Warning: Lots Of Wordy Word Words Ahead

What is up knitty peeps?

I think I have finally decided that the time for e-cation has run its course.  I don’t know if it helped to have time off.  I seemed to have found a way to fill that time with other crap that wasn’t useful or productive and I’m still not sure I feel rested. But I think I do feel like it’s time to put my game face back on.  Trouble is, you take a few weeks off of blogging and you start to feel apathetic about it.  You start to wonder if it will be awkward to come “back”;  can you pick up where you left off?  Will things be weird?  Will anyone care to hear what you have to say after your pause for the cause?

Despite all my agonizing, I’m jumping back into the bloggy pool.  Off the deep end of course.  The exercise of posting about Dahlia last week was good for me and it got me back in touch with so many of you that I hadn’t talked to for a while (or what seemed like a while) and that cheered me greatly.  See, January has been all about change here at Chez Funkytown.  Not all of it good change.  Being someone who doesn’t initially deal with change very well (despite the fact that I tend to do a decent job masking this trait by being amiable & unassuming) it’s been a tough month.  That’s a true Virgo for ya – routine, routine, routine.  But sometimes you don’t realize a change is good for you until you are forced to just deal already and face the aftermath.

The biggest difference has been going back to work on Mondays.  You would think that a measly 8 more hours a week would be no biggie.  Yet somehow, losing that day to do things around the house, knit a little, and blog, has sucked the fun right out of things.  I feel like all I do is work.  Rationally, I know this is not the case, but I just don’t know how you 5-day-a-weekers manage to do everything it is that you do.  I am exhausted!  Strangely, the only time I have to knit anymore is during work at lunch and even then it’s not a whole lot of time.  Getting that first bigger paycheck did make the situation seem a little rosier and now that I feel like I’m a more equal contributor to the household finances, I actually allow myself to relax just the wee-est bit more from day to day.  Dirty dishes?  I think I feel like leavin’ ’em.  And I can ’cause I makes me some money baby.

But enter – dun dun dun – EXERCISE!  Ugh, this necessary evil has made a new entrance into my life, and with it goes the last vestiges of free time each day.  Winter is always hard for me in terms of dealing with the blues.  Exercise never fails to make me feel better, but amping myself up for the activity always proves difficult after a long hiatus.  But I’m doing it and trying not to complain too much about it.  It’s actually alleviating some of my symptoms and keeping me on more of an even keel until the sun decides to make its appearance again up here in the northern regions.

I’ve also retired from helping my wonderful knitty pal rchrispy co-moderate the Sexy Knitter’s Club on Ravelry.  The energetic and ever so knit- speedy Robin of YarnCrawl has replaced me and she and rchrispy are doing a bang-up job between the two of them.  Though I do miss the involvement and the excitement of such a fun group, I do feel it’s been the best choice for me in terms of freeing me up to do other things I didn’t have the time for in the past.  In fact, I actually finally finished a project during one of the KAL’s (Dahlia) for the first time probably ever.  I think it was the best choice for both me and the group to bow out of those responsibilities as I never felt well-suited to the moderator role.  Though I am forever grateful for the experience, it’s been fun just being a “normal” participant once again :)

On the knitting front, I am focusing heavily this year on finishing WIP’s and knitting from stash.  For shits and giggles I’m keeping a little excel sheet for myself of how much yarn I am using each month and it will be fun to see, at the end of the year, what kind of progress I’ve made.  For the month of January I used 755 yards of stashed yarn and for February so far I’ve used 190 yards.  In January I spent only about $30 dollars on yarn and that was for one hank of sock yarn and 2 balls of Patons Classic Wool for the Cable Rolling Socks (Rav linky here) from the most recent issue of VK.  Not too shabby.  I won’t tell you how much I spent on yarn already this month though ;)

So hello again bloggy peeps!  If you read this far I’m suitably impressed and honored and thanks for taking some time out of your life to read my nonsense!  I know it’s 5 minutes you’ll never get back.  Next time I hope to meet you here with pics of new yarny goodness and a soon-to-be FO.  Until then, take care!