Stress and Stranded Colorwork

In this episode I talk about the January blues, work stress, and the slow and steady progress i'm making on a stranded colorwork sweater vest.

Music Credit: Ketsa, "Day Trips"

Transcript

[upbeat intro music with bells and trills]
Holly 00:30
Hello! I hope you’re well. I am so happy to be chatting with you. 

Holly 00:43

I didn’t think it would take this long to get back on the mike. I am feeling a bit weird and out of practice. Things are a bit crazy right now. My kids are nearby, so that is always distracting. Usually I feel like sometimes I need to wake up super early and podcast before my kids are awake. I guess I feel a little bit shy. I don’t know. I’ll have to think more about that. But for now, please excuse any extra noises in the background.I apologize in advance. 

Holly 01:17

I wanted to pop on and say hi. I want to keep this short. Hopefully that will increase the likelihood that I’ll edit it and share it with you all. I'm a little nervous right now. It’s been a while since I’ve sat down with the mike and  I’m supposed to talk with my sponsor in about 20 minutes. I am always a little anxious right beforehand– not quite sure why– she is lovely and she always makes me feel better at the end of it but I am feeling a bit creaky. But I wanted to chat with you all before too much time got away from me. 

Holly 01:55

I hope you're well! For me, oof, January's been a bit tough. I'll be honest and now February feels rapid. January felt like it was 3 years long and February feels like I'm going to blink and it will be over and I'm not quite sure how to balance all that. 

Holly 02:17

This year…this new year's off to the races! On the one hand everything big picture is really lovely: the kids are healthy, i’m fine, and work is … work. But in the small picture things have just been really challenging. We've had terrible weather in the DC area. It feels like it's been gray for about six weeks. There's been snow, which in this area shuts the school down for very long periods of time even if it's not a lot of snow and I've just been longing for spring. I’ve been working with a very big work deadline, on top of a really challenging teaching semester and I don't know why I feel like that gif of Kermit flailing his arms around. I’m a muppet flailing. I’ve told my kids multiple times, “I’m about to have a temper tantrum. I'm going to go put myself in a Timeout.” [laughter]. I just feel like work is really stressful and then the pandemic level of stress this time around with the the variant and the holiday–ugh–it just really took a lot out of me.

Holly 03:06

I feel like the holiday break was wonderful but by the time we had to get the ship moving in the right direction again there wasn’t any wind in the sails! So yeah it's been a little challenging. I just haven't felt like myself. I’ve been a bit more depressed than normal and that has been showing up in my knitting. I've been making a lot of random objects that just aren't quite right. I think I have a bulky weight hat that I frogged and I'm now reknitting it. It just was a little too tight I don't know it jus doesn't work and that, I don’t know, was a little frustrating. 

Holly 04:03

One thing that I've been working on (I’ll keep this short laughter because I’m a little bit all over the place), but one thing is really being kind to myself and recognizing how much I actually do get accomplished, even when I feel this way. When I feel this way, I tend to focus on what I don’t achieve, whatever it is that I hoped it would be on whatever project, whether household related or work-related or even some stuff with the kids that I got to take care of. One of the things I did was you know take a minute to review what i’ve done …it started off as a list of things I haven't done in January but then I took a few minutes to write all the things that I did accomplish and that felt really great and it made me realize that slow and steady wins the race and sometimes this is really just did my my anxiety my stress and my trauma from living with the disease of alcoholism. All of that means I tend to focus more negatively then positively on my day to day life. For me I've been just trying to really keep that in mind. I actually did get a lot accomplished.

Holly 05:07

I actually have achieved some knitting. I’m working on color work vest. It’s just not tangible in that kind of short-term way that sometimes I feel like social media around crafting you know lends itself to you, which is like look at this finish object and look how productive I am. So I have been working on this fair isle vest. I have been–I don’t want to call it an intention–I just feel like, yuck, that’s not really what I did. I just decided that I wanted to work on colorwork. I’ve been knitting for a really long time but my colorwork projects could… use some work. So that’s what I’ve been telling myself I was going to do this year. I was going to learn colorwork. 

Holly 06:07

I cast on a colorwork fair isle vest. It’s the academic vest by Skeindeer knits. I got yarn for it last November and found some other yarn at my local creative reuse center. I did all the swatching, and it felt so exciting. I mean I did everything right. I cast it on and … laughter… it was way too big. I thought the gauge was right but somehow iI knot 5 inches of the ribbing band on size 2 needles. Ugh. so the swatch lied. Anyway, I ripped it back so now I have like 5 inches of the ribbing and 5 inches of the color work. And it is challenging. Laughter. It’s slow. I don’t go fast on colorwork knitting and I want to make sure I’m not pulling the yarn too tight and I’m also trying it on a lot to make sure that it fits. It’s slow. It feels very dense. I’ve been joking that it’s going to be a bullet-proof vest. It’s dense. Laughter.  I forgot about stranded knitting (laughter) that it’s stranded. And that means it’s kind of a heavy thing. It’s very… laughter. It’s a process knit. Laughter. I’m not sure this is going to work out. Laughter. It has steeks. Sigh. I’m not there yet. Right now I’m just working on the colorwork. And it’s yarn management and putting my impatience at bay and working on being okay with whatever the outcome is and whatever the timeline is. I think at most I can knit about three rows a night. 

Holly 08:04

Usually I have about 30 -45 minutes to decompress. I’ve been working really late hours on the computer so I pretty much just finish and collapse and knit and watch netflix. There are a few things that are helping me with that. A few christmases ago, my brother sent me a really thoughtful gift that I didn’t use until now. It was one of those file foders for knitters with a magnet that hods your chart and props it up. I have this. It’s wonderful. So i can prop up the chart, put on netflix, and knit and deal with all the yarn management. This isn’t really a portable project. It just kind of lives near my bed. I’m like a 19th century literary heroine knitting in bed like an invalid. That’s how tired I feel at the end of my day. Gosh kudos to those women in the past. Wow. Having to create fair isle knitting while aso moving around the house and taking care of kids and having your whole livelihood depend on it. wow! That’s hard! All kinds of respect. I’ve checked out a book about fairilse from the library and i’m learning a lot. It helps to keep things in perspective. 

Holly 09:45

So yes I’m knitting that and a lot of random hats (i have a lot of anxiety and zoom meetings so I need those easy portable projects. SO I really do want to knit something. Maybe a simple sock is the answer. I’ve even been craving maybe just a giant garter shawl. Or maybe even a crochet blanket. You know, when work gets really busy I don’t end up knitting a lot but I sure do spend a lot of time on ravelry procrastinating! [laughter]

Holly 10:20

Yea. Trying to keep that at bay. Trying to be gentle with myself. Trying to make slow and steady progress. I think I’ll end there. I just wanted to get back on ere, say hi. I hope you’re well and tha you’re having a good start to the new year. I hope that your knitting is going well. Sending you good thoughts. I hope you have beautiful materials to work with. 

Holly 10:57
Thanks for your patience and for hanging in here when I’m less regular with the podcasting. I hope to get back into the rhythm soon. Take care!

[outro music, upbeat music similar to intro but with more bells and trills]