It’s still snowy, but the main roads are clear, I’m told. I haven’t left my house since it started snowing last week.

I’ve been working what one of the guys I interviewed for the Successful Men series described as “half days” — 12 hours a day.

However, I’ve also gotten some knitting done. Here you see the sleeves of the Diagonals in Flight cardigan. I’m doing them both at once on circular needles, which is a good thing, because I never seem to have the same stitch count. I’m counting every few rows and adjusting as I go, so they may not be perfect but they will be pretty close to matching.

I like the way the slant of the stitches shifts in the middle. I like the crunch texture of the cotton in this stitch, too.  Sometimes I like the knitting and then don’t like the garment, but I hope that isn’t true in this case.

This is repurposed yarn. I had knitted it all up into Oat Couture’s Bijoux Blouse. The cotton spread out horribly at the bottom, the sleeves drooped in a schlumpy fashion, and I looked like a polar bear when wearing it. So, after a decent interval to allow me to forget all the hours I had put into it, I frogged the whole thing and began anew on this cardi.

I still have an hour to do for my Aussies, largely because I spent the time I should have spent on them yesterday in knitting, but I am also going to go to church. LaBella is picking me up; otherwise, I probably wouldn’t go. It would be very easy for me just to become a hermit.

If you can be a hermit with a job and a family. Possibly this would interfere with the true hermetic life.

In any case, I’ll be going to church and then writing for the Australians and grading paper, and if I have any time left at all, I’ll get on with those sleeves.

We’ve been snowed in all week. My classes were canceled, though I have all of them online this term as well so I’ve still had lots of grading to do. Lots of writing, as well, and websites to work on.

#1 daughter and I spent last Sunday afternoon cooking for the freezer. This is what we made:

• Chicken Stew with Black Beans
• Beef Stew and Corn Muffins
• Chicken Saltimbocca
• Chili (packaged up with hot dogs and buns)
• King Ranch Chicken
• Chicken Casserole with Pasta and Spinach
• Chicken Tostadas
• Pizza Kits
• Chocolate Chip Cookies

We should run out of food sometime this weekend. It worked perfectly. Too bad this Sunday we will still be snowed in and unable to repeat the excellent plan. 

I have to work today, in fact. I’ve already worked about 56 hours this week, but I still have grading, my Australians, and a website that should have been finished yesterday.

I’m also planning to do some housework and at least work on my knitting — sewing, too, if possible. I have a knit top cut out and ready to sew, and I’m on the sleeves of the Diagonals in Flight cardigan.

That’s it on the left, being worn by both those ladies who seem to be having such a fun conversation. I’m making it from a peach cotton, and I’ll take a picture of it for you when I get my camera back.

I might have a bunch of yarn left when I finish. If so, I’m going to make the top shown below. Both patterns are from Lacy Little Knits.

One thing about working way too much is that your projects last a really long time. True, I knitted a sweater and some cowls for Christmas gifts, but apart from that I’ve been working on this cardigan since last summer. At this rate, the price of yarn becomes irrelevant. I could knit everything in alpaca and silk without a qualm if I only accomplish two sweaters a year. 

Today was supposed to be the day of this Interfaith Event Janalisa and I were going to sing at. I think we’ll be snowed in again instead.

There was to have been a reading of the Koran, chanting, some sort of Goddess Celebration, us singing a bunch of noncommital hymns and songs, stuff like that. At the rehearsal last week I ran into my brother’s roomie from years back. She sings with the Unitarians now, and has finished writing a book called Worship Your Food, so I don’t know quite where she is theologically, but it was great to see her.
 

I have a painful eye infection. For some reason, trouble with my eyes, and headaches as well, feel more like a central problem. That’s where I am, so a problem with my eyes or my head doesn’t feel like something I can overlook and keep on in spite of.

I’m saying “infection” because I think it’s blepheritis, something I’ve had before. As I recall, the treatment was hot compresses and waiting for it to go away, so that’s what I’m doing.

Also, feeling sorry for myself. And grading papers. I think I will be skipping church and rehearsal today, since I feel as miserable as I do. However, #1 daughter is on her way back up from the capitol, where she went to interview for the high-powered Canadian job she has been offered.

We’re intending to have a grand cooking session so we can have food for the week for our two households.

Last weekend we had a big reshuffling. #2 daughter came to visit. #1 daughter had a birthday celebration and also came back to work for me, resulting in a much calmer week (of course I was also sleeping in till 5:00 or later, so that may be part of it as well). #2 son left for his college. #1 son and I started back to school as well, here in our county.

#2 daughter and I had a sewing day. She’s making this dress of chocolate brown satin. In fact, she has a set of glamorous origami-styled sheaths and a jacket planned. She bought a bunch of menswear-with-a-twist fabrics at the Hancock’s MLK Day sale, so she has a camel herringbone with metallic gold sparkles, a black and mahogany houndstooth check, stuff like that. It’s going to make a beautiful work wardrobe, and then she can pull off the jacket and go out to dinner.

I made the jacket below. Note how it has no buttonholes, topstitching, collar notches or any hard parts. I didn’t even have trouble setting in the sleeves. It’s a Sewing with Nancy pattern. I plan to make it again. If I had the skills, I could redraw the collar piece (it’s just revers, I think, if I’m using the word correctly, rather than a proper collar) into a different shape and make it look quite different.

Even without those skills, though, I think I could make it in a drapey solid with the attached sash and it would look different.

I finished it over the course of the week, and you can see it below (wow, it needs pressing, doesn’t it?). I think it works well with the teal wool suit I made last year, so I believe I’ll make a matching skirt so I can swap back and forth. If the skirts are the same shape, that ought to work. Neither of these jackets came with a skirt in their patterns. The teal skirt is a basic pencil skirt with no waistband or pockets or anything. Very nice with the new jacket.

The new jacket fabric is a tweedy wool with a bit of a check effect in a blue green, caramel, and brown mixture that I’m completely failing to capture here. The green is like a mallard green or bottle green, not very obvious in the fabric until you put the same shade up against it, at which point it comes up very brightly.
 
 I’ll try again from another angle — okay, this might be better. 

It’s a classic look, short enough to work well with skirts but good with pants as well.

So this week I think I will sew a blouse in blue-green cotton to go with it, and perhaps also the matching skirt.

I have some caramel colored wool that would make a nice skirt, a dark brown fabric suited to pants, several blouse lengths in various blue-green shades, a sturdy jersey in aubergine, and some jacquard linen in a shade of burgundy that looks very good with the other colors.

In short, I have the makings of a SWAP, if I can be disciplined about taking the time to sew. I do have some work to do today, plus housework and errands, but I’m optimistic.

Here’s the other pattern I’m thinking of using. The jacket in the photo above was made from a Vogue pattern, not from this one, though the styles are similar. If I use the pants and skirt patterns from this ensemble,  they should work well with that jacket.

Then I could also make one or both versions of the jacket in a dark brown or charcoal gray.

Note how having finished ONE sewn item (apart from pressing it) makes me imagine that I will be able to sew up a whole wardrobe for myself?

But if I do one piece a week, I’ll be able to do just that. There are 11 pieces in a classic SWAP and 11 weeks from now is merely the beginning of April. Then I could switch over to warm weather clothes and have another complete SWAP before it cools off in the fall.

It could happen.

This is a picture from #1 son’s trip to New Orleans. I didn’t go. In fact, I didn’t go anywhere between semesters, and now I wish I had, since school starts on Tuesday. For me, on Wednesday, because I don’t teach on Tuesdays. I’ve really been questioning whether it’s wise for me to keep teaching. On the other hand, I’m committed to the spring term, so there’s not much point in agonizing over it right now. 

Remind me to leave town over spring break, though.

I’m trying to be more businesslike, to have more creativity in my daily life instead of only in my work, and to take care of myself. I realize that this is the same list of goals as last year’s, but maybe they were just goals that take longer to accomplish.

#2 daughter is coming down to visit today, #2 son leaves tomorrow to go back to school, and we’re going to celebrate #1 daughter’s birthday when she gets back from Baton Rouge. This is therefore the end of the holidays.

Beginning next weekend, I plan to have Saturday Sewing Day. For the sake of my wardrobe as well as for the sake of getting some creativity back into my daily life. I might try to finish last year’s SWAP, or I might start a new one. I haven’t kept up with fashions this year, so I don’t know whether there are new trends I ought to try out or not. Maybe I’ll roam around the sewing blogs and see.

I’ve had a rough week. Not a bad week, but it sort of went on for a long time and had lots of stuff in it. My husband’s 4:22 alarm clock is probably the main thing, frankly. I always end up sleep deprived and Not at My Best when I have to get up with him that early.

My new website had some tech compications (a freak accident with a server) on Monday and then on Tuesday a former client had a problem. It’s kind of a sad problem, really. He left me and The Computer Guy, who had  made him a beautiful website and written (me) and planned (TCG) a fine secondary website for him. He took my content and our concept to a bargain “web designer” who not only gave him an inferior site but also messed up his fine site that we built him. So Tuesday was filled with frantic emails from him, his wife, and finally the “designer” asking for help.

We sent him the original files, but apparently his new person doesn’t know what to do with them. This is a sad tale, I know, and I am sorry for the guy, but also I spent a couple of hours dealing with the issue for him, while trying (and failing) to get my paid work done. The total time was a couple of hours, but since it was in a series of interruptions over a period of two days, it was more intrusive than that suggests, and I didn’t get all my work done.

It isn’t right for me to ignore my current, paying clients to send compassionate but essentially worthless emails to a former client who isn’t paying for the help. It isn’t good for my business and it isn’t fair to my current clients. The guy still doesn’t have a functional site and I spent Wednesday catching up from the emergencies of Monday and Tuesday.

I’m a sucker for emotional appeals. That’s the true source of the problem.

Thursday was a normal workday, but 12 hours and 40 minutes long (according to Toggl). Yesterday I took time for a lunch meeting with #1 daughter. Now that we don’t live in the same place, we’ve decided that this will be our means of keeping up to date. I also took time to go see the IRS and buy food in order to avoid having to call out for pizza all the time.

So what with all that stuff happening, I’m working today. I have to get my online classes ready, and check my campus email. I like teaching, but I dislike everything else about it. The hourly rate ends up being lower than my normal rate, and there’s all this grading and following rules and filling out forms and going to meetings… Could I sound more bratty, petulant, and unreasonable?

I’m not really feeling bratty today, though. I have fun things to do and I plan to do things like baking and knitting and taking a nap. I did some housework already, and read a bit, and a little time spent doing stuff I don’t like will probably be good for my character.

I’m updating links for my new website. This is sort of meditative. It’s lots of routine stuff, with occasional bits of exciting mental activity and many small hand motions.

Just like archaeology. I’m sure that’s what you were thinking, too.

I don’t do this very much any more. #2 daughter is our official linkbuilder. However, this is unpaid linkbuilding just for the firm, so I’m doing it.

Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon knitting and watching a marathon of Bones. I think I may repeat that. I had dinner with my family and we discussed issues in sociology, and I may repeat that, too. I made Silk Fountain Hoods (you can see one here, though not one of mine) for several female family members, and now I want one of my own. I can’t take a picture of mine because #1 son took the camera to New Orleans.

Back to the salt mines now. Or possibly to knitting.

Happy New Year!

I have a new website. Apart from that, I don’t think I have much to say about 2010. I didn’t meet my goals from last New Year’s, apart from getting more reasonable amounts of sleep some of the time. I worked a lot. I had fun. I don’t think I did anything especially interesting or had any major events, though some of my family members did. I knitted a couple of sweaters and pieced a quilt. I launched one wildly successful website of my own, was chosen as a Google Earth Influencer, launched a bunch of reasonably successful sites for other people, complicated my churchgoing, enjoyed some great music,

We’re planning an exciting year for 2011, though! I hope you are, too.

If exciting is what you want, of course.

Here’s the new design for our forthcoming new website.

My current website is beautiful. However, it is the website of a freelance writer, while I now have lots of workers. My typical website these days has six people involved. I have no business using just my name on my website or on my work.

My daughters are also now part of the company, and they felt that my website, beautiful though it might be, was dark and old looking. They wanted something younger, fresher, brighter. This new design, says #2 daughter, is sexy. The old one was comforting.

The whole point of the old one was to be comforting, actually. “Don’t fear,” it said, “Even if you’re scared of tech guys, you can call me and I’ll help you with your website.” I’m not sure what this one says. “Hello, sailor, let me help you with your website”? Probably not. It may or may not be relevant that #2 daughter has dated both the designers who worked on this.

We definitely need to do a new video. The blue in this one clashes.

I don’t know if the site is sexy. It does seem luminous and lovely.

So here’s a ravishingly beautiful song for your Christmas music collection: “All My Heart This Night Rejoices,” from Ebeling. Here it is with an enormous number of verses so that you can allow its lovely harmonies to wash over your ears and fill you with joy. If perhaps music doesn’t have this effect on you (and you have my sympathy), you might still like it for the fact that it contains logical argumentation, an extremely rare feature in Christmas carols.

Usually we sing these bits, which are pretty touching:

All my heart this night rejoices
As I hear, far and near, sweetest angel voices
“Christ is born,” their choirs are singing
Till the air, everywhere, now their joy is ringing

Hark! a voice from yonder manger
Soft and sweet, doth entreat, “Flee from woe and danger
Brethren, come; from all that grieves you
You are freed; all you need I will surely give you.”

Thee, dear Lord, with heed I’ll cherish
Live to Thee and with Thee, dying, shall not perish
But shall dwell with Thee for ever
Far on high, in the joy that can alter never

Yesterday’s tea was lovely, by the way, though not in the same way that the website design and the song are. It involved numerous dainty little bites of things: cucumber and cress sandwiches, delicate lime cookies, tiny chocolate tassies, and cream puffs filled with chicken salad. There was a lady presiding over a silver teapot and lots of tinkly laughs and ladylike conversation. I enjoyed it.

We had a nice Christmas concert this morning and I’m going to a Christmas tea this afternoon. I made a good amount of progress on #2 son’s sweater yesterday (I’m doing the sleeves two at a time, and am about 7″ into the them) and hope to make some more progress this evening. I wrapped up my other knitted gifts and put them under the tree, changed the regular dishes out for the Christmas ones, and set up the creche

It feels like Christmas.

I learned today that I’ll be singing a solo on Christmas Eve, so I need to decide what to sing. Tough decision! There are so many beautiful songs… I’m thinking about Panis Angelicus because a) it’s lovely, b) it’s familiar enough for people to enjoy yet not so well known that they’ll be tired of it, and c) I own the music in a good key. That’s Pavarotti singing it, but Josh Groban did it very beautifully on his Noel album, and Renee Fleming is another fine choice. If the Cheetah Girls have done it, or Andy Williams, or someone like that, I think you should skip it.

Thomas Aquinas wrote this piece, and Cesar Franck arranged it. #2 daughter and I have done this as a duet many times; unfortunately, she will still be at work when I sing it on Christmas Eve.