{"id":15161,"date":"2025-11-25T14:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T21:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/?p=15161"},"modified":"2025-11-26T03:36:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T10:36:42","slug":"home-and-new-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/2025\/11\/home-and-new-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Home \u2026 and new rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I had my fiber group over last Friday. In the non-summer months, we take turns meeting at people&#8217;s houses. When it&#8217;s my turn, there&#8217;s a lot of cleaning involved. Normally my partner and I don&#8217;t take much care tracking garden dirt into the house and letting spiders take up residence and having tools and projects everywhere. Even though there was a lot of cleaning in preparation, it was a great gathering. And the feeling of a clean house is so relaxing. I still need to clean the upstairs though! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I bought this vase years ago and always meant to fill it with winter berries. As soon as I saw the vase, I was very attracted to it. The smooth brown upper area, where the glaze is a little smeary with tones of blue shining through. The crisp demarcation between that area and below, where the white glaze pools a little. And the rough multi-faceted shapes below with some texture carved in &#8211; I find the whole thing very pleasing. In the store where I bought it, they displayed it with winter berries, and maybe that was part of the attraction. So I was very happy to forage for some winter berries and display them here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0460-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15158\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0460-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0460-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0460.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Winter berries <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Lots of knitting going on. I finished a hat and a cowl. The hat is made from Nutiden, a very rustic unspun yarn from Sweden. And the cowl is made from a souvenir skein I brought home from Iceland almost a year ago. I think this pairing of cowl pattern and yarn is very successful. The tag on the yarn had the name &#8220;Asta&#8221; and I told someone it was the name of the sheep. Upon looking more closely at the tag (I don&#8217;t speak Icelandic, but I could decipher some words), I think it&#8217;s the name of the handspinner. Anyway, thank you, Asta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The new rules have to do with time, and my use of time. I realized I&#8217;ve been mostly knitting for myself and I&#8217;m neglecting commitments I made to friends. I really want to honor those commitments and it&#8217;s been bothering me that I&#8217;m not getting to them. So I made up a concept called &#8220;Afternoons for Others.&#8221; So far it&#8217;s working &#8211; I&#8217;m making progress on some afghan repairs that I volunteered to do for my neighbor, and completed one website adjustment that a friend requested. Next week I&#8217;ll spend some time working on a book design project for my friend S. It&#8217;s a lot of work, but I need to get started. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also need to get more realistic on what I can actually do in a day, and still have time to relax and appreciate life. What else is retirement for? <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0461-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15159\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0461-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0461-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0461.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Hat &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ravelry.com\/patterns\/library\/lc-beanie\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">LC Beanie pattern by Ailb\u00edona McLochlainn<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0459.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15160\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0459.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0459-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0459-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0459-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0459-80x80.jpg 80w, https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/img_0459-320x320.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Cowl. <a href=\"https:\/\/api.ravelry.com\/patterns\/library\/poibleog?buy=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Poibleog pattern by Ailb\u00edona McLochlainn<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had my fiber group over last Friday. In the non-summer months, we take turns meeting at people&#8217;s houses. When it&#8217;s my turn, there&#8217;s a lot of cleaning involved. Normally my partner and I&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[501,438],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-knitting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15161"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15165,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15161\/revisions\/15165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gemtactics.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}