Sorry about my lack of blogging!  Two things have kept me from the computer and from the blog.  1. I have been transferring 3 years worth of photos from my desktop hard drive to an external hard drive which is SLOW. 2. the hard drive on my laptop (that is less than a year old!) crashed.  Thankfully the day it actually happened I brought it to a computer shop where they were able to salvage all my files (including I TUNES!).  The warranty on my computer was still good so I had it replaced for free which was an added bonus.

So yeah. I’ve been away but now I’m back!

Minnesota was awesome.  It was really more epic than I had anticipated.  My cousin drove up from Nebraska to stay a few days with me, I got to see my best friend for the first time in 4 years (way too long!), I met up with people I hadn’t seen in 10 years, and I spent a good amount of time with my grandparents.  My grandfather was diagnosed with alzehiemers last year and now that I actually have free time I am determined to see him more often while he still knows who I am.  Anyone who has experienced this terrible disease knows how hard it can be.  But to put it in the words of my amazing grandfather, “At least it doesn’t hurt.”

I had an excellent time having coffee with them, spending time with my most favorite cousin ever, and seeing my dad.  It can be hard having family live so far away but now that the Mr and I are finally free of California it seems as though we can actually make the trip more often.  I know this has a lot to do with being able to get time off and having more money.

I was lucky to be able to run around and play cameras with my dad.  Since he’s local he knows all the most fun places to shoot and I’m still editing photos.

Left to my own devices I will always to back to the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden to visit the giant spoon and cherry.  It’s a huge symbol of Minneapolis for me because we used to pass it all the time when I was with my dad.

While in Minnesota I got to see quite a few people I hadn’t seen in 10 years.  It was a little nerve wracking at first but it turned out pretty fantastic with the exception of one visit.  I went to my friend’s comedy show and was relieved that he was actually quite funny (I was worried because the first three before him were not funny at all), met at the Muddy Pig with my friend Erin to have drinks and laugh so hard we almost passed out.  Also we spotted a Collin Ferral look alike that I couldn’t stop staring at because it was SO ERRIE!

It was a fantastic time and I think I’m going back in the spring (I’ll never do another MN winter on purpose ever again).  I wore myself so ragged though that I needed a full week to recoup!  I was running around from 8am till 1am every day and frankly, I’m not cool enough to pull that off anymore!

I’m off to Minnesota for a week or so.  I’m stoked to see my family, my best friend, and even some that I haven’t seen in the last 10 years.  Until then…  

It’s that time again Mr Man, our anniversary, the day we arbitrarily chose to unite our lives in Las Vegas surrounded by family and become a family of our own.  We didn’t have a big wedding and it cost us under 2 grand all said and done.  Frankly, I would have aloped if I knew our families wouldn’t have had their feelings get hurt.  It still surprises me that we have people telling us that it’s the best wedding they’ve ever been to.  It wasn’t fancy but it was perfect kinda like us. 

It’s been a crazy year but I finally feel like we have all our feet on the ground and we are off and running. 

We now have a small farm with sheep, goats, chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys, and two dogs.  It’s amazing how our life has changed.

The things that haven’t changed is just how much I love you and frankly, I know for certain that I love you more now than I did when we got married.  You are truly my best friend and really all that I need.

I don’t know if you realized just how crazy I was when you first met me but now I think that you secretly like the chaos.  Your my best friend, I love you more than I could words could ever express and you are truly the best thing that’s ever happened to me.  I’m lucky to know you and to call you mine.  Happy 8 years baby, here’s to the next 60!

(I’m having issues getting my card reader to read pictures so until I can post all about my inlaws and the awesomeness of our last weekend here’s a random thing I stole from Monica.)

1982: HEY, I’m BORN & stuff.
1983: I’m pretty sure my parents made me wear tights on my head, nice.
1984: My mom has me on a horse before I can even ride a bike.
1985: This year had lots of clothing that matched my dolls.
1986: I remember my dad moving into an apartment.
1987: My mom got me a bulldog!
1988: I road cross country from Minnesota to Washington with my Buppa to visit family.
1989: Ug, I became a day camper, I dislike camp.
1990: I have a new stepdad!
1991: We went to Disney World and I chased down every adult in a huge disney character suite.
1992: I officially become completely awkward. *sigh*
1993: Aparently it’s awesome to rhyme my name with anything and everything even if it doesn’t actually rhyme.
1994: Teased teased teased then I beat up one of the coolest kids in school, mom was proud.
1995: What a bastard of a year, I’m currently the most teased kid in this school.
1996: Hello Shawna! You are now my best friend!
1997: Shawna and I spent the whole year dressing alike, it was dorky but in retrospect I think we were cute.
1998: I ran my ass off and lost a whole bunch of weight but was totally miserable about it.
1999: I had my first boyfriend and he was a looser.
2000: I graduated and played in Carnegie Hall in New York with my orchestra.
2001: I went to college and it kinda sucked.
2002: I won 5 grand off the powerball and was 1 number away from winning 42 MILLION dollars.
2003: I married my husband after dating for 4 months, best decision of my LIFE.
2004: Matt and I traveled up to the Russian River and had the most amazing camping trip ever.
2005: Our family business moved offices and we moved to Camarillo.
2006: WORK WORK WORK WORK WORK…nervous breakdown (or close to it).
2007: We moved to Ohio for business and I met my cousin Rebecca as an adult.
2008: We moved back to Ohio and I did have a complete breakdown, thank god for zoloft, but met AMAZING new friends who owned alpacas.
2009: Mr and I were both unemployeed and it sucked ass.
2010: We moved to Washington, met Monica in the flesh!
2011: Finished writing Mildred, started writing another story, have knitting patterns published in actual magazines!

1. This blog is amazing.  Each post brings new and amazing art to the forefront.  This particular page is amazing.  The last image reminds me off the cover from J.M. McDermott’s cover from Never Knew Another.  Beautiful.

2. I have decided to take a step back from designing knits.  I’m focusing on Mildred – though it seems I might have gotten her into a spot I’m not quite sure how to get her out of – and knitting for myself which I haven’t done in forever.  I had some disappointing news regarding a design I did for a magazine.  Basically I made the mistake of insuring something that was to be sent out of the country thinking I was doing something smart.  Well customs decided that the insured value of the package determined it’s physical worth even though it was marked commercial sample and the magazine refused the package because customs wanted like $150 for it.  So I’m waiting for it to come back.  It was supposed to be in the Winter 2011 issue but now if it comes back in any sort of decent time frame it might be squeezed into Spring 2012.

It’s kind of a blow to my ego.  Anyone who knows me knows I like to do things perfectly (if not better than everyone else) the very first time.  I’ve been working on chillin’ on that but it’s hard.  So I’m trying to decide on a sweater to knit and doing it just for fun.

3. Thank you all for your insightful comments on my last post.  You all raised some good points.

In the meantime here are some random animal pictures…

Oops is doing so much better!  He’s running around with the other goats but still reserved and quiet.  He just wants to cuddle which is adorable.

I have a turf war on my hands.  Something I never would have expected honestly.  I am pretty sure that the geese started it.  They have gotten used to pushing the chickens around so they might have tried to push the turkeys around.  Thing is…there are 8 turkeys and 3 geese.  The big tom has decided he’s not going to just take geese gruff so they chased the geese and the geese ran.  Today I actually had to jump over the fence from the back yard to the back pasture to make the turkeys stop chasing the geese.  The turkeys fly, the geese don’t so I don’t see this as being very fair. 

Poor turkeys have no idea that they are dinner (except for our breeding trio) and the geese are not.  The geese will probably have the last laugh but for now it’s war. 

Apparently this happens when a tom is really upset.

I think the geese are regretful for starting shit. 

I love the depth of field in this shot so much! Yay for new lenses!

The goats are so naughty!  Thankfully they are like Tank and can be deterred with threat of water.  I just point the hose at them and they scatter like it’s acid.  It makes me giggle like a fool.

The chickens are nearing egg laying age and getting prettier every day.

Earl is king of the roost.  He is definitely the head rooster but I don’t think Maurice minds.  Earl crows full length now while Maurice only does one little note.

The turkeys.  Those damn trouble makers.  They think they should be allowed to go where ever they wish, even in my garden.  Normally I wouldn’t care but this drives Tank nuts and then he bursts through my fence in the garden and walks all over my beans. *sad face*  Also, you’d think they would learn because Tank has almost grabbed them out of the air twice.

Today I am 29 years old as of 10:59 am.  It’s my last year till the big 3-0.  Frankly I’m going to rock my 30′s like a Rolling Stone (though I bet I won’t trash any hotel rooms).  I’m chill about the idea of leaving the 20′s behind.  They have been some of my worst years and some of the best but either way I finally feel comfortable with who I am and what I’m about.  I hated being an insecure 20 year old not knowing who my friends were or what I was as an adult human.   I married my amazing husband at 21 and frankly, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done and probably ever will do.   So yeah, I’m 29 and have 12 months left of it.  Here’s a give away for you

To enter just comment on the blog sometime between now and July 8th (the release of my newest pattern Weave It) and I will have the Mr do the random number generator thingy.

Here is what I’m going to be giving away.

1. A complete package of all my pay patterns published including Weave It.  (You can see the full scope here) 
Here’s a little preview…

2. Your own finished Weave It Shawl

OR High Desert Shawl

3. One braid of your choice of my hand dyed roving from my shop. (Full selection can be found here)
  

4. One Skien of Falkland Hand Dyed Sock Yarn

I’m a frustrating person, I’m also a person prone to easily be frustrated.  This is probably mostly because I expect perfection out of myself even those things I have no idea about or have never done before.  If I were to go caving I would expect myself to not look like a jackass, same as if I were suddenly an astronaut, deep sea diver, or rodeo clown.  I don’t have a lot of room for errors with in myself which leads to a lot of frustration and built up anger.  Oddly I don’t expect anything of the sort from others around me.  Exactly the opposite I am the first to make anyone feel better if they are learning or something didn’t happen exactly as they desired.  I’m a great cheerleader for everyone except myself.

I won’t toot my own horn, I won’t even let you know there’s a horn to be tooted because as my mom jokes “that would lead to a big head” which in my family is the epitome of bad behavior.  I think this has also led to my personal perfection expectations.  Maybe I hope that if I do something amazing enough others will notice how great I can do something.  Many tears have been shed over such a silly notion of instant perfection.  More perplexing is that I am not actual a perfectionist.  I don’t keep a spotless house, I don’t mind dirt or the odd bug, my laundry pile must threaten me with a baseball bat before I accept imminent defeat unless I do something about it, and cooking is always a mish mash of what I have in the fridge, a bunch of spices that might raise an eyebrow of a chef, and frankly, a lot of broccoli. 

There were a few days last month where I lost my beans.  I mean total and complete mental explosion.  Thankfully no one was here to see it in person.  I slogged through and have put it behind me.  While trying to coax my 6 week old red cornish chickens into the coop for their first night out of their brooder in the garage and starting to get mad I realized something.   This was absolutely nothing to get upset about.  The chickens, with their brain the size of my thumb nail had no concept why they needed to be in the coop or why I was starting to fling (yes I do mean fling) them willy nilly over my shoulder.  Frankly my anger was making it worse, my own frustration was getting in my way.  So I relaxed as I do when I knit a pattern that just doesn’t make sense no matter how many times you read it.  I accepted that I could not understand it and just followed the directions.  With the chickens I relaxed, took a deep breath, and let the Mr actually help me (something I don’t do very often) get all those damn chickens in for the night. 

Later in the week my turkeys were out for the tenth time in so many days.  I have no idea how they are getting out and every way seems impossible.  They are wily birds and as I was trying to fight a large strong turkey back through the door to their run I realized once again my own frustration was making it worse.  I’m a bigger, better, faster person.  I like to do everything fast and better than really needs to be done.  I was trying to wrestle this damn bird back into the run and it wasn’t working, do I really need to get this turkey back in the coop in 5 seconds flat?  Does it really have to be so crazy all the time?  So I opened the door (which is not so much a door as a flap) and moved out of the way fully aware that any turkey currently inside the coop could easily now be outside which would only add to my perceived problems.  What happened when I relaxed and gave up some control?  That damn turkey went right in the run to be with his fellows and I was amazingly not frustrated or angry.

This realization should have come much faster for me (though I’m not always a fast learner).  I am never frustrated when I knit.  I never get angry when a stitch drops, my needle slips out of a row of stitches (in lace of course), or my ball of yarn rolls off my lap into a pile of dirt when I am outside.  I never worry that it won’t turn out, or that it won’t be perfect.  Nothing I knit is perfect, I’m a constant cheater, I rarely rip back.  Knitting allows me to be relaxed and free in a way I don’t allow myself to be with anything else.  If something doesn’t turn out I can easily rip it out and make something else and no one will ever know the difference.   I am peaceful when I knit and when I am peaceful things go much better for me.  So with this new knowledge in hand I’m going to try to make a pact with myself to always be as if I am knitting, to allow myself to “cheat” and take a little more relaxed stance.  It is not important to anyone else that I be perfect (which I am not) so why should it be important to me?  For now I’m going to breath before allowing the frustration to overtake me, I’m going to remember that it helps nothing and only makes matters worse (especially if you are working with animals) and give myself a break.

(BTW instead of flinging chickens into the coop I have now realized that if I put their feed in the coop 30 minutes prior to shut in all chickens will put themselves to bed, even those wee wily red cornish who caused such chaos).

You know your life has changed when you put your hand square in a chicken poop and don’t chringe.  I’m not really sure who I am anymore or where I fit.  My biggest thrill is still going to the yarn shops but it is followed closely by the local farm and feed store.  I think it’s a sickness but I think it also is genetic because I remember going to the tack shop with my mom when I was young and it was just as fun.

Never so fully have I felt that I am where I am supposed to be.  I may not wear great shoes (though I love my Keen’s to death), my clothes may be covered in dirt, but I have never been happier.  I love working with roving, I love writing and tending my chickens.