The Week March 6-12, 2017

Last week’s goals with progress indicated:

• Wear The Green Wood Cardigan and when I’m not wearing it, gaze lovingly/meditate on the greens and blues in the yoke.
  This was easy; I wore it everywhere I could and thrust it at people to admire and hold.
• Knit 5 more wedges of my Aranami shawl. I can easily make 1 a day, so setting a goal of 5 is not unreasonable.
  Easily done – I did 6.
• Buy Aspen, read the pattern through, plan modifications.
  Done. I planned chart modifications/increases to knit the back and front top-down, so I could use just the right amount of yarn (I’m using yarn bought for Essex, another Michelle Wang sweater but I don’t want to make it again) and shorten the length. Instead, I think I’m going to knit bottom up and make an educated guess about how many shaping decreases up the body I should start at (adjusted cast-on count). I started knitting the sleeves for my gauge swatches. Modification #1: I’m knitting the sleeves 5″ shorter than the pattern calls for because I don’t like the chunky cuffs on sweaters, mine never stay folded over and I don’t like the extra bulk when wearing a coat over the sweater.
• Go to TKD twice.
  Done.
• Go to the PO and mail an order from the shop. Yup, just when I’ve given up on selling anything but patterns, I had a sale. And actually, I need to do this today.
  Done, and although I printed a receipt and wrote a nice thank you, I forgot to put that in the package, I did actually mail it.
• My friend Suzi challenged me to a nature photo-off; take 1 picture of something nature-y a day and post it to FB. Of course I’m posting them to Instagram first and then sharing them, so I also plan to take 1 photo of something in the natural world each day to keep up with this.
  Done. Still going. I’ll post them on Wednesday in case you follow me here but not on Instagram and if you do follow me both places, my apologies for the repeats. At least they’ll look a little different in a group of 7.
• I set up an account on Society6 and uploaded some of my flower/nature photos since a few of my friends expressed interest in buying prints. I’m not sure if this is really how I want to move forward with print selling or not, but it’s probably a good way to start – it’s easy to set up, that’s for sure.

This week:

• Knit 3 more wedges of my Aranami shawl.
• Recreate the charts for Aspen so they’re all in one chart, not a handful of charts with different row counts, which is too much for me to keep track of. Plus for some reason I really enjoy lining boxes up on a grid in Adobe Illustrator so this will be fun for me.
• Go to TKD twice and find more patience for myself and the instructor. (Expecting myself to have mastery of something I’ve practiced once is unreasonable and expecting the instructor to know where I am & what I need by reading my mind is also unreasonable. Maybe my goal should be more about expectations than patience. Or both. Hmm.)
• Add more photos to Society6 and ruminate on it more.

I promised myself my goal list wouldn’t get out of control and unattainable again and the creep of unattainability has begun. I just removed a few things and adjusted a few others so I don’t overwhelm myself and shut down again. Here’s some Monday wisdom that dovetails quite nicely with goals & expectations.