Organization

I'm a few weeks into this self-employed/working from home/full time designing thing, which is awesome, and I've learned several key things already:

1. All the moms go to Target between 10-12 on weekdays. Seriously, if you're a mom looking to meet other moms, get yourself to Target in the middle of a weekday. If you're not a mom, like me, just keep pushing your childless cart full of Target brand boxed wine right to the checkout and get out of there.

2. Showering is not an item I get to cross off my To Do list. Some things should never be on a To Do list.

3. To work at home, you need to have a functioning workspace. So my first order of business was to get my workroom in order, not to mention my yarn and hooks. Until this week my hooks had been all over the place--a few rubber-banded together at the bottom of a bag of yarn, some in the couch cushions, and a few at the bottom of various purses (yeah, i know, it's an addiction). I needed to keep them all in one easily identifiable place, so I found some old, strange fabric and whipped this up:

Aren't you just dying to see inside? It's glorious:

Isn't that fabric bizarre? I love it. This was a super easy project, all you need is some fabric and a couple strips of elastic! Now I have any hook I need at my fingertips.

Now the bigger issue of the yarn. Until just recently, my yarn was in a moving box that I dug through every time I needed to find something. The digging resulted in a yarn knot the size of my head, and if I found yarn I wanted to use, I first had to extract it from the twisted mass by cutting it out. Not productive. Until a magical trip to Ikea last week, when Mr. N spotted an organizational tool that has revolutionized my life. Behold:

Amazing. It's all right there, sorted by weight! Oh, and yes, that is a pink and black feather boa. It's from my bachelorette party, and no, I'm not getting rid of it any time soon. 

Now that I'm organized I can start taking over the world! I'll keep you posted! 

Big News, Big Trip!

Yep, ok, this is my confession. It's been an insanely long time since I posted anything here. I can assure you, however, that is not because nothing has been going on...quite the opposite, actually:

1. One of my crochet patterns has been accepted for publication by a major crochet magazine! I wish I could say more, but I'm contractually obligated not to share a thing until it's published in October. But once October rolls around I can't wait to share everything!

2. I left my day job as an administrative assistant to pursue design, both fashion and crochet, full time. Seems a little crazy, but it was just time to take a risk and do what I want to do. Thank you for being the first members of my crochet empire! Website with patterns coming soon!

3. Mr. N. and I just got back from a 3 week trip to Europe. It was, in a word, incredible. We started at a friend's wedding in Budapest, then on to Venice, Milan, Lake Como, Lucerne (Switzerland), and then Stuttgart, Germany, where my amazing sister lives with her husband and beautiful little girls.

Here we are having aperitivos (afternoon drinks) in Venice:

Dinner in Lake Como:

Idyllic Lucerne, Switzerland:

And finally, Mr. N with two of our nieces, sporting dresses we picked up for them at the Baby Gap in Milan:

So as you can see, it's been an amazing, super busy past couple of months. Thanks for sticking with me on this journey and supporting me. I can't wait to see what's next!

Love,

b.Niel