Housekeeping!

Yay! School went back this week!

After decades eight weeks of having basically everyone in the house (we now live in a HOUSE! More on this later) non-stop, on top of two new kitties (we now have cats! More on this later, too) and blazing heat (eww) I wholeheartedly confess that I was ready to start disowning everything that didn’t come with knitting needles and yarn. We have a front yard (or garden, as the locals call it), so it isn’t like they wouldn’t have had somewhere to pitch a tent...I’m not unreasonable!

I have plenty to catch you lovelies up on, but we will have to agree that multiple posts are needed to do this properly (and reasonably, for everyone’s sake). But first thing’s first - Some housekeeping!

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GREAT PUMPKIN MAL WINNER

Thank you to everyone who participated in the MAL. The winner this time around is the delightful Mel, who crocheted the sweetest Halloween Top Hat by Sharon Mann

Darling Mel, if you are reading this expect a message from me via Ravelry to talk about your prize and getting it to you.

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With that done and dusted I feel I should explain my absence a little bit. I can’t and won’t go into great detail, but I do think you dears deserve some clarification.

I’m sorry for the long absence. I knew I would be gone for the very end of the year, but I had every intention of writing to you beforehand and letting you know. Instead, everything started happening a good month earlier than I had anticipated and I didn’t have the time to prepare as I had meant to.

Our family had some very big and intense things happen to us last year, things that really should never have happened and were out of our control, for the most part. These things all came to a head at the end of last year, and though I anticipated being pulled away from my community and my blogging, I didn’t expect that it would be February before I could come back to you and to all the fun we’d been having.

I think if it had been just the one thing I would have been back with you straight after Christmas. Instead, one thing bounced to another and we moved into a house the week before Christmas (during a record-breaking heatwave I might add) and then we had our schedules upended again, and then we were trying to rebuild our home and family and figure out what that looked like after everything that happened last year.

Then we got a cat, which turned into two cats (it’s a beautiful story, and I will share it with you another time) and then it was trying to sort out back to school and my keep on top of my busiest time of year for my Day Job and line up students for my Other Job. Honestly, I’m so proud of all of us for still standing and not breaking anything after all of this. And I’m grateful to you for being patient and understanding and coming back to fan-girl (or boy or whatever label you want to take here) with me about fibre. I started this blog to help me stay connected to my community during a time when I wasn't able to participate in the more traditional ways. It has given me so many smiles and laughs - YOU have given me so many smiles and laughs. Thank you.

And on that somewhat heavy note, I will leave you with two delightful photos of the newest additions to our family. On the left is Song, who somehow doesn’t care a snit about yarn, though we’ve been assured she is definitely a cat. The pretty poser on the right is her sister, Jolie, who is happy to give her opinion on fibre choices at any time, day or night. In the middle is the current sock project I’m working on, because this is afterall a stitching blog.

See you next Tuesday for a post about yarn, stitching, and very likely more cats.