Weekending

We had a lovely weekend here - just about perfect late spring weather.  D and I did some yard clean-up jobs and I am hoping the last of the snow/cold weather is done around here.  (Last week's upper 20s and flurries were very unkind to several things in the veggie garden!)  I replanted my basil, which hadn't made it thru 2 cold snaps, and I picked up a few plants to pop into the boxes on the deck and a couple of other planters we have.

This past week also marked the end of a long-time job for me - my last day was Tuesday.  While I will still be working, it'll be a new company (which so far seems to be MUCH less likely to make me crazy to the level I had been with the old one), and I'm cutting back to 24 hours a week, which is ALSO much less likely to make me as crazy as I had been with the prior schedule.  D and I celebrated with a nice cookout kind of dinner and some wine on Friday night, which was a great way to kick off the weekend as well.

Since my work schedule is moving around a bit (I usually worked 5:30 to 2:00 every day, and now I'll be on 10-4 instead), my new schedule consists of getting up at the same early time, but now I make a cup of tea, sit and knit for an hour, then go to the dye studio for an hour or two, go for a run, hit the shower and then start work.  One trick that I've found works great for me is to allot a certain amount of time - 60 minutes, 2 hours, whatever - to a specific task and then set my phone alarm.  That way, I am not worrying about "Oh, I need to get up and go start X", and I can have a really focused "power hour" on something without distractions.

I'd been using that to good effect with my Book knitting - I've gotten the front and 2 sleeves done on a men's sweater and I'm ready to tackle the front now - plus most of the body of a shawl for The Book, AND started another lace shawl for an indie release in the last week.  This weekend, while I did do a lot of knitting, I also snuck in 90 minutes of sewing time, which felt absolutely great to be doing something just for fun!  I'm still holding out the hope I might have this pretty decorative winter quilt done in time for my parents' 50th wedding anniversary in December of this year, so that's what I worked on.  I didn't feel like sitting and working on applique (of which there is a lot in this quilt), but I did get pieces for some flying geese patches cut and started sewing those.

Hope your weekend was great too!