New

I’m excited that after many weeks of emails back and forth with an amazing illustrator: Neesha Hudson, I finally get to show you the blog’s new header!  I’ve been wanting to work with Neesha for awhile, and finally asked her if she would do this little project for me, and I absolutely love what she did.

Actually, I wish I could show you all the preliminary sketches that she sent me because each one on it’s own could have been chosen and beautiful, and deciding which sketch to go with and develop was really hard.  I still wonder if I picked the best one, but the problem was that they were all the best one.

So it came down to a family vote because I really, honestly, couldn’t pick, and the kids loved the chicken wearing a sweater the best.  I especially love the subtle details like the sewing needle coming out of the clouds like they were stitched up there.

There are some other projects like this going on behind the scenes here.  January is a month I’ve long been awaiting because one of my knitting patterns will be published by a company I have wanted to work with for a long time.  I’m anxiously waiting for that one to be released!

Speaking of knitting patterns, I’ve been pulling together a lot of sketches the last few weeks, and making lots of plans, and doing lots of writing, brainstorming, and pricing out book publication.  These next few months may be sparse for my self-published knitting patterns.  I have a few small ones that will be released, but I have nearly 3 completed patterns now stockpiled, and I plan to add 6 more to that and publish a collection late in 2014.  Is that crazy?  I don’t know.

For knitting, I have always wanted to push to know more.  When I was learning, I always tried to pick a pattern that had at least one thing in it that I had never done before.  Pretty soon, I could do most things, and decided to try designing…just to see if I could do it.  I still have much to learn in that area, but one new thing I want to try now is releasing a collection of patterns all at once.  I have never done that before.

Plus, I love the idea of putting a collection out in book form, with photographs that mean a lot to me, and writing about each pattern more in depth.  I plan to release it in paper and e-book first, and eventually just the individual patterns.

Will it get done in 2014?  I hope so.  Maybe.  Maybe it won’t be until 2015, but I won’t know until I try, now will I?  It’s hard to say because in the spring, we plan to finish moving our garden, and the strawberries have to be thinned again.  My injury in 2013 set back all of my canning last year and I hope to catch up a bit this year, and then of course, our homeschool is gaining a new student with Elias starting to do a lot more.  Plus, Solveig really needs to get potty trained, and Ingrid just started walking so it’s not exactly like things are slowing down at home.

On the other hand, the kids are so helpful (though not always willingly) and as they get older my share in the chores gets a little bit less as they need me in different ways than they used to.  It’s a strange shift that is slowly starting to show itself.

The collection will be a fun project for me to work on in the quiet evenings that become available, but hopefully not at the expense of all of the other precious work I get to do for my family.  It’s so hard to manage priorities.  I hope that at least, priorities will be one area of 2014 that I manage well.