He's Still in the Picture, Sort of...

My husband and I have been together for 31 years.  He's a terrific guy.  Really.  So when I started this blog, I pretty much forced him to read every post with the full expectation that he would do his duty and tell me it was great.  His response?

"You make it sound like you live alone with the dog."

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned him.  I know I said he likes burritos.  So I browsed back through a few hundred pics of the dog, yarn, and knitting projects to the last picture I took of him to share with you.  Here it is:

Oh dear.  But, OMG look at that puppy!

That, by the way, is the newest member of our family.  She is my sister's puppy, Shelby, and she is perfect.

So I scrolled back a little more and finally found this pic from our trip to Alaska six years ago.

Despite the fact that I apparently only take really bad pictures of him approximately every six years, he is still very much in the picture!

But the blog is called "Knitting with my Dog," so I think it's pretty clear that he's not going to have a starring role.  Doesn't mean I don't love him and love doing things with him.  It just means that I am a fully formed adult who also has fully formed separate interests.  If he wants to be a star, he will have to write his own blog called "Riding my Motorcycle and Starting Another Project Around the House."

And just so you don't think that I have forgotten my priorities, here is a picture of me knitting with my dog.  On a boat.

We (my husband, my dog, and I) spent a beautiful weekend at a friend's cottage near North Bay in Northern Ontario. Such a peaceful and gorgeous setting.  It's the kind of cottage I like.  It's a cottage, not a luxurious house.  It's a little rustic.  There is indoor plumbing but no television.  

But the outdoors is the focus.  Its rugged and rocky and situated high above a beautiful quiet lake and you want to spend all your time out there just soaking it all in.

And the only responsibility you have all weekend is to throw this stick into the lake for this dog. Over and over and over.......

It was a great weekend with great friends.  Thanks McAllister Family!  

Tomorrow, we'll get back to the knitting!

"Purls" of Wisdom

So today I'm going to share the first in an ongoing series of posts I like to think of as "Purls" of Wisdom.

See what I did there?

It is safe to say that Izzy loves bones more than anything else in the World.  At some point every day she approaches us in what we immediately recognize as her  "Can I have another one?" pose.  It is a unique combination of adorable, pathetic, hopeful and excited that can only be interpreted one way.  She wants a bone.  It is subtly different from the "I want to go out" pose but similar in tone to the "I see a squirrel in the backyard" pose.

A long time ago, I recognized this quality in myself.  I'm  a girl who needs a lot of approval.  I want to be appreciated and rewarded for the things that I do.  Like Izzy, I would be thrilled if someone gave me a bone every day.

If every knitting pattern I design rocketed to the top of the Ravelry listings.

If my husband raved about every meal I cooked.

If my son told me I was the best Mom in the World.  Better yet, texted me that message every day.  Let's be realistic.

But.  Izzy does not get a bone every day.  Similarly, everything I do is not met with universal approval and love.  But here's the thing I learned from my dog.  Sometimes it happens.  And sometimes is enough to warrant ongoing enthusiasm and the expectation that it could.

So yeah, when I released this pattern?

http://www.ravelry.com/designers/cathy-lewis-tall-tree-designs

Not too many people cared.

But when I released this pattern:

http://www.ravelry.com/designers/cathy-lewis-tall-tree-designs

People loved it.

So here it is.

Purl of Wisdom # 1

No matter how many times you fail, the possibility of success continues to exist.  Every failure brings you one step closer to it. Don't focus on the times it didn't work.  Live your life like every endeavour has an equal chance to be the success you want it to be.

And just  keep trying.

Hello

Hello.  This is me, Cathy.

And this is my dog, Izzy.

I know,  Right?

And this is me, knitting with my dog.  

 

To be absolutely clear.  The dog does not knit.  I'm the one that does that.  But she is quite appreciative of my efforts and I'll take approval from wherever I can get it.

A couple of years ago, a few things happened (we'll probably talk about that someday), and my husband and I left the big city and moved to a small town on a pretty lake in Ontario's cottage country.  I had given up the rat race, my nest was empty and it was just me and the dog most of the time.  I was kind of at loose ends at first, but then slowly I started to appreciate my new freedom.  I started figuring out a lot of things that I didn't want to do.  And I figured out a few that I did.  Chief among them was knitting.  

Now don't get me wrong.  I've been knitting for a long time.  Since about two months after they kicked me out of Brownies because I couldn't knit a potholder.  But this was different.  This was slightly....obsessive.  And I found kindred spirits who encouraged me to follow my new obsession and things kind of snowballed.  I have a couple of thousand beautiful patterns on Ravelry.com that I cannot possibly knit in this lifetime, but even so, when I saw a post by Francoise Danoy of Aroha Knits on Facebook advertising a designing challenge, I was intrigued.

I joined the group.  It was five days long and the first day she wanted us to do a mood board. While I experience many moods, sometimes within the space of five minutes, I have never really been a mood board kind of girl.  But I'm working on being open to new experiences...other peoples' ideas and all that crazy crap so I did the mood board.  And it actually inspired me.  (Go figure).  

Every day, I followed the instructions of the challenge and every day, I got a little bit more excited about what I was doing.  Francoise started a Facebook group called the Initiate Design Group and I really got into it.  (Thanks, Frenchie)!  I was having more fun and feeling more energized than I had in a long time.  So I pushed through the obstacles and actually designed my very first shawl.  Here it is:

You might not think it was very good but I don't care.   I was stoked.  Most people in the designer group recommended having a few pattens under your belt before opening a store on Ravelry and offering your patterns for sale.  So I designed a few more.  Then I opened a store and... well more about that later.  (If you're interested my user name on Ravelry is clewis65 and I design as Cathy Lewis, Tall Tree Designs.

So it's a lot of fun but, as much as I love the dog and the dog loves me, I've been craving a slightly wider audience.  So here I am.  We'll be talking a lot about knitting.  And yarn.  And my other crazy knitting friends.  And my efforts to become a successful designer, mistakes and all.   But being me, we'll probably talk about a lot of other stuff too.  Books, food, my newest NetFlix obsession, my long suffering family, the argument I had with the old guy at Shoppers Drug Mart, and of course, my dog.

I don't  really know where it's all going, but I welcome you to join me for the ride.