the house as it is today....covered in snow

We went for a walk to our new house today while it was snowing and saw (for the first time) the SOLD sign!  Grant's expression says it all.

Our house!  (and all the snow we're going to have to start shoveling soon)

Also note: the hat and cowl I made for myself over Christmas.

Back at Fischer.  Part of the walk was so I could test my new (waterproof) boots!

(almost) Homeowners

Yep, you read that right.  Grant and I will officially own this house in just a couple of weeks!

Us owning a house might come as a surprise to many since we live in a residence hall and have been dreaming about moving west or (in my case) back to Canada for a long time.  But, my time in the residence hall will come to an end this spring and Grant has taken a job as a youth minister that he loves and wants to stay in and I still have some work to do before I finish my Clinical Psychology degree.  SO, it looks like we might stay in Wheaton a while and this house is making an already good decision (to stay) that much sweeter.

More details and photos to follow... especially once we have the key!

Making millions...

I am realizing that many of my posts the last few weeks have been all about knitting.  Grant keeps telling me how amazed he is that my obsession has lasted this long.  What he doesn't realize is that I have had this "obsession" for a very long time I had just put it on hold while we were dating.  Maybe it was because while we were dating I always wanted to hold his hand and knitting is a two-handed activity. Wait, that makes it sound like I don't want to hold his hand now that we're married...  anyway...

One of the things I did over break was make a bunch of "test knits."  I think I'm going to open up a little shop on etsy and start selling some of my hand knit items.  I figure it is a way to hold myself accountable to "do something creative everyday" as Paper Source encourages us to do.  It is also a way to help fund my knitting habit, if you will.  Starting this little endeavor has also made me start designing some of my own patterns since many patterns request that you don't sell items knit from them.

As far as the store goes, I've figured out all kinds of things from the packaging to the colour of ribbon I want to get but I have one small problem...  I cannot for the life of me figure out a good name.  This is where you (my few and dear readers) come in.  Do you have any suggestions for a name?  I want it to be something fun but maybe not too punny.  I have actually grown to love puns over the last few years even though I am the last one to catch on to the joke, but I find that in knitting people are all about the puns and I want to have something more original and maybe a little more me.  This is testing my creativity, that's for sure.

Along with selling hand knits, I think I want to sell a few other things that I have made.  You see, I also have a hard time picking my medium.  Do I want to design wedding invitations?  Do I want to make cute (yet somewhat kitschy) knitting stitch markers that make you happy when you're knitting with them? Do I want to knit?  Do I want to paint?  I suppose it is a great problem to have.


In other news.  My mom has been here visiting over the past week and we had a great time.  It was a fun and relaxing visit and even though she was on her holiday, Grant and I managed to benefit from her cooking skills a time or two.  I have to say, having a very skilled chef in our little kitchen made me love the wedding gifts that were generously given to us all over again!

I instantly fell in love with these knitting needles as soon as I saw them at Loopy Yarns in Chicago.  They were a little expensive, but oh did they make me happy!

Christmas break is over already?

I can't believe how quickly this break flew by.  It was relaxing, relaxing and relaxing... just what I needed!  It was also filled with an abundance of knitting!  All of the students are back and today is the first day of classes.  Hopefully it is my last first day of classes as a student.  

My computer died just after Christmas and I unfortunately lost all of my photos.  Here are a few highlights of the break taken once the new hard drive was installed (thanks to the nice apple store people who fixed my computer even though my warranty had run out just two days prior).

We had a wonderful WHITE Christmas here in Wheaton.  It was so calm and pretty outside and very, very snowy.

I got this wonderful thing from my dad and I have been winding up a storm ever since.  Who knew that this would be so much fun?

Grant gave me a gift certificate for yarn and the packaging was perfect.  This was one of his rock climbing ropes all wound up and tied with a bow.

I made myself a new pair of Christmas slippers.

... and wound the leftover yarn for a future project.

Grant and I went hiking in the snow at Starved Rock State Park.  It was chilly but beautiful outside. 

And finally, this is Elijah.  I did not come up with the name, rather that is the name of the pattern I had to knit him.  This was a fun thing to knit once I finished all those Christmas presents I had been working on.  He is so cute!!

We have more fun things to share from the last three weeks, but I'll have to make you wait in anticipation for that.  

Happy first day of classes!

Art in Ministry

I took a course called "Art in Ministry" this semester.  It was a 1-credit independent study course that we made up essentially as my "I don't want to be deported" class.  (I needed one credit to bump me up to full-time status in order to meet the requirements of my student visa).  It was actually a great class and a change from all the paper-writing that I do in every other class.  I read a few books (Art for God's Sake by Philip Ryken and Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol).  I was asked to submit some of my thoughts from the readings and to create an art piece in response to both of them.  This is it:

I'll write more on that later.  For now, I need to study for the final I have tonight!

It's official...

I feel like I am officially a knitter and as happy as the little girl in this photo.  Happy because I never have to do the task that she is doing ever again.  I never need to wind a ball of yarn while someone else holds the skein, or while it is propped up between the backs of two of our dining room chairs (although that was a great day when I discovered that one).

Let me back up.... When I was in College at Northwestern I used to walk into the Yarnery or other cute yarn shops and for some reason would pine over the beautiful Yarn Swift they would have for sale.  (Actually, I must admit that I recently learned that they are called "Yarn Swifts.")  They were too expensive and unnecessary for a college student to buy.  After all, it is a good work out to hold the yarn between my feet and hold them up in the air while I wind yarn.  But this beautiful thing now belongs to me and was a gift from my mother-in-law for my birthday. 

For those of you who are curious, this is a yarn swift:

How wonderful!  But it gets even better...

I also used to go into those cute little yarn shops and steer clear of the yarn that comes like this, just because I knew the hassle it would cause when I got home.  Now, I head right to it and I'm actually disappointed when the yarn I want is is already a ball!  The other day I got this and *horray* I needed to wind it into a ball!

Now if that's not bad enough, I got a package in the mail that is a Christmas gift from my dad.  No, I did not cheat and open the box, the box just happened to be adorned with a huge picture of what is inside.  It is official, I must be a knitter if I have one of these in my house:

So now this is what I have under my tree.  I added a bow so I wouldn't be tempted to open it just to peek because I know peeking would turn into using and it would never make it's way back into the box.

  

W.I.P.

As I have mentioned before, I am totally addicted to knitting these days.  Maybe it is stress, maybe it is the season, I'm not sure but things sure do feel pretty hectic around here.  There is not any one reason for the stress or my feeling overwhelmed.  Maybe just too many good things going on... school, work, clc, marriage, friendships, family... the list can go on.

I did read in a magazine last week (not a knitting one, mind you) that knitting helps lower stress hormones and increase endorphins.  I now have proof that knitting makes you happy.  I'm not sure that Grant would buy that as a valid source, but that would not be anything new.  You should ask him about that... it's a pretty funny story.  That might explain why I have been knitting a ton lately and that my hives are a little less obnoxious.  (I have had pretty severe hives every day for almost 6 months now.)

Anyway... onto my thought behind this post.  One of the knitting websites I have discovered recently is Ravelry.  If you are looking for yarn-related inspiration, go no further.  It is fun to take pictures of the things I am working on and what I've completed.  I'm not sure anyone ever sees what I post, but it makes me feel productive and useful.  Just today I made the connection between the label on Ravelry "WIP" or "Work In Progress" and the title of our little blog.

I was in String Theory Yarn Co. in Glen Ellyn this afternoon and there was a woman working on what looked like a sweater.  She had put a lot of work into what she was making only to find out that she had made a mistake right at the beginning and unfortunately she had to pull it all out and start over again.

I named this blog "Work in Progress" because I feel like that represents me (and us) well.  It is amazing to look back and see areas of my life where I have grown and changed and areas where there are mistakes... to go with the knitting theme.  Those areas that are "mistakes" mean that I might have to pull out a lot of work that has been done and re-do it, even when everything beyond that mistake looks fine.  Pulling work out is frustrating and can be hard to do (when a lot of time has gone into it), but it does make me more familiar with the pattern and it does make me a better knitter.  I've even learned how to fix some mistakes without pulling a whole sweater apart now that I've been knitting for a while.  At the same time, other mistakes and glitches (and there will always be mistakes and glitches) are part of what adds character to hand-made work.  I hope that my life turns out like that - something unique and hand-made - one that reflects that handywork of my creator and my willingness to let him shape me.