The oddly balanced changeable and stable month of July

There was a whole lot of change thrown at me in July, and usually I’m all, a;ldjfa;dfj;dsj!!! CHANGE! RUN FOR THE HILLS!!!a;fdja;dfj… but I think I looked all this fluctuation straight in the face and rather than taking it on the chin, gave it a big ol’ bear hug.

Home-wise, you’ve all probably gotten tired of seeing the photos. Tim revamped my coffee mug wall. He finished the dye bar. The kitchen and the living room were normalized. Kitten and puppy integration continued to go well. So did cat and kitten integration.

I can’t even tell you how social I was this month. Even with my broken toe causing me to go mostly shoe-less. Wait; let me try to tell you. For the last three years I’ve primarily been social with people at the yarn shop. But this month, I met friends at Sweet Dreams. I met friends for spinning. I met friends for lunch. Stitch ‘n’ Bitch had a great kickoff in the new location. I started meeting reasonably regularly on Tuesday afternoons for knitting. We went over to our friend’s for Catan. We went to a party where Tim was introduced to Banagrams (the Conyers Clan should get ready to play over Thanksgiving). We went out to dinner and saw a friend play. We went to a movie and dinner with a big group of friends (I am now in love with the BJ’s drink menu). I went out with a friend for drinks and good conversation. I met other friends for drinks. I met friends for cupcakes. I met other friends for other drinks. I am telling you… I think I was more social in July than I have been all year.

In knitting, I finally finished something I’d been working on since January. I also finished one – no, make that two pairs of socks. You know what I don’t really have a shitload of time for any more? Knitting. It used to be that I was working about 50-60 hours a week, out of which 30-40 of that was spent knitting (and that’s not counting at-home, tv-watching knitting time). Now I really only have the TV-watching time, because I’m also busy making ceramics. So… expect a lot less knitting content in the future, but for me to enjoy what knitting I do a lot more. Also expect more ceramics.

Workwise, I started off the month by knitting in the shop for the last time, as we were donating the last of the things that didn’t sell. I then threw myself into dyeing yarn, and pouring ceramics. And making soap. I found instructions online for making an easy light-box (not the result I intended) so expect lots of photos of ceramics and yarn popping up with a flat white background. A wonderful friend who is a designer is helping me out with the HaldeCraft logo; I’m hoping to launch the Etsy site no later than the 15th of this month. Stay tuned for that!