Mother's Day & Fairy Cakes

My Day
Mother's Day was incredibly restful - coma-like, I might even say - and it's exactly what I needed! I find that a week before I'm scheduled to go away I begin to hibernate, sleep a lot and rest, and I think it's my way of storing up energy. Oh, who am I kidding? Given half a chance I'd sleep all day EVERY day!

The kids wanted to go out to breakfast, lunch or dinner (they weren't choosy!) and Gerry was game, but I'm afraid I disappointed all of them and just chose to stay home. Going out on Mother's Day isn't the huge treat it might be - usually the restaurants are pretty crowded and I've spent WAY too much time eating out over the past few months. We compromised and picked up Chinese food. And there were leftovers yesterday, so life is about as good as it can get.

Romance Redux and Growth
I'm barreling through the shipment of the yarn for RK [Romantic Knits] and it feels good to get the yarns out the door! I still have a number of pieces I haven't written the patterns for, and have NO idea what yarn I'd like to use, but little by little it will get done. It's so odd to be leaving this Friday for THREE WEEKS away - but I do feel that with my handy laptop I can work as well anywhere as I do at home! For a few months I wasn't traveling with any computer (my old one had conked out and I hadn't yet decided on the new mac) and the disconnect I felt trying to run a small business without my records was palpable.

Recently I was asked to complete a survey about women who run their own small internet businesses. It made me think hard about where I'm at, where I'd like to be, what kind of growth I'd like to sustain and what my dreams are. I'm not a big 5-year plan kind of girl, but I also understand that sometimes growth can outpace a new business and cause so many problems that it never recovers. I may be at that place.

- Books are selling very well - in some cases faster than I can print them (I'm not making my print orders large enough, but when push comes to shove I find it hard to commit to a really large print order...)

- I have more designs due than I can comfortably finish on my own (hence my use of knitters) and I'm wondering if I should get an assistant. I know of a college age son of some friends who is a computer designer and lives nearby - I may ask him what he's doing for Summer break and whether he'd like 10 hours or so of work a week assisting me in the more mundane aspects of my job.

- I have ideas I need to get out for other books, and I'm stymied by the lack of hours in the day.

- I'm not submitting as much as I'd like, for the above reason.

We all know that knitting is having a heyday right now, and - as with any business - there are cycles. Knitting is a luxury, a comfort, a non-necessity (for some, for me it's required for daily happiness!) My hope is that the fact that it's been feeling a steady increase over the past 6 years or so implies that the boost is semi-permanent (not unlike certain hair dyes...) If this is the case, then I feel more comfortable planning out a career that I sort of wandered into (on purpose) and love dearly.

I put much of this sticking power of the current knitting phase at the feet of the sock knitters. God bless the sock knitters! By showing the rest of us that socks are fun and relatively easy (simple) to work up, they make ANY knitter understand a few key things:

1) Working on small needles will NOT kill you
2) Knitting CAN be practical!
3) Hand knit socks are unlike anything you can get anywhere else.
4) Finishing projects is not only possible, it's FUN (that satisfying feeling of finishing something eludes so many knitters!)
5) The giving of small, knitted gifts is a tremendous joy.

I also believe that sock knitters have really spearheaded the move toward self patterning and striping yarns, they are the gear in the knit-world machinery that is running the whole knitting resurgence.

So, even though I'm not the sock knitter I'd like to be, I salute every sock knitter out there!

Fairy Cake

Max's teacher is from Ireland, and she had several of the students to a "tea" in her classroom last week. She made fairy cakes, which I'd never had, and kindly sent the recipe home. It's a kind of sponge cake and - let me tell you - these are the easiest and tastiest cakes I've ever made! We made little mini-muffin sized ones, then we made a big one with blueberries inside. YUM!

While the cakes were cooling we went for a walk and I took photos of my own neighborhood. Every picture was taken on our walk around the block (and these don't begin to match the mansions over on the next street!)

A big tree fell over a few months ago, they chopped off the top, but left the trunk and roots and the kids play on it - bit tree, huh?