Progress on the Plan

Last Sunday was a watershed in a couple of ways. First, the universe decided to offer me up the coincidence of Sally coming to knitting. I love Sally, and I love when she comes to knitting, and she doesn't often as she is very busy with teaching and her small human, Beatrice. Sally also shares my desire to write. So I mentioned to Sally that I was making a writing schedule and I was determined to make it work this time, and we came up with the idea of forming a writing group. Both of us seem to need some level of accountability and deadlines, otherwise, we don't write as much as we should. I was so excited! After a long chat on Facebook on Monday, determining a organizing meeting date and an agenda for the meeting, I drafted an invite to our soon to be formed writing group. After Sally reviewed and approved the invite and agenda, we sent it out to our knitting group and knitting acquaintances, as several of them have a literary bent. We have several takers, and we're looking forward to the organizational meeting on September 3. YAY!!

I also implemented the schedule, Part 1 of the plan this week, and I was scheduled for two hours of writing between 7-9pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. I wrote. The first night, I wrote about 1,500 words on a random story that I probably won't do anything with, but I just needed to practice doing it a bit without any pressure. The second night, I took a piece I had written for a class that I had taken in the past, and realized it was pretty good, and that since I already had a start on it, and I liked, it, this could be the novel. I expanded it, and I now have 1,500 words towards what I think will be the novel. Only about 85,000 or so words to go!

The other reason that Sunday was a watershed is that Shawn, my father-in-law, and I went for a bike ride in Bow. It was hot and humid. I cannot overstate how dumb this was. My mother-in-law very sensibly bailed. Also, Bow is very hilly. The pictures below are the before pictures of Shawn and his dad in the background there. The long inclines killed me, and the last hill was 3/4 of mile and at about a 45 degree angle, but at least it was quick. I sweated so much, my clothes were just soaked completely (get it, watershed?? haha! Yes, I know I'm a loser.) I really thought I was about to have a stroke. Luckily they have a pool, so I went straight into the pool. Afterward I was not putting those clothes back on, so I drove down 93 in my bathing suit and a towel, which was hilarious. It was starting to get dark, so hopefully people didn't notice me. However, it did cause me to drop another 3 pounds. I'm down 17 now.

Wednesday before writing, I dropped into knitting with the Manch Vegas group so I could see Gina's designs that are coming out in a new book, The Joy of Sox. She had an advance copy and it was really nice. The photos of her designs came out beautifully.

I spent Thursday evening with my knitting group. I love them. I had a really good time, and I worked on my swirl shawl project. I'm up to 23 swirls out of 82, and I've started on the second row of swirls. There are only 5 rows of swirls, but still, given how fiddly the project is, I'm doing well. I can't seem to to get good pictures. The first one is with the flash, which washes out the colors, and the second two are too rich for the actual colors, but this the closest I can get with Photoshop.

As an update, Mya's Jacket pattern has been favorite-d on Ravelry 99 times for the red version and 6 times for the blue version. I'm very pleased, and I'm thinking I need to put my designing hat back on after this project is done. I have had a request for an adult version of the sweater, but I'm not sure how interested most people would be in the sweater. Knitterati, please leave an opinion for me in the comments.