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January is my selfish month – I’ve usually been knitting and making for others during the traditional holiday months, so on January 1 I usually cast on something for myself, and take the month to indulge in casting on various items on my list.

The first item I cast on was the Cabled Leaf Pullover by Alana Dakos. I meant to cast this on last year but I never got around to it, and I’ve had the yarn for it for a while.

The pattern is lovely and the yarn is in my color crush for the year – burgundy. I have finished the front and am halfway done with the back, but as usual, I cannot have just one project of my needles, which brings me to my second cast-on of the year, and my first finished object.

The Exploration Station shawl by Stephen West is one of the most well known shawl patterns on Ravelry. I named it Parisian Exploration – I lived in Paris for a while after Uni, and have visited several times since, and the colors were my interpretation of a delicious chocolat chaud from Angelina enjoyed during a Parisian morning.

This is another indulgence I am enjoying this year – I am naming my projects after whatever inspired me to make them, not just after the pattern name itself.

My LYS is hosting designer Marie Greene in March, and I decided to make one of her pieces to wear to the event. I had been eyeing the color Eel from Hedgehog Fibres for a long time and it was perfect for the accent color of Marie’s Brunswick Tee.

As I type this, I have just begun the bottom colorwork section using the Eel color, and I absolutely love it. I will have a lot of leftover from this color and I am thinking of how I can best use it. Maybe a cowl to wear with the Tee?

I discovered a very talented dyer, Onyx Fiber Arts, and I saw a sock weight skein she had in the most stunning shade of burgundy. I was looking to make a DK weight top, though, and she was kind enough to make a custom sweater-quantity in that same burgundy color, in the DK weight.

With January almost over, I am hoping to finish these projects in the next few weeks, and I will also begin working on a blanket that a friend asked me to finish for her.

I am sure I will be casting on a bunch more projects in February. I can’t help it, it makes me happy to start new pieces and it makes me just as happy to work on them and finish them. I wear what I make all the time, I love wearing my sweaters and my hats and mittens, and I am so lucky to work in a yarn shop with amazing coworkers who are so incredibly talented and generous in sharing their knowledge.

See you at the end of February!

It was about a year ago that I began thinking of what I would make the following year.

Yeah, I’m like that.

This is what I came up with:

Let me sit back and laugh, heartily, at my attempt to control the fact that I have the attention span of a gnat, because I have finished a grand total of TWO of these projects.

TWO.

The bottom left and the bottom right.  That’s it.  C’est tout.  In my defense I did mean to make all these; in my defense I did start two others, the mittens in middle row right, and the sweater in top row left.  And in my defense, I did make two of the bottom right cardigans, one for me, and one for a friend.

That said, I can confirm my complete and utter failure to follow a plan.

However!  Check this out!

I set a challenge on Ravelry to complete 30 items this year.  Technically, I have made more than 30 because I’ve made random hats here and there, but per the tally on Ravelry I have one more item to finish before I fulfill my self-set challenge.

Not bad, I would say.

The 29 items I have made include the most difficult knit I’ve completed, the Liguria brioche hat Alex requested when he visited me at work (I work part time at a . . . wait for it . . . yarn store) because the child just had to choose the hardest thing for mom to make.  Had it not been by my awesome coworker, there is no way I would have finished the hat, and I’ve discovered brioche knitting is not for me, I even attempted an easier style and failed at that as well, and as I prefer my knitting to be fun, I decided this is a technique I will not attempt again, at least not in the near future.

But look at him:

He was so happy and that makes the frustration worth it.  That’s parenting in a nutshell.

So I will probably not make a plan for 2019 because let’s face it, mama ain’t gonna follow the plan so why fricking bother.  But for the rest of this year I do have a few must-makes, which include a cabled sweater for Steve, a super secret something also for Steve made out of the yummiest yarn EVER, a v-neck red sweater for me that is actually looking more and more like a project to cast on next year because OH YEAH my tradition, after months of knitting for others during the holidays, is to cast on something for me on January 1.

That alone tells you how much I party on December 31st.

So, despite my less than 50% success rate in making what I thought I would make last year, this has been a great year knitting wise.  I made a cowl as a sample for the store, tried a new and difficult technique, and have met lots of amazing knitty friends.

I’m on Ravelry as claudiaberry and on Instagram as casadeberry – I ‘gram almost daily and love seeing other people’s knits.  I hope to post again before the end of the year but who am I kidding?

It took me a few months after we lost Foxy to even consider getting a new dog.  Oh, I was always torturing myself by looking at the Humane Society pages, but to actually get to the point where I would go in and look at the dogs . . . nope, that didn’t happen for a while.

Finally, at the end of this past winter, Aidan and I headed over – we’d seen a dog named Cherry (for her cherry eyes) on the website, and we wanted to meet her.  She was a Southern lady, one of the many dogs that have little chance for adoption in some Southern states and get sent up here in hopes of finding a forever family.

Cherry was very sweet from the first moment, we don’t know what her background was, but she has been a loving girl and constant companion.  She does have separation anxiety and when I got a part-time job during the summer, she made her feelings known every time I would leave, even though Steve and the boys were home.  Having made the commitment of being with her, I felt that I needed to honor that and I quit my job (where I spent more than I made, so probably not a bad thing) and she is much happier now.

She puts up with modeling the dog sweater I made for her and keeps me company while I knit, do laundry, clean house, etc.  She just wants to be with her mama.

If you come visit us she will greet you with lots of barking until she sniffs you – she just wants to make sure you’re not a meanie and once she gets to know you, she’ll bring you her toy to play.

She was described as a puggle – a mix of beagle and pug – but some people with more dog knowledge believe she also has some Mountain Cur or Boxer in her makeup.

We are happy to have welcomed Cherry – her official name is Cherry Cherry Bo Berry – into our family and hope she knows how much she is loved.  She recently went through some surgery to remove some teeth and fix a little bump on her eyelid that kept irritating her eye – our local vet staff is amazing and our girl is more comfortable than ever, we hope.  We just want her to have a good life with us.

It’s been a while since I last updated the blog.  In fact, it’s been just over a year.  The main reason is, a year ago (October 7) we lost our sweet Foxy girl.  She was killed in a car accident and I could not write anything without writing about it, and writing about it sent me into a bad, bad place emotionally for a long time.

It is now October 2016 and within the last year we have lost a parent (my mom), lost two jobs (Steve, now happily employed again), thrown two birthday parties (one TARDIS, one Lego/Dino), and adopted a new member of the family – Miss Cherry Cherry Bo Berry.

It has been a tough year but we are looking forward to the future, are getting ready to enjoy the holidays in beautiful Wisconsin, where the trees are changing color every day and there is a chill in the air that I love.

See you soon!

The leaves are already turning color here, and we’re enjoying the views from our living room and dining room windows.  I recently changed up our dining room table to reflect the changing seasons.

I purchased the runner on clearance last December (I think) at Target, and it’s been sitting in my Fall storage bin until last week.  The fleur-de-lis candlesticks are from Goodwill, they are really heavy and I spray painted them black.  I saw the tapers at World Market, they have lots of them in fall colors and I thought they would be a nice accent.

Our friends M & J gifted us the vintage MOET poster, we brought it all the way from California and it goes perfectly with the warm feel we want for the dining room.

The faux-croc stamped chargers are from Michaels, I saw them and thought they made such a statement, and I like mixing different tones of golds and browns.  The centerpiece is a grapevine wreath (also from Michaels) layered with a garland with a gorgeous scented candle in the middle.  We first got a similar candle from our cousin and now it’s a must once summer ends, it lasted forever in California but I have a feeling it will be lit a lot more often here 😀

Finally, on Friday, papers were signed and the house is officially ours. Well, officially the bank’s, for us to repay on a monthly basis, but in any case, we are happy to be homeowners in the fine state of Wisconsin.

My favorite feature of our new house is how bright it is. Our California house has always felt so dark to me, but this new house is full of huge windows and, added to the open concept floor plan, makes for a very bright home. This is the living room:

I have been debating two-story curtains, but I think I am going to live in the house for a bit before I make a final decision. If I do decide on them, they would be something very neutral, maybe a silk dupioni. I like the idea of neutrals with mixed metals for the living room, I came up with something like this:

I have the two peacock prints, which have warm teals, golds, and touches of rust, good starting points for a nice, cohesive palette.

We are in California for a few more days, packing up our home, and then we will be making a road trip to our new home. Stay tuned for more of our adventures!