Rejection

Hello all my comforting people,

It is official, I have been rejected. I received the letter today, and I have been questioning whether or not to share my feelings with you. Since I have declared my blog representing my life as well as my crafts, and I have shared up to this point. So here is me in my life, right now in this moment of rejection.
    I was not enough; good enough, qualified enough, passionate enough, whatever enough. I have failed. I have failed to meet the standards and expectations of others as well as myself. My heart is broken and my stomach hurts. I am sad. I need a moment to myself. I need a moment with someone who will just listen and understand. I need a good cry before I can pick myself up and move forward.
   I am afraid of forward. What does that even mean? Forward. It is moving to plan B, the back-up idea. The thing that will allow me to continue on the path I have set for myself. Do I want to continue on that path? yes. no. maybe. yes.
    Yes. It is just hard right now. Especially since plan B is less than perfect and plan C is difficult to pin down. I know there will be a lot of other moments. Some may actually break me for a time. This one has been more difficult than expected, of course you never know how you are going to react to something until it happens. I will be okay. We will see how plan B works (plan C has to do with crafts, but you are not allowed to root for that one)
It is not a perfect post. There are a lot of ideas and thoughts I wanted to add. But I am done writing now and, honestly, I do not have the energy to say anything else.
Thanks for listening,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee

February part II

Hello again my sweets,

As promised, here is the re-cap of what I was up to the second half of February. (by the way, I think February is the worst spelled month ever! I mean really, Feb-r-ua-ry? Every one pronounces it Feb-u-ary. Sorry, I have spelling issues, and February and Wednesday [pronounced: Wen-s-day] get me every time.) Anyway, back to the re-cap. 

First, on the Master/Credential front, I have officially been wait listed. I received an e-mail a couple weeks ago stating that they had sent out their first round of acceptance letters. When I called to see where I might be on said wait list, I was essentially (although, very kindly) told that it was probably not going to happen this time. After the initial sting of rejection, I took stalk of what this meant. Those of you who have been following along know that my plan B is to apply for my substitute teaching licence and sub for the next year couple of years. I will wait until 2017 before reapplying, by then I should have some quality classroom time under my belt.

Second: the lady and I had a mommy-daughter weekend while the men went to visit family. The lady had a Saturday birthday party that could not be missed. Unfortunately, once the birthday party was over, our 1987 pick-up decided it had no interest in starting (later found out that the new battery had not been secured properly and it now starts fine). We had to take Uber home. That Sunday it decided to rain (pour), and without a car we were stuck in the house. We used the opportunity to dye some wool! 

 

 

  I feel that the pictures

speak for themselves. We dyed 3 skeins of 2oz hand spun and 4 oz of roving.

Of course, as soon as the roving dried I had to spin it up:

They turned out so pretty! It was at this point I realized that my current spools and flyer were to small to ply more that 3oz total. Fortunately Stitches West was the 19-22 of February, and my friend and I had already made arrangements with our loves to go!

I will say this about Stitches: It Is FABULOUS! So much yarn and knitting and spinning and everything in between in one place. If you ever get a chance to go to a Stitches event, go. But make sure you have a list of necessities and a good size budget. My list consisted of a larger flyer, 2 large spools, wool, interchangeable circular needles, and yarn for the lady to learn how to knit with.
This is what I came home with:

*sigh* I love this picture ;D.

And now that I have the bigger flyer and spools, I have plied:

  Although, not evenly. That small skein on top of the spool in the second picture is the left over single. Despite the extra, I still love the end result, about 3.75 oz of sock weight.

Well, that covers February (with the exception of the class project, but that might be a post all on it's own)

Thanks for checking in,
XO Lue Lue Ellabee

February part I

Hello my treasures!

Well another month has past between my posts. I have thought about posting several times, unfortunately I kept getting distracted by small children and projects. Between new babies, Valentines Day, Stitches West, and a class art project for my daughter's school auction; I feel like I have been all crafting all the time. Because there are so many things to show you, and  I have spent the last 3 days trying to write this post, I have decided to do February in (hopefully) 2 parts. Things I did/ worked on up to Valentines day:
 You might remember this sweater from my last post:   
It is the sweater I was making for my friend that just had her second baby (Baby E). I finished it, and I love it so!

.   The hot pink hearts are my favorite bit. I think they make the sweater. Of course, baby E has a big sister. And I could not ship something to Mama and baby without making sure big sister had something fun to open too. So, I went through my fabric stash and found enough snoopy valentine fabric for my favorite skirt pattern, the one I made my lady's plaid skirt from back in October:

   

I am not positive on sister's exact size, so I used some of that elastic with the buttonholes and made it adjustable. 

I made one for my lady too: 

Also from my stash ;D.

Babies and children are not the only ones I have been making for. My oldest sister, MC, has a February birthday. And I had promised her some fingerless mitts to go with the shawl I knit for her two Christmases ago. 

This is the Shawl:

The pattern is Silvia Bo Bilvia's All About Love Shawl. Using the half skein of Cascade pure alpaca that I had left over from the shawl, and Fiona Ellis's #40 Lace mitts pattern. I managed to make her these:

 

I think they turned out fabulous! Especially since I had to do some re-adjusting and this was my first time with thumb gussets. The yarn I used is a worsted weight and the pattern calls for a sport weight. I ended up knitting one mitt twice, because I realized that (despite already casting on 8 less than called for) it was going to be way to big once it was blocked. In the end I cast on 32 stitches and the count on the thumb gussets is 12 stitches instead of 15. 

That is about it for the first half of February. I will try to get to the second half soon (and I will show you what I got at Stitches West!).

Thanks for checking in!

XO Lue Lue Ellabee