Productive Week

(I'm sorry if you read my first attempt to publish this post with the photos hanging off the edge of the page... What a crazy convoluted business this has been. Anyway, I'm now trying to figure it out with Flickr as my image host... and changing my whole stinkin' layout.)

On to my post: Last week was spent turning messes like this...

... into clean/organized spaces like this...

I threw junk out, took three van-loads of things we no longer needed down to Goodwill, and put things away that had been sitting out for ages. Next, I need to go through all our stacks of papers - ugh. That will take awhile... but for now I can breathe a bit. You wouldn't know this by coming to my house and peeking around on a regular weekday, but I am a neat-freak.

I love to have everything in its place. I can think better when my space is organized.

I have spent quite a bit of time since becoming a mother, breathing out the angst that comes from not having an organized environment. I've had to let go of the irritation and frustration over it, because really... it's not worth being angry about. It is what it is... and every once in awhile (for about 5 or 10 minutes) I can have it the way I like it. And that's actually very nice, because it reminds me that the possibility of it isn't entirely out of reach.

In the midst of all the purging and cleaning, my beautiful prize fiber arrived - the Sheep 2 Shoe Kit from Jersey Knitter!

In case you are wondering, that is a lot of fiber. 8.5 oz is more than I usually spin in one sitting, but I'm determined to start this project soon so I immediately divided it up and braided the sections so it's all ready to go when I'm done with my current spinning projects. I'm really getting into knitting with my handspun lately. I recently finished some lovely singles...

... and one skein was combined with some Fisherman's Wool to become my winter hat!

The pattern was Three Tams on Knitty, and I really enjoyed knitting it. So much so, that I'm using the other single to knit another one in reverse. Besides, it looks cute on me...

... don't you think? And it's super warm with the double-stranding. I had to take a photo of the inside too because it looked so awesome! It really shows how far I've come with this knitting thing over the past 7 years. I mean, there's no way the back of my fair-isle projects would have looked like this when I first started out...