedding photos and there are some really fantastic ones in there.

We ate a crazy amount of 15 bean soup after Easter courtesy of trying to eat almost a whole ham by ourselves. It was awesome.

I am about eight years late to the washi tape craze but I am all in. Last night I got on Etsy and purchased this one, this one, and this one. So cute and can’t wait to bring some more creativity to my planner and some letters I’m writing during quarantine season.

I organized my desk drawers and it’s really nice to open them up looking for pencils or scissors now.

I went on a run/walk on Wednesday in the cool weather and it felt really good.

I finished The Nightingale. It was ok, some compelling story moments with some, in my opinion, clunky character development, but mostly I just felt happy about crossing that off my goal list to finish. I have heard that The Great Alone by the same author is really good so I may try her newest novel instead.

This weekend I’m looking forward to picking up pastries and a couple of weekly favorites from my favorite bake shop, sewing a few more masks (maybe), and going on a long walk with B while he plays disc golf, if the weather will hold. Happy Friday!

Friday, Friday 4.10.20

What a week!

I said my goals out loud and started a daily blog habit that I am loving.

I made a large batch of French onion soup and loved eating it all week.

I watched the pink shadows outside my frosted bathroom window become vibrantly pink with the giant azalea blooms outside.

I didn’t do a great job of getting up and moving my body, but I got a lot of work done.

I finished a big project for a tiny human.

I made two cakes, including a wedding cake.

We mulched our front yard and welcomed spring weather.

I cooked a delicious hash for breakfast.

I got ready to love on some dear friends who will host a private ceremony today for their wedding in lieu of the party they had planned.

I ripped out a few inches on my Wool & Honey sweater when I saw a mistake I knew I’d never be able to let go of, and felt good about it.

I hung out with my husband and cats a lot.

It feels as though we have been living in our home in self-quarantine forever, but really it’s only been about a month. It’s weird thinking of all of the things I used to take for granted as so normal that now I miss so much. Going to the library. Getting a coffee downtown. Eating at a restaurant. Popping into my local yarn store. Not wondering whether a business is going to be open this weekend that I randomly need to visit. Going for a swim at the Y. Not wearing a mask outside. I know we’re getting through this, and in some ways have settled into a routine, but in others it just continues to be hard and I want to acknowledge and be OK in that space too. Happy weekend friends. May it be full of health and goodness and love for you!