How time flies

Good grief! How did almost a month go by without blogging? Things have certainly come to a pretty pass, haven't they?

The truth is that Family Trunk Project has been hit by a perfect storm of anti-blogging factors: secret patterns I can't show you until later, intensive planning for my classes (which went great! more on that later), a big sewing project that I've been dithering about sharing, and the onset of grey, un-photo-friendly winter weather have all conspired to keep me away from the old fiber blog. One of my hangups about craft-related blogging is that I feel there should always be pictures, and when there aren't...well, we can all see what happens.

But! I do have some exciting news, and some lovely knitted goods that will hopefully be both photographed and share-able in short order. On the exciting news front:

1. Classes! I spent the last two weeks hunkering down to prepare for the two-part Beginning Design class I taught at Twisted here in Portland. I have to admit that preparing for it was WAY more work than I anticipated, but I think the end results were really cool. The first week's class was devoted to coming up with ideas, finessing those ideas into specifics, and going about developing sketches and swatches. The second class was about applying math and planning for different shapes. As you can probably guess, the first class is more fun and glamorous than the second; the prep for it included making a huge pile of swatches:
   

   We used them to talk about yarn choice, needle sizes, drape and body in different kinds of fabrics, structure, and so on. The first class also incorporated a random, Flickr-generated image, lots of garments, and photos of cool staircases. The second class involved lots of charts and graphs, and an imaginary woman named Doris. I think both halves went well, especially considering that it was my first time, and everyone came up with SUPER-cute sketches and swatches. I hope they'll make up their designs so that I can see.

   Twisted and I are talking about doing another set of these classes in a few months and at a slightly later time, so if you work an 8-5 job and are interested, keep an eye out.

AND, speaking of that...

2. I got a job!

   You may remember that the company I was working for went out of business in June; since then I've been enjoying all the extra time, but also stressing at the provisional nature of unemployment. Well, I start a new, half-time position on Wednesday, and it's pretty much exactly what I had in mind: a generous rate of pay, a consistent schedule, half-time so that I can continue to work on Family Trunk Project stuff, conveniently located right downtown (a 5-minute bus ride or 20-minute walk from my house), and best of all, the other members of the organization seem really nice and fun to work with, and the organization itself does worthwhile work. I'm psyched for such a perfect-seeming match, and I think I'll do well in the position. So, hooray!

Now that I've caught you up, I hope to get back to more regular posting soon. Nice to see you again, Internet.