The last couple of weeks have been a blur, frankly. To me, lots of things have been happening and I just sat down to review them all. Some folks would say it was a typical couple of busy weeks. You be the judge.
The MOST IMPORTANT NEWS...As of this past Saturday, I am officially a Retired Person. After just shy of 15 years, I finally decided to leave the library. Life's too short to have to deal with some people in one's life (there are a couple of personalities there that I'd tried to live with and it just wasn't happening for me) and this was a mostly easy decision for me to make. Add in the fact that my library pay for parttime work is equal or just a tiny bit less than my Social Security check for fulltime leisure....it was a no brainer decision! I sent a text to my brothers to tell them that Mom's 3 kids were all now unemployed - I was the last one to retire. One of them sent me this note: "I prefer not to think of it as being unemployed. Think of it as "working smarter"; you're being paid while you sleep in until noon. Or even if you sleep until noon next Thursday, you get paid for every day. We should have known this back in the 70's." Dangit, he's right!
I spent yesterday knitting and sewing....today will likely be more sewing. I figure I have enough projects to last me till about age 100 so I really don't need to worry about being bored.
Two weeks ago, the Qualifying Round of Sock Madness started. Everyone who registered (I think someone mentioned there were over 1500 folks from around the world who registered for this annual sock-knitting contest), received the qualifying pattern at the same time. We had exactly 2 weeks to knit a pair of socks, following the pattern exactly with no modifications AT ALL! If we did that, and sent in photos with specific areas marked so the mods could judge if we really did follow the pattern with no modifications, we made it into the actual competition. Here you see my pair:
I used a yarn with the name of Llamacorn....I'd had that yarn for a year or so and never found a pattern to use it with...this pattern wasn't necessarily the perfect one but I made it work and the moderator who judged my pair only said "Wow, a lot of colors when magnified to 150%!" You can see where I used black marking thread to show where the smocks are on the sock.
So now I'm waiting to be put on an actual team and have the First Round pattern appear in my inbox...Then I'll be knitting like a fiend to complete the pair and be one of the the set number of qualifiers for the next round. I rarely have the expectation of going past Round 3...I'm just not that dedicated a knitter nor am I that fast...I'm hoping the next round starts before Saturday morning - I'm leaving for a week in Utah and will have some quality knitting time on the plane!
Mom has been knitting, too. She decided she wanted to knit herself a sweater with some money she got for Christmas. It's been over 70 years since she last knit a sweater ( for a boyfriend who she was no longer seeing by the time she got the sweater done). She picked out a lovely little cardigan-type of sweater that is knit all as one piece except for the collar piece. No buttons or buttonholes. She's been working on it since January and this past weekend she finished it. Isn't it great? I'm so proud of her!
And she, rightly so, is proud of herself, too!
Well, I'm off to start work on my 2nd day of retirement! Thanks for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment