Hippiemommy

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  • Small change: Using up what I have

    This is hardly a revolutionary idea, but it really hit home for me over the past year. My ex moved out with hardly anything. He took his personal possessions, a few rooms of furniture, and a few condiments(?), but he mostly decided to buy new for himself.

    Reusing old pots and free seeds for this year’s veggie starts

    On my end, I was looking at a house partially stripped of furniture, but otherwise filled with items that have accumulated over the past 25 years of marriage.

    My first instinct was to get a dumpster. I decided that his old things could easily be tossed and it’d just feel nice to get them out. Because my property includes outbuildings that had things in them when we moved in, I had no trouble filling the dumpster with random crap that I definitely didn’t need.

    Once I got past that initial purge, I realized that I have a lot of stuff that is still very usable. It’s just going to take time and intentionality.

    Some of these items are easy to use up (shampoo, dried beans, lightbulbs), but many of the items require a little creativity.

    I’ve been really proud of a few of my upcycling projects. I made an outdoor compost bin out of a mix of old wood and gates. I made a trunk bag for my commuter bike out of a rejected backpack. And, to that note, I basically upcycled my entire old gravel bike into a commuter bike. It did require a few small purchases, but I was mostly able to put it together with items that I had on hand.

    As I go into the second half of the year, I’m trying to be mindful of the balance between minimizing for speed (to just get it over with) and mindfully using what I have unless it really can’t be used. If I can save an item from going to the landfill and save some money, I definitely want to go that route.

    How about you? How have you found the balance in life?

  • Small changes that add up

    It’s been a long time, but I’ve really missed blogging.

    My life has changed dramatically in the past year. I’m now a single mom. I started a new career. I graduated college. I’m making my life into what I want it to be. I learned a lot of lessons in the first half of life, and I hope to use them in the second half.

    I have a million things to talk about, but I thought it might be nice to do a series on small changes that I’m making. Some are completely new, but many of them are more about re-embracing things that I used to do.

    In the past decade, I’ve let a lot of things drop. Some, like Evangelicalism, were overdue to be ditched. Others, like my commitment to sustainability, just felt like too much to carry when I was also dealing with a failing marriage, pandemic life, working and being in school full-time, and raising teens/tweens.

    As my life has started to get a little space in it, I’ve spent a lot of time considering what I miss and what I don’t. One thing that I really missed was my connection to the natural world around me.

    As part of my divorce, I ended up with our little homestead. I’ve always loved this property, and he was never very enthusiastic about it, so it seemed like a good solution. Still, there’s a lot to care for and it’s just me, so I have to be patient. Projects take time and I can’t really rush through them.

    Just before Covid (maybe 5-6 years ago?), I started planting one tree a year on my property. I’d pick it out in the spring and plant it just before the summer heat set in.

    I started with an apple tree, then I added a cherry tree. My now ex-husband decided one year to include an apple tree as an anniversary gift. After that I added a peach tree and another apple.

    I announced my divorce and the anniversary apple tree died an extravagant death. It never even leafed out. I yanked it out and put a nectarine tree there.

    The peach tree and apple trees are now probably about 10-15 feet tall. What started as a small project has now completely transformed my front yard.

    This year, I decided to add a maple tree. I wanted a tree to give shade and a little more privacy to the front of my house. I found one that I loved and saw that the scientific name for it was the same (oddly spelled) name as the street that my younger two kids were born on. Perfect!

    One thing that I love about small changes is that they kind of creep up on you and one day you realize that you’re closer than ever to the life you want. The opposite is true in life, too. I think I’ve felt both of these in recent years, which has really helped me to appreciate the good ones.

  • WIP-a-Day, Day 6 – Piper’s Journey Shawl

    Today’s WIP is a newer project. It’s a Piper’s Journey shawl that I’ve been using as parking lot knitting. My 13yo has a decent number of classes/lessons/rehearsals and some of them are only 45 minutes long, so it isn’t worth driving home. I usually have a pair of socks on the needles at any time, but it’s nice to have a second project in the car that’s a little more interesting.

    At this point in the shawl, I’m working on the applied border. I don’t have it entirely memorized, but I only have to glance at the pattern once or twice and then I remember it. The body of the shawl is just garter stitch with increases, so I didn’t need a pattern at all for that part.

    Piper’s Journey was designed by Paula Emons-Fuessle. I enjoyed Paula’s podcast and I have been wanting to knit this shawl in her memory. Paula’s posts as she dealt with cancer reminded me so much of my mom’s journey, so it was really hard for me to read/listen. I honestly felt really guilty about it, but I guess that’s how unhealed grief goes sometimes. (Is grief ever completely healed? I’m not there yet, if so.)

    For today’s run, I listened to a podcast that was actually quite boring, lol. I did, however, also start Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow on Audible the other day and it’s good so far. I have seen a few spoilers, but nothing too intense. It was a Book of the Month selection a while back and I was very tempted to get it then.

    Alright, back to work on my yoga teacher training assignment. I’m literally dreaming of yoga at this point, lol.

  • WIP-a-Day, Day 5 – Parallelolamb

    Today’s WIP is the Parallelolamb by Stephen West. This is another pattern that I assumed was pretty popular. I tagged it on Instagram and realized that is actually had very few tags. There also aren’t that many projects for it on Ravelry. It’s interesting to see what takes off and what doesn’t.

    I used a bunch of scraps to make this shawl, so it has sat in time out a few times while I waited for scraps. The shawl is knit on 4 long circular needles at once, so you don’t have to pick up stitches. It does make it a bit like fighting a jellyfish, though. I’m often getting poked by a random needle tip or having this strange thing happen where one of the needles stabs through the fabric and kind of ties the shawl in a knot. It has definitely gotten better as the shawl has grown, because the needles are a bit more stretched out.

    The nice thing about this pattern is that you’re just increasing on one side and decreasing on the other, and it’s all in garter stitch. As long as you remember which side to work on next (there’s a handy chart in the pattern too), then you can just knit and knit without thinking. My rows are pretty long now, so it is requiring larger and larger scraps. It’s also getting pretty warm to work on, so I think I’ll probably finish it in the fall. That’s fine, since I’m not going to be wearing this beast when it’s 90+ degrees out anyways.

    For today’s run I had some harder intervals, so I thought I’d like something engaging to listen to. I picked the latest episode of Moonbeaming, where Sarah discussed shady practices within the New Age community. Her guest, Katya Weiss-Andersson, is someone that I feel like I must know, based on where she lives and what she has done. All of the alternative health/wellness circles are small enough that you tend to bump into the same people.

    Overall, I loved the whole discussion. I’m very aware of the way that religious retreats and communities manipulate emotions. A lot of New Age teachers have borrowed some of these unhealthy practices too. It’s good to step back and see the many influences on each movement and the ways that it shapes the community. Even though people like to think that they’re above the influences of patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, transphobia, etc… the people with power in society still end up being the same people in power in subcultures. That means a lot of the same problems exist in both places.

    The episode gave me lots of food for thought and made my V02Max intervals go by quickly, so it’s a win-win. I still have about 15 minutes left, which I think I might listen to while my son is getting his teeth cleaned this morning. The sounds at the dentist office aren’t my favorite, so it’ll be a good distraction.

  • WIP-a-Day, Day 4 – Selbu Socks

    Hey, look! A project that isn’t a rainbow, lol.

    Today’s WIP is a pair of Selbu socks that I started several years ago. The actual knitting on these socks is very enjoyable, but the pattern requires a lot of clicking on links and being at my computer. That means I only work on it when I have dedicated time.

    Since I’m knitting them two-at-a-time, they should go pretty quickly once I turn the heels. I’m not in a huge rush, because I have a lot of socks and these are more of a process knit for me.

    In non-knitting news, I got feedback from my latest assignment for my yoga teacher training and it was so nice! I have one section left of assignments and then my final. They were really encouraging about my teaching style, my sequencing and my cueing. That felt very good. I’ve been practicing yoga for most of my life, but I still wasn’t sure how that would transfer to teaching.

    On my run this morning, I listened to an old episode of the Why I Knit podcast. Today’s episode talked a bit about how Instagram might make it seem like knitting projects just fly by and how people should maybe consider sharing more WIP photos. Perfect! LOL. It’s true, though. As someone with a lot of WIPs, I can show a lot of FOs in a short amount of time. That’s not exactly reflective of how quickly a project goes from start-to-finish, though. Some of my WIPs have been on the needles for years, with stitches added in hundreds of tiny sessions.

    I hope you’re having a great start to your week and the weather isn’t too crazy for you. I just let the sheep out and it smelled like smoke, so I’m off to see what that’s about… Climate change is super fun, y’all.

  • WIP-a-Day, Day 3 – Temperature Blanket

    Woohoo! We’ve made it to Day 3. This project is very different from my first two. Not only is it crochet, but it’s a WIP that can’t be finished before the year is done.

    I loved the idea of temperature blankets (where you knit a row for each day of the year), but I didn’t really love the thought of having to knit an entire blanket stripe every day. I came up with this option instead. Each round represents one day, and each color represents a 10-degree range. Depending on where I am in the square, a day can be a relatively small number of stitches, but I will have a really good-sized blanket at the end.

    When I did all of the math, I needed 6 more squares for it to be even. Luckily, we have 6 people in our family, so I added a rainbow square in for each of our birthdays. Our year is kind of front-loaded with birthdays, but I feel like the rainbows melt right in anyways.

    In other news, I am nearing the end of my 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training and my brain is feeling quite mushy. I’ve been doing a lot of simple knitting and crocheting while watching lectures and reading books. Truth be told, I absolutely love learning and having a project, so I’ll probably be a bit sad when I get to the end. Because I have a few other fitness certifications, I’m lucky that I can double-dip, and any new certifications count as CEUs for my existing ones.

    I’m not exactly sure how I want to implement yoga teaching into my schedule. I attended a lecture on “yoga for athletes” and I was very drawn to the idea of including custom yoga sequences for my run coaching clients. I think that would be really useful. I also miss teaching in-person fitness classes, so I might pursue that. Either way, I’m having a blast and learning lots of new things.

  • WIP-a-Day #2 – Frankenfingers Mitts

    Hey, hey! I’m back for my second day!

    I decided to pull WIPs based on which one is the closest (physically) to me. Today’s winner is this pair of rainbow Frankenfingers. They’re being made out of Knit Picks Felici and I’m knitting them TAAT on magic loop.

    It felt to me like this pattern was super popular a decade ago and then it suddenly disappeared. Now that I’m looking at the Ravelry page, there really aren’t that many projects on there. It must’ve just been popular in my very small circle, and I imagined that it was popular everywhere.

    I feel like what makes the Frankenfingers extra cute is that each finger is done with a different color of yarn. It requires a bit of yarn waste, but the stripes aren’t that big in Felici anyways and it’s well worth it. You can always use the scraps for stitch markers or whatever. (Is that just me?)

    Since the entire pattern is ribbed, plus it’s long, and I’m making them TAAT, this will take me forever to finish. I tend to bring them when my 13yo is performing in shows, because I don’t have to look down and it helps to have other entertainment while knitting these. People always comment on the yarn, but they probably think, “Wow, this lady takes a long time to finish a project”, since I’ve literally been bringing them to shows for more than a year, lol.

    For today’s run entertainment, I decided to listen to Buddha’s Brain. It was the book club pick a few months ago for my Yoga Teacher Training and it sounded interesting. I find meditation to be particularly helpful and I am a science nerd, so I’m hoping it’ll be a fun read. I only ran for 45 minutes this morning, so I think I listened to a preface, the intro and then chapter 1…. so it’s still building. Hopefully it’ll get going soon and I’ll have more info to share.

  • A WIP a day…. until October?!

    I run pretty much every day and I love listening to podcasts while I run. Podcasts kind of make me feel like I’m running with a friend… except I don’t have to work around anyone else’s schedule and I can just run straight out of my front door. 😛

    This morning I was listening to the Pardon My Stash podcast. They were discussing the number of WIPs that each person has and whether or not they’re monogamous knitters.

    First, for anyone who doesn’t know, I am NOT a monogamous knitter. Far from it, I often have 30+ WIPs at a time. I know this number realllllly stresses some people out, but it feels pretty great to me. For my first 10 or so years of knitting, I felt guilty for having so many projects, and I’d work really hard to reduce the total number. As soon as I’d get down to single digits, I’d hate it! I love variety and I love having lots of options to choose from. I also don’t particularly like casting on (although that might not seem very believable with the number of projects that I have.)

    One thing that I’m learning in my 40s is to lean into the natural flow of my life/brain and not fight it so much. For one thing, fighting it never really works… the only real difference is whether my internal chatter is accepting and appreciates the way I work or if my internal chatter is telling me that I’m wrong.

    OK, so back to the title: I was running and listening to the podcast and thinking about how no one on the show had nearly the number of WIPs that I do. It was interesting to hear their individual takes on everything. I love hearing how brains work and I love how fiber arts are so flexible and can be approached in so many different ways.

    This afternoon, I was knitting on my couch and my beautiful pit bull, Layla, was working on a bone beside me. (BTW, Layla has at least 30+ WIPs going at any time too. There’s a reason we’re best buds.) I realized that if I photographed one WIP a day, I think I could make it until October. For some reason, this really cracked me up. I thought it might be fun to write a little more about each one and share why it’s a WIP, because there are a lot of projects that I have NO intention of finishing anytime soon. A lot of them are scrappy and the scraps just don’t exist yet. Plenty of others use funny techniques that I like working on sometimes but also don’t want to do all of the time. Some just get forgotten for a bit or make me bored and then I pick them back up later.

    Today’s WIP that I’ve been focusing on is a Sockhead Hat made out of a beautiful sock blank from Gale’s Art. I let it sit in my stash for way too long. I had started to use this yarn for a pair of socks in this year’s Sock Madness, but they ended up too tight and I liked the yarn too much to waste it. I frogged the socks and decided to make a hat instead. I was actually going to make a Musselburgh Hat (my bajillionth), but my 13yo and I were heading to see Theater Camp in the movie theater earlier this week and I didn’t want to do increases in the dark. I’m pretty good at reading knits and purls by feel, so I figured the ribbed brim would be easier to work on than the crown of the Musselburgh.

    Sure enough, I feel like I’m flying through this one. I mostly just worked on it in the theater and then for a little bit today. It’s fun to watch the color develop and I think it’ll make a really happy hat. It’ll probably be knit night/purse knitting for a few weeks, because I’m almost to the stockinette section and then it’s entirely mindless.

    I’m going to try to photograph and talk about a WIP a day until I get through all of them. I’m not too stressed about being perfect, so I’m ok if I miss a day here or there. I really like seeing older projects from other people, because there are often really good patterns in there that I’ve forgotten about. It’s easy to get swept up in the latest-and-greatest on social media and forget about other gems that are out there. If you want to follow along, I’ll be posting them on Instagram too.

    If you want to share any info about your number of WIPs or your philosophy on WIPs, I’d love to hear it! Feel free to comment, DM or post and tag me. Like I said, I think it’s fascinating to see how brains work.

  • Book Review – Long Way Down

    I decided to pick up Long Way Down on a whim. I saw that the Knitters Book Club had selected it as their book for March, and it sounded interesting. It was available through my library for free, so I downloaded it right away.

    The premise of this book is that a young man’s brother has been shot and killed, and now he is going for revenge. The book takes place over the course of 60 seconds in an elevator. At each floor another character enters, and more of the backstory is told.

    I don’t even have words for how beautifully this book is written. I was listening to the audio version and I had NO IDEA that it was written in prose. The narration is flawless. If you get the audiobook, I highly recommend that you also listen to the interview with the author at the end. It is excellent.

    I noticed that many people recommend pairing this book with The Hate U Give. I agree that the books have certain parallels, but this book can easily stand on it’s own. I’m looking forward to hearing my teenagers’ thoughts on this book, and if they feel that the books should be read together.

    I rated this book 5/5 without hesitation, and I really encourage you to pick it up. The audio version is less than 2 hours long and flies by. If you’re like me, you’ll be sad when it’s over.

  • Book Review – Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud

    Anytime I walk into the library, I have to check the “new releases” shelf before I go anywhere else. A lot of times I find new-to-me authors and books that I wouldn’t have otherwise sought out.

    I had never heard of Anne Helen Peterson before picking up this book. I’ll admit that I didn’t even realize that Buzzfeed had serious authors… so I guess I went into this book with some preconceived notions. I was really wrong. This book is concise, engaging, and it really challenged me in ways that I didn’t expect.

    The book is broken up into 10 chapters, each focusing on an unruly celebrity who is viewed as being “too much” in at least one area of their life. The first chapter, “Too Strong” is about Serena Williams and is an excellent way to open the book. Anne Helen Peterson covers how Williams’ gender affected the way that she was treated and how her race was used against her. Both the chapter on Williams and the chapter on Nicki Minaj address the fact that women of color are treated differently and held to different standards than white women in the same field. After reading the first chapter, I knew I’d definitely finish this book.

    Some of the women in the book will be known to all (like Hilary Clinton and Madonna) and others might not be (Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson were new to me.) I don’t think this makes the book any less insightful. I still enjoyed every chapter and each one left me thinking for days and noticing the subtle ways that society judges these women and other women like them.

    I’d definitely recommend checking out this book. Even when I didn’t necessarily agree 100% with the author, I still found myself challenged and seeing new perspectives. I also loved that the format of the book made it easy to read a chapter, take a break, ponder it for a while, and then return to the book.

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