What a Life!

This morning I finished knitting the Nantucket Jacket from Interweave Knits Winter 2006. Mine is in the same yarn – different color (Teaberry). Now I just need to block it and then assemble it and do the crocheted edges. We have a guest staying in our spare bedroom right now, though, so I will have to wait a couple days before my “blocking board” (the bed in the guest room) becomes available.

Blocking is when you dampen the pieces of a project and then lay them out in the exact size and shape that you want them to be. My grandmother made the quilt you see in this picture – her quilts were very exact so I use the squares to help make sure everything is straight. The quilt, of course, is on the bed in our spare room.

Next on the needles is a little cardigan for Joey. Back when I first learned how to knit (May 2003), I came across this yarn and bought it, thinking I’d knit it into a cute summer sweater for Ben to wear in his one-year pictures. Well, I made the shorts I had planned to go with it but never got the sweater made. Then there wasn’t enough yarn for me to make it up for him anymore.

Initially I had just the variegated and the light blue, but about a year ago I saw the dark blue and added it to the stash. Now Joey is growing like a weed and if I don’t knit it up soon, he too will have outgrown what I might have made up with this pretty yarn.

I got it out yesterday (before our guest arrived since my stash is also kept in the spare bedroom) and swatched with it. You’re supposed to get 30 sts over4 inches with 2.5 to 3.5 mm needles. I had to use US 1 (2.5 mm) to get gauge, but the fabric looks nicest when the stitches are that small. It will be a tedious project, but very worth it.

I had some ideas of what I wanted to do – a v-neck cardigan like the one I made for Ben from knitty back in 2004. I went online to look at the dimensions of that little cardigan and then measured Joey (which was rather tricky). The thing is, I’m not sure if I have enough yarn. Looking at the specifications of that pattern, I have enough – theoretically. But I still am unsure.

That pattern also happens to use self-striping yarn, but I will be doing my own striping pattern with three different colors of yarn. After pondering my options as I finished knitting the final sleeve of Nantucket, I decided to follow the same pattern, but I will knit the front and sleeves first before I decide how to proceed with the back. If I am short on yarn, I can do the back in a completely different color (such as a coordinating green) either in the same version I did when I knit the one I made for Ben or the other version shown in the pattern, depending on how short on yarn I am. Otherwise, I may just do the back in the same stripes as I’m doing the rest of it. Ha!

So now, on to knitting the next project.

You’re probably why I titled this post “Monogamy.” In knitting circles, monogamy is when you work on one project from beginning to end without putting it down to work on another project. I did that with the Nantucket Jacket. Now my plan is to do it with this little sweater as well. [Once you get to the point where you’re blocking the project, since it takes time for the project to dry and everything, you are allowed to start working on the next project, but you come back and seam it together and everything before starting the project after the next one. Got that? This is especially important since my blocking area is otherwise engaged at the moment.]

Generally, I’m not one to have many projects on the needles at one time anyway. Some knitters have a dozen or more going at one time, all scattered around their house. I only have three knitting bags – one for large sweaters, one for small projects, and one for socks – so that’s my limit for projects that are on the needles. Things that are on serious hold – UFOs or Un-Finished Objects – get taken out of the knitting bag and placed in bag and stored along with my stash. I have a couple of those right now too, but still, only a couple. Some knitters have a dozen of those or more, too.

And why am I rambling on about UFO’s and monogamy and such? I’ve been catching up on the podcasts over at Stash and Burn this week. They are the only knitting podcasts I’ve listened to so far, but they talk a lot about using yarn from your stash (something I happen to be obsessed with these days), and I just love listening to them laugh. I know, I know, I’ll probably get nominated for the Lame Blog Award for saying that, but oh well!

Okay, enough for now. I have knitting to do.

The house is clean and tidy (except for a couple forlorn corners – the top of the chest in the guest room, the utility room shelves, and the shelves in the office, for goodness sake!) and I am calling it quits for the weekend. We are hosting a football party Saturday afternoon (with just one guest…whose house is always immaculate), and then on Monday we are having Steve’s extended family over for our quarterly gathering. If Steve thinks the house needs more cleaning, he is welcome to do it. I am done.

The one thing about being on top of everything and being a member of the neat and tidy club means that I don’t have to worry about my husband starting the “What’s this?” game. He’ll go through something – the refrigerator, a table, a shelf or something – and ask me about everything that doesn’t belong to him. He seems to think that if it isn’t his, it must be clutter. As in, stuff we don’t need that’s just filling space and getting in our way. Mind you, I could say the same about his stuff, but I don’t. Of course, “my stuff” includes everything that belongs to the boys so I get to be on the receiving end of this “game” quite often. It’s my favorite! But this weekend I should be safe…hopefully!

The thing about being a SAHM is that when holiday weekends come, you don’t get “time off” like everyone else. I still have to prepare meals, change diapers and the like. I try to at least modify our routine and follow the simplified, bare bones version. Then I try to add in special fun things like trips to the park and extra knitting time. That way it’s a change of pace at least.

So my plans for the weekend (Steve is only working a half day today and has tomorrow off which is why I’m talking about it today) include finishing the Nantucket Jacket and working on some other knitting projects I have going but haven’t touched for a few days. I also want to get out what photo frames I have and see what photos I might put in them so Steve will quit complaining about not having any pictures of the boys on his desk. I have photos that need to be hung, but I just haven’t taken the time to do it. With a clean office and someone else to pay attention to the boys for a few moments, I’m hoping I can at least get something on the wall so we can enjoy some of the pictures we have. That would mean taking some time to get better acquainted with Photoshop as well. But again, I shall have a second pair of hands and a few spare moments so I ought to be able to get that done.

Tonight college football season begins so we are going to be watching that. It’s a beautiful day – I have the windows open kind of beautiful – and I have some meat thawed that we can grill for supper. I will be running a few errands solo in town this afternoon so I may swing by the grocery store and pick up a couple hamburgers. [Hyvee has the best hamburgers in their meat department! You just buy the patties, take them home and cook them.] Then we have one more round of strawberry shortcake to enjoy.

Steve is home now so I must go. The weekend starts now… Enjoy everyone!

I’m still fine-tuning my daily routines, but we are doing well so far. This morning I asked Ben if he wanted to make his bed by himself or if he wanted me to help him. He thought about it for a moment and then said he wanted to make it by himself. So while he made his bed, I made our bed, and now both beds are made. Then at breakfast, he asked me to read to him. I think he’s getting the idea that being read to can be fun, so now I can start using it as a reward for being good while I do something I need to do, right?

Today’s focus is to take back the basement. The upstairs has been neat and tidy for about a week, but the basement has been where I’ve been taking all the clutter (mostly because that’s where it needed to be dealt with anyway). It’s a cloudy day so I won’t feel like I’m missing the sunshine by camping out in the basement. I have a bunch of stuff ready to list on ebay except that I need to package it up and find out how much it will cost to ship that since I have to include that as part of the listing. Once that stuff is out of the way, I have some paperwork to do, bills to pay (I do this weekly), and filing to do (which always seems to be behind).

The thing about having everything neat and tidy is that, at least at first (or so I’m telling myself), it seems a bit lonely. I get up in the morning and come out to the living room and since all the toys were put away when the boys went to bed, it’s like I’m the only one who lives here or something. It’s an eerie feeling that takes some getting used to, but I do find that I am more productive in a tidy room than an untidy one so I’m hoping I can adjust and it will be worth it.

When I was in college, the quarters where I had a 4.0 GPA were also the quarters where I exercised regularly and kept my dorm room or apartment neat and tidy. But then, for some reason, I always fell back into my old habits of needing to do such things instead of doing them. And schedules? I don’t know how many times I’ve made schedules as a SAHM only to have them fall by the wayside because they just weren’t working.

This time, though, it’s different. Or so I’m telling myself. I’m trying to make a flexible schedule that is based on what we’re already doing rather than imposing some unattainable ideal on myself. I’m trying to make small changes here and there instead of doing a big overhaul.

At first I was making little routines, but I’m back to working with checklists. For instance, I take a shower, do my skin care, dry my hair and then do my floor exercises. [Exercise is another thing I’ve started and stopped more times than can be counted.] The first three items I always do together, but the floor exercises, while they may generally work best after I get out of the shower because my muscles are “warm” from the hot shower and seem to respond better to stretching, there can be exceptions, such as this morning, where I want to do them sooner – or later. This morning I seemed to have a lot of nervous energy and floor exercises were something active that I could do quietly while taking a shower might have woken up certain little people who I was not ready to see yet. So having floor exercises separate from my normal shower routine allows for such deviations while still getting everything done.

Sometimes I get so discouraged when I try to bring order to my life. I’ve failed so many times, and while there are lots of people who don’t do as well as I do – whose houses are far messier than mine – there are also people who do much better than I do. I know I function much better when I am disciplined and organized, but sometimes I’m just to tired to do what I know needs to be done. Then when I tell people how I’m making all these big changes, I feel like they’re looking at me like I have two heads and all my great plans are going to be in vain, just like all the others.

My hope, though, is that if I stick with it long enough, I can establish a new groove, so to say. A new baseline. A new normal. I can fill the time I used to spend thinking about needing to do things with new and different things since the routine stuff is done and out of the way.

But that’s just a hunch – I could be totally wrong. Then again, I have made changes successfully before – I can do it again. I choose to cling tightly to hope and optimism.

Onward!

Well, we seem to be doing pretty well with our daily routine. We made supper, washed the dishes, and did baths before Steve got home from work. The house wasn’t as tidy as I wanted it to be, but it was a far more peaceful evening than usual. We were able to spend the evening enjoying being together as a family instead of the usual mayhem. The only glitch was when Steve told Ben to go get his jammies and he couldn’t because they were put away instead of laying on his bed as they usually are – they had actually been folded by Ben and put away by me (their dresser drawers are pretty hard for him to open still).

My morning routine seems to be working very well also, except that when I when I finish it, I need to schedule “crash” for about an hour afterwards. Ben made his bed by himself this morning (well, it wasn’t perfect, but I only had to coach him a little), and he has also started to take initiative and at least start the morning getting-dressed process by himself. But by the time I do all the little things, including my morning walk, I’m beat. As in, don’t ask me to do anything productive. Perhaps this is why I usually find myself at the computer, checking email, surfing blogs, and finally posting in my own blog around this time.

Homeschoolers talk about starting school stuff immediately after breakfast (before everyone disappears and starts doing their own thing). That makes sense, but I’m thinking that’s not going to work for us, at least not right now. Ben seems to be able to best entertain himself after breakfast. He’ll either play with Joey, read his favorite books (which he’s doing right now) or go play outside for a while. I’m thinking that needs to continue. Then when he starts to get bored and turn into a pesky fly, I’ll switch gears and do some activities that directly involve him, like baking or cleaning or whatever else I have up my sleeve.

One thing I’m stuck on is when to shop groceries. Starting next week, we’ll be going to the library for story time on Tuesday mornings. Shopping groceries after that (instead of after playgroup on Fridays as is our usual custom) might work well. The thing is, I hate shopping for groceries and getting all this nice produce and then not getting it cooked up before it’s no longer nice. One might think I’d have more time to cook on the weekend, but now I’m thinking that might not be so. If I’m going to be cooking during the week to keep Ben busy and Ben likes to help Steve on the weekends (he’s tired of me, I guess), the weekends might be the best time for my “break” so to say.

Regardless, we need to go to the grocery store in one shape or form today as I am out of bread and I don’t think I’ll be making any myself (though that is an option). I need to at least make a menu for the rest of the week so I can make some kind of decision on that. Going to town is easy entertainment for the boys, but I don’t like doing it every day as Steve complains if we make too many trips and going every day would wear me out anyway. Two or three trips a week seems to be enough.

Now I’m off to cook some rice for supper. [Yes, I already know what we’re having for supper and it’s not 5:17 p.m. yet – imagine!]

I am trying to review our schedules and find ideas online and come up a new routines that incorporate Ben more into what I’m doing so he isn’t so bored all the time. When I tell people that sometimes it seems like he’s bored, the suggestion is always to send him to preschool. But say I did that? That would take care of a few hours each morning, not the rest of the day. I would still have the same problem. And if my intention is to homeschool him, I am going to have to figure out a rhythm for our day that involves learning along with fun at some point – why not start now and begin working toward the type of routine we will have when we’re doing serious schooling?

I got that book last week and I’ve been reading it again and jotting down ideas that would work for us as I go. Somehow I came across as website that is similar to FlyLady except it is done by a SAHM with a large family and she talks about her routines and how she involves her children in daily life – Large Family Logistics. That, too, has been immensely helpful.

I’ve made a list of the things I need to do every day – from fixing my hair to cleaning up the kitchen after supper – and I’ve divided things into solitary and joint activities. For instance, fixing my hair is something I need to do without help (though I supposed he could stand next to me and comb his own hair if he wanted to). Cleaning up the kitchen is something where Ben can be directly involved in what I am doing. Basically, tidying, cleaning, laundry and cooking can all be activities where Ben can participate in what I am doing. Not only can he help, he can also learn as we go about our daily activities.

But may I say that involving your child in what you are doing doubles the energy required to complete the task? The day is not even half over and I’m exhausted.

We got up. We got dressed. We made our beds and tidied the house. No walk today – I walked the three previous days and the rest of the week is supposed to be cooler and nicer than today so today is my day off.

We started the laundry. Ben helped me sort the clothes from the laundry hamper (learning light from dark). Then he helped me fold and put away the clothes that were in the dryer (he folded the wash cloths which get folded in half twice – aka mathematics, specifically fractions). [See? You can learn all sorts of things without having to do worksheets from a workbook (which is the type of busywork I found so boring and hope to spare my children from…one of my prime motivations to homeschool, in case you were wondering…). I mean worksheets can be fun, and I’m sure Ben will do his share of worksheets. But there are other more fun ways you can learn the same things.]

I read to him while he ate breakfast. My goal is to get him hooked on being read aloud to. The few times I’ve done it, he’s just messed around and hasn’t listened much, so I decided I’d start while he was a captive audience so it would be easier for him to pay attention and learn how fun it was. We read one Psalm and then I read him the first chapter of Stuart Little and he made comments on the reading, which tells me he was actually listening.

Then we went to the park. The year my mom homeschooled me was the same year the neighbor girl was going to kindergarten (her first year of school). My mom was so worried that I would be disappointed that I didn’t get to go and feel left out. She explained to me what we were going to be doing and how I would be staying home and doing special school things at home. I remember the conversation and listening patiently to everything she told me. When she was done, she asked me if I had any questions. I did have one burning question: Were we going to have recess? She told me, Yes, and that was all I needed to hear to be happy staying at home instead of going to kindergarten. Today, though, we went to the park because Steve planted grass this weekend and Ben needs to stay off those areas so the grass can grow.

We made banana bread. One of my plans is to increase the amount of time I spend in the kitchen. When you first become a mom, it seems what once was a quick and easy meal is now gourmet. But now that I have Ben to entertain, I think it’s time to get the old cookbooks back out and start cooking again like I used to. I mean, they have the Food Channel where you can watch people cook all day if you want to – helping me cook should be a great activity for Ben, and cooking is one of my seemingly “former” hobbies. I measured things and told him what I was doing, and then he emptied the measuring cups into the bowl. I also let him “stir” the batter as we added various ingredients. This afternoon we’ll be making Chicken Pot Pie for supper, one of my favorites.

Making out this schedule (albeit flexible schedule) has helped me see why either I get nothing done or I get things done and basic stuff like making the beds doesn’t get done. Really, I just have three opportunities to do actual stuff besides routine stuff – a few hours in the morning, in the afternoon, and then in the evening. I need to make the most of those times by knowing what I need to get done and doing it. Perhaps this realization will help stop the floundering between being productive and having a well-functioning household that is comfortable to live in. But my schedule still include open, unstructured times, which are key to my keeping my sanity – I hate having to follow a moment-by-moment schedule all the time.

But now Joey is awake, and Ben is wanting some lunch. Back to the routine…

I just love that picture!

How did I take it? I used a piece of white posterboard, laid it on my bed, and arranged my knitting on top of it. For specific camera settings (aperature, ISO, shutter speed), click on the picture and then look at the exif data in flickr. I shot the picture in RAW which means I was able to adjust the white balance, sharpness, contrast, etc. in post-processing on my computer. [Usually cameras process the file and turn it into a jpeg – a RAW file allows the photographer to do the processing instead which tends to get better results than what you might get with photoshopping a jpeg file.] I actually have Photoshop now (finally) and am slowly trying to learn how to use it to make color adjustments – I must say that doing the same things with a RAW file is much, much easier.

The subject of that photo is the beginning of the second half of the front of the Nantucket Jacket I am making. A couple weeks ago I complained about being in a slump and wishing for a large project with a pattern to follow so I could be more of a zombie than having to think so hard about my knitting projects as I do when I design them. When Interweave Knits Winter 2006 issue arrived with that pattern on the cover, I knew I had to make it. But the design requires lots of manipulation in order to get it to fit a normal person (as you can tell by the wide range of “interesting” results shown on the knit-a-long blog). It took me a while to decide exactly how I was going to approach it, but now that I made up my mind, things seem to be going along quite smoothly. Hopefully it will be as much of a joy to wear as it is to knit.