April was overwhelming. I had a busy winter, I’m now in the middle of a busy spring and I feel exhausted. I’m still trying to effectivly split my time between work, working on my patterns, my flooded basement and the music school my husband, a few friends and I are going to open. Plus the routine – cleaning, cooking, doing the groceries and trying to have a social life – and my high maintenance dog who asks for an hour and a half of exercice daily. I can’t seem to find a minute for myself in all of that. I tried to take a night off last weekend. I just sat on the couch wondering what to do. I couldn’t think of anything else so I ended up knitting. It reminded me it’s even more enjoyable when it’s not part of the routine.
I haven’t released a pattern in April because I made a reflexion about the seasons and the patterns to release. I released patterns of a hat and of a pair of mittens in late March, I had a very good response in the tests, a few testers even told me it was their favorite hat ever and they were planning to use this pattern for all their go to hats. That’s a wonderful compliment! But I sold none. Here in Quebec, in March and April, it’s -20°C until it’s 20° and no one understand what happened but all of a sudden summer is here. (By the way, summer isn’t here yet and I just can’t stand winter anymore!) But I should not base my pattern releases on Quebec’s temperature because for everyone else in Canada, USA, Europe, etc, spring arrives many weeks before it does here (and I am totally jealous)! So I decided I should work on lighter patterns from now on and to keep my warm patterns ready to release when fall comes back. And because I can’t keep a resolution for more than 10 minutes, I made a cardigan and a headband…
I think I’ll wait until fall to release both patterns if I don’t change my mind ten times before then. Meanwhile I’ll slowly get them tested.
I also finised knitting a stuffed dog based on my pattern Gustave the dog for my friends who are going to have a baby boy very very soon!
And I had a one night stand with my sewing machine and did 19 squares for a future quilt (even if I’m not quite done with my cabin log quilt…)
I published no patterns in April, but someone did published one of my patterns! Yep yep yep, I have a tiny tiny pattern in the Summer issue of Interweave Knits! It’s a light headband called Olympia and it’s just perfect for summer! The magazine is available for preorder now, on the Interweave website.
Olympia Headband
Photo credit: Harper Point Photography
When I feel overwhelmed and exhausted like I do now, I love knitting even more. It’s my everyday absolute relaxation.