Knitting Inspiration - Sweater Weather

I don't think that many people who go for a four mile run in 90 degree heat and 88% humidity dream about wooly yarn and cozy sweaters the whole way.

But I did.

I love myself some yarn and sometimes while running I distract myself from the physical exertion of it all and just think of squishy yarn, pretty patterns and sweaters.

I have actually never knit a sweater before. I have made baby sweaters, knit a shirt for myself and some shrugs...but no sweater for me.

I have a sweater actually waiting to be finished but it's been sitting in a bag for over a year but I couldn't tell heads or tails of it now and the idea of figuring it out just doesn't seem as fun as starting fresh with new yarn and a new pattern.

My sad Liesl by Ysolda Teague just begging to be finished.

I signed up for LuvInTheMommyhood's summer sweater knit-a-long where you have from July 24th to September 19th to knit a sweater, post photos, share your experience and win yarny prizes.

I have yet to cast on for this yet though because the thought of winding up my three hanks of Malabrigo Lace yarn by hand is ever so daunting.

 The pattern I plan on doing - Featherweight Cardigan by Knitbot

Cardigans count as a sweater!

 

My perfectly minty yarn which will become that sweater. 

Even though I haven't even begun the above sweater I already have future sweater plans. 

Big sweater plans. 

It's totally reasonable and realistic to plan on knitting ten sweaters this cold weather season. Right fellow knitters?

Hear that husband??? Totally reasonable and I might even knit you a thing or two. 

Maybe...I've got a lot for me to do first ;)

Left to Right, Top to Bottom: Cobblestone / Owls / Oh My Bear / Blackberry Cabled Cardigan / Emmanuelle Sweater / Plowman Cardigan / Metamorphosis / Watermelon / Smokin' / Happy Days

See?!?! Totally doable. These are my first round draft picks for sweaters I want to knit up RIGHT now.

Back to reality, I have actually finished knitting a few things lately.

First, I finished my Molly hat!

 

oh howdy neighbor...I'm just hanging out in my curtains doing selfies. Don't mind me staring into your windows making weird faces.

I also had a couple little boy birthdays this past week, so I knitted up a few footballs to send them.

 In case you are wondering...I doubled the size of the pattern for the football to get something size appropriate for a 2-3 year old.

Last thing about knitting tonight (pinkie promise).... if I can figure out how to crochet an ear this evening, I will have a new pattern available tomorrow.

Now if that didn't pique your interest about the pattern, I don't know what will!

What are you working on right now? 

~ With Love, Ashlee ~

 

Being On A Schedule

Dear people who read my blog and spam robots, 

I am so tired right now. 

For the first time in my four years of being a self-employed business woman, I am trying to follow a schedule. 

You see part of the romance and intrigue of being able to work from home means being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want. 

Answer customer emails at 11pm...sure!

Look at a dog shaming website for an hour because its 10am....okay!

Stay up until 2am working because you procrastinated a project....why not!

Have a not wearing any pants day....you bet!

But this whole 'doing whatever the hell I want' thing has kind of hit a fork in the road. If I want to keep growing my brand, keep expanding my business and well frankly....eat food and have shelter....I need to step it up. 

I need to be a bit more focused. A bit more driven. And a bit more productive. 

In comes my SCHEDULE. 

Dun dun dun. 

My husband and I sat down last week, talked about what my goals for the week should be, what my priorities were, what deadlines I had and then I took all 4526451346 items on my to-do list and put them into 7 incredibly jam-packed days. 

The very first day I started getting stressed and kept finding myself shouting to the puppy, 'AHHHH, I am off my schedule!' 

Lunch time became eat/work/eat/dribble food all over my desk/work time because I needed to multi-task. 

All week I frantically moved from task-to-task, trying to stay decently on top of things and failing terribly. 

When I made my schedule for this upcoming week, I vowed to allot more time for tasks, to better grasp how long it 'actually' takes for me to do things and not just use the imaginary figure of time I have in my head. 

You guys....here it is Wednesday at 10:30pm and I am still doing Monday's stuff. My blog post today was supposed to be about knitting inspiration from around the web...

 

but the best I can do tonight is show you a photo of a hat that I wish I was working on right now. 

My brain isn't really functioning and I did about ten different endings to this blog post and none of them felt right. So...

good night!

~ With Love, Ashlee ~ 

Hesitation...and destiny.

A few weeks ago I got some new yarn. 

Some yarn that I had seen online, had been coveting and when I saw it in person, bought it much to the delight of the kind, yarn store salesperson.

The yarn (Manos Maxima in Highlighter) and I then sat on a bench and hung out in Savannah while I ate ice cream.

This yarn and I have a destiny together, but I haven't quite figured out what it is yet. 

It has sat on my desk, taunting me, calling my name for the last three weeks. 

After much deliberation and searching, I found a good yarn to pair with it. A nice neutral Malabrigo wool yarn in polar morn. 

I think they might be yarn soulmates. 

But what to make, what to make?

I want to make my own pattern up... a cowl I think. 

I am envisioning stripes, zig zags, maybe chevron? 

Or perhaps some cables and bobbles to spice it up?

I scoured pinterest today for some inspiration and I was loving what I was finding.

1/2\3/4\5/6\7/8\9

After looking around the interwebs, I now know that i want something mostly gray with the neon yellow as a highlight (pun intended) along with another neutral. 

Maybe cream or a dark gray accent.

Now to convince my husband that I need to actually buy more yarn. 

Honey, it's destiny. Just let it happen. 

~ With Love, Ashlee ~

PS!!! - HEY YOU! Follow me on bloglovin' (click on the button below) or sign up for my blog via email (sign up on the right). Google reader is saying buh bye in two weeks and I don't want you to forget about me. 

Weekend Shenanigans!

Guys...

I spelled shenanigans right the first time I tried in my post title. I also spelled it right on the first try in that last sentence. 

I then just misspelled sentence. And misspelled. 

My reign of spelling things correctly is over. 

This weekend lived up to expectations, but we didn't end up doing everything that we had originally had planned. Laziness and sleeping in late got in the way.

Friday night we went to a book reading featuring my new favorite author Dan Kennedy at The Book Lady in Savannah.

He read a few pages from different sections in his new book. I learned about Dan Kennedy from the Moth podcast so it was really cool to see the face behind the man.

Or rather the face on the man. 

I loved his impromptu question and answer section at the end and he ended up reading about ten pages from his book which was all about the main character's brawl with his mediation teacher. Pretty ridiculous stuff. 

After hearing him read the story and learning that he did the voice work for the audiobook, I went ahead and bought the audiobook at audible.

We spent the evening walking around Savannah and listening to some musicians in one of the squares. 

Saturday was filled with sleeping in (not going to the farmer's market), attending an adorable production of 'The Frog and the Toad' at the Savannah Children's Theater and lots of knitting. 

I am working on a new project for a boutique in Colorado, so I got to pull out some of my cozy yarn that I don't get to use very often here in Georgia. 

I also watched this video....

And then attempted to make my own with Cooper ...

Sunday, I spent a few hours watching my husband build a roasted vegetable vegan lasagna and then I ate a lot of it. 

We also went out to dinner with my husband's parents to celebrate Father's day. 

There we presented him with a Father's Day card which had three separate wiener jokes all packed into one card. 

The jokes weren't quite as funny to them as they were to me while I was standing in Publix at 8am a few days ago. 

Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well!

~ With Love, Ashlee ~

High Five For Friday!

For the past few years (ever since I graduated college and became self-employed), Fridays lost a little bit of their appeal.

Their zest if you will.

Without classes and a boss other than myself, along with the husband being incredibly busy with law school, all the days seem to roll into each other, making some sort of week-long blob. 

(how's that for a run-on sentence?)

But ever since John started working a 9-5 this summer (more like a 7:30-6:30) and has weekends mostly off, Fridays are a lot more exciting around these parts.

So I am linking up with Lauren for 'High Five For Friday!'

/one\

Tonight we are having a picnic in one of the squares in the historic district of Savannah, followed by a book reading by one of my favorite podcasters/storytellers. We are going to see Dan Kennedy from the Moth Podcast talk about his new book, American Spirit and regal us with tall tales and charming antidotes. 

 via

Sidenote: I have to leave in 45 minutes to go get John and I am still unshowered, in my workout clothes. I may have been caught up in a game show about musical chairs and I lost track of time. Whoops!

Double sidenote: If my mom was here right now, I know that she would say that I got 'tv hypnotized' and then start shouting '45 minutes!!' She likes it when people stay on track and get out the door on time.

/two\

I finally got to pick up a copy of the June issue of Southern Living Magazine. 

 

I found it, in all places, a gas station in the middle of nowhere Georgia.

One of the boutiques that I sell at had a little shout-out in it, so I wanted to purchase it, hoping that my jewelry items would be in the photo. 

No such luck, but still pretty awesome that it was mentioned as one of the best places to shop in Atlanta. 

/three\

Tomorrow I have big plans to go running for the first time in forever. I think I have ran once, maybe twice, since the marathon in mid-march. I'm only going to go for 2-2.5 miles and with the summer humidity and heat, that is already seeming like a lot. 

With all that said though, I am looking forward to starting to run again. 

/four\

Tomorrow morning we have an excursion planned to the Savannah farmer's market again. 

Every Friday they send out an email letting you know what's going to be there and I saw today that someone is going to be there tomorrow selling some watermelon juice. 

My favorite fruit of alllll time and I can eat it in public without looking like a pig. 

/five\ 

I finished the hat that I was knitting for John. 

You know, the totally necessary, completely useful, 100% wool hat for summer. 

 Maybe I can get him to model it before October, but not very likely. 

Have a great weekend everyone!

~ With Love, Ashlee ~

PS... I now have 25 minutes until I have to walk out the door. Showering might not be an option anymore.

 

My First Tropical Storm...

So far Andrea isn't quite as exciting as I had hoped it would be. 

It's raining a lot and my puppy is refusing to go to the bathroom due to his immense dislike of water. He's just sitting downstairs right now with his puppy legs crossed, staring out the window, waiting for the rain to let up.

Today I spent the majority of my time indoors besides leaving to have a bicycle race with myself to get to the post office before my t-shirt became soaked with rain. 

I won. 

I also had the pleasure of working on and packaging up a custom order for a lovely bride and her lucky bridesmaids. 

 

During my lunch break, I spent an hour knitting while watching a rerun of America's Funniest Home Videos. 

Does anyone else love that show as much as I do? 

 

I started working on a wool hat for John (I know that June doesn't seem like an optimal time to knit a wool cap, but I do what I want). 

I found this pattern and had the yarn on hand to recreate it, and hats are my favorite thing to knit, so there ya go! 

Wool hat being knit in June.

That's how this knitta rolls. 

Lastly, today I started a massive storewide sale in my etsy store, My Sweet Nomsa. Everything is marked down 15%!

Sale ends June 17th at Midnight!

Hope everyone is having a great day and staying dry if you are on the East Coast.

~ With Love, Ashlee ~

Big Intentions...

Before heading out on a 'kinda/sorta/not really/but it totally is' a six-week vacation, I had a lot of hard choices to make. 

I was going to be separated from my yarn stash for six long weeks and I needed to figure out what I was going to need to bring with me to knit a lot of awesome things during this getaway. 

Patterns were queued up on Ravelry, needles were grabbed and yarn was fondled and packaged up. 

But after two weeks away, I haven't knit a thing. 

Not one itty bitty stitch. 

Instead I have been outside walking my dog, hanging out on the beach, cooking new meals and doing some other crafts. 

I have actually been doing quite a bit of embroidary lately. Here's my latest project....

I made one of these gnomes for my mom for Christmas and I loved how it turned out. I still need to do the rest of the black outlining and then write 'Gnome Sweet Gnome' on the right, but that won't take too long. 

Back to the original point, I had a lot of big intentions with this vacation, but I haven't knit at all, so I am going to be changing that this evening. Here's what I hope/plan on knitting these next few weeks and months. 

/1\

WORK+SHELTER Lace Stripped Sweater

This sweater is actually what I am currently working on. I am doing a stripped version and am making it out of Lion Brand Cotton-Ease. 

Here's what I have done so far...

Some other things I hope to get to knitting soon...

/2\

Featherweight Cardigan by KnitBot

This will be knit in a lovely mint green wool lace yarn by Malabrigo.

/3\

Molly Hat by Erin Ruth

A lovely heathered robin's egg blue Cascade 220 wool yarn is reserved for this. 

/4\

Honey Mitts by Megan Grewal

These are going to be knit in the same robin's egg blue wool yarn as the above hat. 

/5\

 Hermione's Everyday Socks by Erica Lueder

I want to finally give socks a go and I love the subtle textured pattern here. 

I've avoided socks thus far due to some cankles, but hopefully with a little math and extra yarn, I can get around that hiccup.

I've got a some bright red merino yarn from Plymouth Yarn that is going to look pretty awesome!

 

So that is what I have planned for the next few weeks knitting wise. 

What are you making? 

~ With Love, Ashlee ~