So It's Been a Minute

Greetings, Gentle Readers,

For those of you who are still subscribed, first let me thank you for your readership. To those who sent me words of kindness and care while I’ve been sub-radar, thank you also, from the bottom of my heart.

By way of explanation for my absence, I’ll offer this: Within a three week period, my daughter left home for college, My mother died, and my husband of 25 years announced that he wanted a divorce.

The trifecta of loss sent me into a pretty dark place, from which I am still gradually resurfacing. To say that my heart broke is an understatement of preposterous proportion. It was more like a complete throttling of the spirit, and a smoking crater was left where everything I cherished used to be. I was reduced to survival-only mode, and just didn’t have the heart to blog while it was too hard to find anything positive to say.

Through all that though, I managed to continue teaching, find gainful employment, and while not really designing or writing anything, I did knit. Always I do knit.

So now I’m reinventing, and putting my arms around a new normal. Over the next little while, I plan to find my footing again here on the blog. This has always been my happy place, and I’m privileged to share it with you. Please bear with my while my posts are all over the map; I have a lot to process and share. If you see posts that are under the Not Exactly Knitting category for a while, it’s because I’m basically rebuilding my house. More on the why of that will come.

For now, I’m delighted to show you what I’ve been up to since Pandemic Stay-At-Home rules have been in place. To begin with, I built a staircase:

Yeah, that was a big job. I had no experience, little guidance, hardly any money, and a fierce drive to succeed. Not unlike when I taught myself to knit. Never underestimate the power of a woman with tools, be they needles or nailgun.

I’ll talk more about the process of how I got it done, but for now I’m doing the big reveal first for once.

And yes, I still have a thing for bees. I think it’s because they don’t know they can’t fly.