Breathing Easier

No, I'm not having respiratory problems. I've been wrestling with a design and it's finally coming together. For me, the design process is unpredictable. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and an idea is ready to pop out of the oven, fully baked, needing nothing but to cool down before I can cut into it. Other times, I have a glimmer, sometimes a feeling of the design, lurking in the shadows, just out of reach. It's these designs that cause me to lie awake at night.

They hover and when I reach for them, thinking that I've finally got a good vantage point to capture them, they jump back into the shadows (and I swear I can hear them laugh at times.) Like the Gingerbread Boy, they keep running and I keep chasing. "Catch me if you can."

Last night, I caught the essence of a design that has been running for awhile now. It's not done by any means, but it's on paper and ready to be tweaked.

While the chase can be frustrating, the capture is oh so sweet!

Easy Bake Cookie

My girls have been baking each afternoon after school. MM is 8 and she has learned measurements, so she makes her goodies from scratch each day. We ran out of mixes pretty quickly, so I found a website with recipes for the Easy Bake Oven.

http://www.eborecipes.com/

Check out her chocolate chip cookie.

Sock Class

The first part of the sock class was on Saturday at Fiber Art. I had 3 students; all did very well and are off to a good start. They have "homework" for next Saturday's class, but I have no doubts that they will complete it.

Two of the students are knitters first and foremost, and I applaud their willingness to go outside their normal bounds. I can understand and sympathize with their feelings of frustration and clumsiness (even though they were NOT clumsy.) I feel the same when I knit. I CAN knit, but it's still work for me.

I saw an interview with designer Mary Lynn Patrick on the Knit & Crochet Today show this week. She said, "The more I knit or crochet, the more I CAN knit or crochet". This piece of golden wisdom is something I can carry in my pocket and finger on those days when knitting and even crochet are, well, "work".

One of the students was a crocheter. She caught the concepts and ran. I'm trying to find a good seque . . . but there's not one, so I'll just say that I'm so tickled by her review of the class. You can read it here:
http://bookhooknomad.blogspot.com/2009/01/sock-it-to-me.html

It's Been A While

The holiday season was very nice, but I can't say that it was relaxing for me. I worked on proposals for reviews that were due in early January. I had set new goals for 2009 and I wanted to submit to additional markets, and to increase the number of proposals for each review. I was able to reach those goals for this first batch of submissions, so now I am waiting . . . patiently.

We traveled the day after Christmas to meet up with family. MM & K were so excited to see their cousins (who are growing up way to fast!) We were happy to see siblings and parents.

Santa brought K an Easy Bake oven and we have been baking every afternoon after school. Yummy!

The Florida Gators won the national championship in football last night! Funny how something that you have nothing to do with (i.e., the outcome of the game) can make you feel so-o-o-o good or so-o-o-o-o bad.