OMG... It's Mandy Bee!

Check out this geeky knitted cowl pattern based on a little Acquisitions Inc (Dungeons and Dragons) inside joke! 

I made a lot of goals for 2015 at the beginning of the year. I wanted to:

travel as much as possible

illustrate a children’s book

read more

write songs

do yoga every day

have better posture

successfully grow some mushrooms

become a knitwear designer

I did three of those things. Almost did most of them.

My intentions for 2015 year were vague: be more compassionate and bring happiness into the world.

I’m pretty sure I was successful in doing those things.

Having quit my full-time job in December 2014, I had a lot of free time last year and I spent a lot of time reflecting on my goals and intentions. Definitely a ‘first-world-problem’, but quitting my job was also the shedding of an identity. I could no longer introduce myself as, “Mandy, a web designer.” I was free from a job title but this left me feeling that I needed to define myself.

How do I want to feel? (These came from reading The Desire Map)

I have no clue how many self-help books I read last year trying to find my new purpose but my favorites were:

The Renaissance Soul (basically how to split up your time between multiple hobbies/callings so you don’t have to drop everything to work towards one goal)

The Desire Map (figure out how you want to feel rather than what you want to do)

The Crossroads of Should and Must (for makers/creatives, how to stop following what you think you should do and do what calls you)

My walls are covered in goals and intentions to remind me of what I’m hoping to move towards. My time was so open and free, I wanted to make sure it counted and that I didn’t forget what I really wanted to accomplish and feel.

Travel

My main goal for the year was to travel and travel we did! We fell in love with Oregon and are making plans to move there in the next few years. We worked on a farm in West Virginia, visited my mom in Pittsburgh and took a road trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway. Right before John started school, we took a trip to Colorado to visit my sister and headed to Alaska from there. Here’s a smattering of photos from our trips last year but if you want to see and read more about them, head over to our blog, Off to Earth.

Driving highway 101 down the Oregon coast

Sunrises in Portland

Coffee in Portland

Crater Lake

Skinner’s Butte views were awesome, the hike was a bit crazy

Skinner’s Butte hike

We had so much fun hiking in Oregon

Downtown Pittsburgh

Gabe and Apollo, the alpaca and llama duo at Evan’s Knob Farm

Kathy, the owner of Evan’s Knob Farm – an amazing woman and she even taught me how to shear a sheep!

And she taught me know to spin, allowing me the use of her spinning wheel and roving from her own sheep!

Dogs almost bigger than me

Blue Ridge Parkway

Blue Ridge Parkway

Yoga on the rocks in Colorado

Hiking in Alaska

Fjord tour in Alaska

I saw a whale in person!

And visited Denali National Park

And stayed in a little cabin on a farm (just a quick AirBnB stay, no work involved)

I thought working on the farm would dissuade me and my husband from this crazy dream I developed a couple of years ago to start my own alpaca farm. I thought it would be way too hard and I would be over it in a day or two. And it was really hard but I loved it. I wanted to stay forever, waking up with the sun, working in the fields and with the animals until I was so hungry I couldn’t stand it, eating lunch and working again until I was so tired I could fall asleep in my dinner.

I tried here and there to illustrate the children’s book John had written, but again, never got anywhere substantial. I don’t know why my heart isn’t in it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/xmQHEKFgIH/?taken-by=mandybee

I took an online course to learn how to write a song, but never got anywhere.

I read about 15 more books last year than I had in the previous year. Goal met!

I did yoga a lot, but definitely not every day. Sometimes not even weekly. I’m still working on it. This goal goes hand-in-hand with better posture.

The mushrooms are going to have to be a 2016 goal. We’ve got the log plugged with shiitakes, ready to go!

Become a Knitwear Designer

The last goal somehow managed to happen. I struggled with it all year, not sure where to start, not sure how to come up with ideas and then actually knit them. Winging it when it came to knitting just wasn’t happening in my brain.

So honoured to be invited to curate a knitwear collection for @KnitNowMagazine. ‘A Slow Moment’ details here: https://t.co/PxPkoN7MGr

— A Playful Day (@aplayfulday) October 20, 2015

Then I saw a call for submissions for a collection that Kate from A Playful Day was curating for Knit Now magazine. At first I thought there was no way I could ever get into a magazine — I hadn’t even written one pattern yet! And I’d probably have to knit faster than I am able to meet a deadline. But then I learned that a submission is only a sketch, a swatch, and some written ideas. I could do that. And there’s no way they’d pick me anyway, right?

I submitted an idea. And I was actually commissioned!

I knit my sample like a mad man and shipped it off to the UK. It should be published in April, but must be kept a secret until then! It’s a small step, but one that really helped to boost my confidence.

https://www.instagram.com/p/_2Q1L2FgI9/?taken-by=mandybee

Compassion

In between traveling, I started volunteering on a weekly basis at the Audubon Center for Birds of Prey and volunteering irregularly at other places when the opportunity arose. It’s been a great way to meet like-minded people and generate compassion.

https://www.instagram.com/p/7-9YrvlgEq/?taken-by=mandybee

I also decided to stop eating meat unless I knew it was humanely raised or wild-caught. I started paying more for eggs from pasture-raised chickens instead of saving a few bucks on eggs from chickens kept in tiny cages. The switch to eating meat (usually fish) only once per week or less was not difficult, though I thought it would be.

What’s in store for 2016

My main goal for this year is to work on designing knitting patterns. I created a map for the first 6 months of 2016 and would like to create and self-publish 6 knitting patterns.

In the gaps, I’ll still be teaching at Valencia, doing a bit of freelance web design (still my most lucrative source of income), volunteering, and coming up with a plan for moving to Oregon, including purchasing land for a farm. I’m also

As far as intentions: compassion, compassion, compassion. More meditation, more yoga, more gardening, more reading, always creating.

I’m a bit late in the game to start talking about slow fashion, but Karen Templar has been inspiring me with everything that she’s been posting this month.

Slow Fashion is a movement towards knowing where your clothes come from, how they are made, mending them when they rip or get old, and only having what you need. And maybe a little bit (or a lot) about actually loving everything in your…

And by “oh my gurumi”, I mean amigurumi. I came across this cute little amigurumi pierogi on the front page of Ravelry and had to stop what I was doing to share it with you all.

Tiffany (tcakes4u) used Deena White’s Little Empanada pattern to make a cute little pierogi!

My mom is from Pittsburgh, where they eat an excessive amount of pierogies and I’ve been eating an excessive amount of them…

Wow – I thought I’d never finish knitting this hooded, short-sleeved sweater!

I started knitting the Kelso sweater in May, so it took almost 6 months to complete. Now that I say that out loud, I’m surprised I knit my first sweater in less than a year.

Yeah, I’m using a remote control. What of it?

Knitting this was pretty fun. The lace panel in the middle uses the SAME pattern repeat every row…

Brooklyn Tweed’s Fall 2015 Lookbook

Brooklyn Tweed released their gorgeous Fall 2015 Lookbook today and it’s focused around one of my favorite things: The Pacific Northwest! Since they’ve moved their offices to Portland, I guess they’re feeling a bit inspired. I know the feeling.

The lookbook is beautiful and makes me want to pack up my needles and knit in Oregon somewhere.

Brooklyn Tweed’s Quarry in Lazulite colorway

They have…

#30MinKnits Challenge: Knit for 30 minutes-a-day for 30 days

I’m challenging you all to knit for 30 minutes-a-day for 30 days!

Wait, why…?

I think many of us knitters, fast or slow, have gone through patches of knit-neglect. Our UFOs (unfinished objects) start piling up in a corner. We look back at the past few weeks and realize we haven’t knit at all or have only knit a couple of times and, with regret, we exclaim,

“If only I’d just knit for a few minutes…

Making sense of variegated yarn

I have a problem.

Every time I walk into a yarn store I become enamored with hand-painted yarn. My pupils dilate, I grab a skein and cuddle it to my face, naming it Fluffy and promising to bring it home to be made into something amazingly beautiful.

I have done this many times… my yarn stash is full of skeins like this beauty:

Manos del Uruguay, Alegria in Agave colorway

I bought this Manos del…

I heard about The Crochet Project on a recent podcast episode of A Playful Day (another interesting and fun podcast to subscribe to).

The Crochet Project is a collection of crochet patterns for wearable items that I actually want to wear. The only things I’ve crocheted are amigurumi (stuffed animals), baby hats and one scarf. I’ve never been drawn to the stiff “drape” (if you can call it that) of…

I have a little time to kill before heading off to school for a workshop this morning, so I decided to knit and listen to a podcast.

In the latest Woolful podcast episode, Ashley interviewed Hanahlie Beise who followed her passion, bought some alpacas, and started a line of yarn (Hinterland).

Like I admitted before, one of my dreams is to have my own alpacas, so it was inspiring to listen to…

I began thinking about someday owning my own alpacas after John and I went to an alpaca farm / yarn shop while visiting my parents in Wimberley, TX. In this shop, they sold yarn spun from specific alpacas and each skein came with a little card of information about that alpaca. Yes, the yarn was lovely and soft, but it was actually those silly little cards and knowing the alpaca’s name that made…

After the train wreck that was my mug cozy, I felt like I needed to redeem myself as a knitter and I think I did, so I wanted to share this finished knitted object with you all.

I found the INSULATE! hat pattern by Amy van de Laar on Ravelry a few weeks ago when looking for something to knit with two skeins of yarn John bought for me. It’s a 2-color hat, covered in Daleks, and the pattern is free!

I’ve been working on a test knit for my mug cozy for probably a month, picking it up and putting it back down. The intarsia was a slow process, since I designed the color changes based on my own visual likes rather than ease of knitting. I’d also never done intarsia knitting before this.

For your memory, this is the color pattern I was working from.

With intarsia, you create a new little bobbin…

Lost Projects Club: Accountability for Your Insane Crafting

My pals and I had a problem. We are crafty gals and dabble in many things. Fleur has ceramics, jewelry making, crocheting… Carly has sewing, paper craftiness, knitting… I have knitting, crocheting…

We started lamenting about our stashes of unfinished projects. The things you start with every intention of getting done as soon as possible that end up in the corner of a room or packed up in a box.…

Learning to draw again: farm animals and spinning yarn, oh my!

One of my goals for this year is to illustrate a children’s book that John has written.

Drawing used to be a huge passion of mine. I could spend 5-8 hours at a time drawing in high school and college.

And then I didn’t have a reason to keep drawing. I had finished school and no longer had drawing or art classes to force me into it. It’s a bit strange when you love something but you find that you…

I’ve done a bit more research on the color knitting techniques I should try out for my mug cozy and I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to learn intarsia knitting.

Before today, intarsia and stranded knitting were all the same to me. Now I know better…

When using the stranded knitting technique, the floating yarn on the inside of my mug cozy was unruly and out of control. To try and fix this,…