wallpaper String Theory

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Today I hyperfocused on the baby afghan again. Worked six 36 inch rows in pretty much one sitting while watching two movies and three Heroes season 4 episodes. The two movies were Spiderman 2 and Air Bud Golden Receiver. I was hoping to make up for some of the the quota that didn't get done during Bloggiesta this past weekend and the library visit yesterday. I was behind by ten rows. Since the first four rows I did today count for today's quota only, I've made up only two rows.

I think I better lighten up tomorrow though and probably should stop altogether tonight. When I was dishing up my dinner tonight I almost dropped the serving bowl and I was nearly holding my breath all through doing dishes for fear of dropping something breakable. For my thumb and index finger and wrist on my right hand were not dependable and an electric sizzle shot up the inside of my left arm from pinky to armpit every time I raised it above the level of my lowest rib. The uncooperativeness of my right hand was not a surprise but that sizzle in my left arm was quite disconcerting. Apparently holding the growing afghan steady at the right distance is as demanding on the physical structure of the arm as is plying the hook itself.

The afghan is now bulky enough to be be in my way as I work on it which is a problem with no obvious solution. The thread is constantly getting trapped under it or in the folds. I now have 95 36 inch rows. I'm aiming for 155. It is now 36 X 18 inches.

Watch for a picture on Thursday for the end of week 4 progress report.

BTW I learned yesterday that my niece may be bringing the baby this way in late February. So I am highly motivated to have the afghan finished by then. If I can maintain the pace getting the rows done should be no problem. I'm concerned abou the fringe though. There are to be 150 or so per side and I have no idea how long that will take. I was planning to fringe all four sides but am now considering doing only the two sides where the rows begin and end which is where the start and finish thread tails are. I'll decide after I've got most of one side done which will give a better idea of the time involved.

wallpaper It's Bloggiesta Time!

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wallpaper PEDRO
Plan. Edit. Develop. Review. Organize

That's what this party is all about. Blog improvement. Three days in which to devote time and attention in the company of like-hearted people who bring to the party buffet their knowledge, expertise, experience, enthusiasm and encouragement.
That's a lot gathered into one virtual place for 72 hours. But it ain't all. There is also FUN. Games (mini-challenges) and Prizes.

Join the fiesta at MAW Books.

Below this paragraph right here is where I'll be posting updates on what I'm accomplishing throughout the weekend.

Umm been doing a lot of lurking. Need to break that habit.

Did My Friend Amy's mini-challenge on goal setting. Made that my Saturday post.

Have accomplished my main goal of changing templates as of 4pm PST Sunday. See my Sunday Serenity post for more detail.

Involved in that project and a project in its own right was a good amount of fussing and fiddling with sidebar and footer widgets--organizing and cleaning up defunct stuff etc.

Also involved and a major project in itself was creating the graphic for the header myself.

Since Friday morning I've clocked nearly 20 hours of Bloggiesta doings.

I think maybe it counts for Bloggiesta that I just finally uploaded a picture for my Twitter profile. The same one I'm using here now and the same one I am using at facebook since a couple weeks ago. I think it was during the last Bloggiesta that I learned that having a common look across the platforms is helpful.

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I'm so late getting my kick-off post up because I'm still sleeping days even tho Ed has been off swing shift since Xmas eve. Since I'm a natural night owl the sleep schedule I settled into while he was on swing was more like staying up a bit later than usual than a complete change for me as it was for him. But instead of returning to my normal bedtime of 4 to 5 am and sleeping til noonish I've tended to stay up even later than the 9ish I had been, pushing my lay down time closer and closer to noon and then waking for dinner.

Thus work on my daily post usually begins after dinner but today I had intended to put up this post before I lay down. But while preparing the post I got side-tracked into doing some of the PEDRO stuff instead of just writing about it. Next thing I knew it was past noon and then waaaaaaay past noon.

I didn't lay down until after 3pm and then Ed woke me for the dinner he was preparing me at 8:30pm. Salmon on a bed of citrus, mango and hickima. Mmmmm.

This is my second Bloggiesta and I was so ambitious last time the list of improvements I made was long enough to need four Bloggiesta's to complete. So I'll continue to plug away at it and add to it. But I have two primary goals for this weekend: First to take advantage of the collective knowledge and experience to learn, learn, learn. Especially to learn what it is I don't yet know I need to learn. And second, to change my template to a three column.

That last was one of the biggies on my list last June and I almost got to it. I'd found the template and downloaded it but I needed a photo or graphic for the masthead.

That's what I was fiddling with this morning. I hunted down the template file and the website where I got it and where the instructions for implementing it are and I played with graphics until I'd made one that I think I can live with for a few months or even years. Years is more likely since I am so averse to change.

Many if not most of the tasks on the very long list I made during the June Bloggiesta have been on hold until I got this template changed over since so many of them involved sidebar and other template or blog organization work that would just have to be redone after the template switch or promotion which I thought should wait until my blog had had its makeover.

wallpaper Bamboo Baby Afghan at 3 Weeks

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Bamboo Baby Afgan @ week 3
77 of 155 rows complete

Am officially at the half way mark now. What you see in the pic is folded in half the long way so what is visible is one quarter of the finished afghan which is now approximately fifteen inches wide. The full length is 36 inches.

But those last four rows took the equivalent stitching of ten to twelve rows to get enough keepers. In spite of having inspected every row before starting a new row, I still found mistakes in the row below the one I was working that required taking out both rows or portions thereof. So many times I lost count. But a minimum of twice on each row and four or five times on the middle white and yellow--rows 75 and 76.

After reaching row 33 at the end of one week I anticipated being on row 99 by today.

Ha. Ha.

I've been dreaming about crocheting. Am beginning to think I could crochet with my eyes closed or even while asleep.

But in my dreams the colors are bright or dark. Especially blues, purples and red. Also black and white. But no pastels.

I think the problem in the last couple days has been my eyes rebelling against the yellow on white and white on yellow because even tho I had to take out portions of the lilac row several times the mistakes were always in the white row beneath it and that white row was above a pale yellow row which was above a white row..

Ed suggests I set it aside for a couple days. Maybe work with some of those bright colors I've been dreaming about and some of the different stitches. Maybe even learn a new stitch. Can't say I'm not tempted.

But I have visions of not finishing it before my grandnephew has graduated from his crib.

Or high school.

wallpaper Having One of Those Days

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Ever had one of those days you'd like to put back in the box marked return to sender?

I pinched my left pinky finger on the tender inside skin right where my engagement ring rubs. Pinched it between my netbook and something on the tray it sets on or possibly between lid and keyboard as I tried to stop it from falling.

Later I yanked my netbook off my desk by the headphone cord as I tried to rush in the other room when I heard alarming sound from the room where Ed was watching TV. First he was coughing which morphed into choking or gagging then a few loud thumps or stomps then dead silence.

He was fine. Turned out he'd started coughing as he was standing up from the recliner and lost his balance and fell back into it.

Had to take out row's 77 and 76 on the baby afghan after finding an error in the early part of row 76 as I neared the end of row 77. Most frustrating about this is that it wasn't the first time I've had to take out parts or all of rows 76 and/or 77. In fact I've had to do it more than once to every row since row 74. Since Monday afternoon at the end of that triumphant twelve hour push that netted me ten good rows, I've done the work of ten more rows but have only 2.5 to show for it.

Tomorrow noon is the three week mark. After the 33 row first week I'd hoped to be on row 99 by then. Not going to happen. Obviously.

Then this evening I spent a couple hours preparing the fifteen library books that were due on Tuesday for their trip to the library in the morning. This involved a lot of regret and sadness and self-recrimination over all the reading I didn't get done in the nine weeks I'd had them. There are several more due tomorrow and I'll be sending some of them back but hanging onto some of them until Monday morning in the faint hope I'll still do something with them in spite of the fact I haven't since the day they arrived nine weeks ago..

wallpaper Designer Yarns

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Ed took me exploring in a specialty yarn shop today. The Middleford Yarn and Stitcery Shoppe in Medford. Oh the pallet of color in there. And the textures and the variety of fibers singly or in blends of two or more--linen, bamboo, silk, wool, alpaca, cashmere, rayon, nylon, cotton, even milk!! Hand spun, hand painted, hand dyed among the choices. From chunky to lace in size.

Most of it seemed to be imported from somewhere. The one I brought home to experiment with was from Japan. It is a lace weight and a blend of Rayon 60%, Nylon 25%, wool 10% and cashmere 5%.. I am looking for a light weight yarn to make a spring weight shawl for my MIL for her bday in April. I would like to get started on it as soon as the baby afghan is completed so in the meantime I need to decide on the yarn and on the pattern/stitch I'll be using.

After we got home I played with the Noro for over an hour. I tried several things in terms of stitch size and spacing. I took the picture below of the last thing I tired which was groupings of three quadruple stitches. This won't stay in. I just needed to get a feel for what it would be like working with it and for the size of the stitch I might need to get the lacy look I have in mind. There are several stitches in that card set Ed got me for Xmas that might work for the effect I am after. I want something with a lot of open air between clusters of stitches or maybe something like a lattice. Like chicken wire or a chain-link fence.

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This is the spendiest yarn or thread I've worked with at $16 for 450 meters. I need to be sure I love working with it before I start a large project with it. Before I settle on this one though I would like to try a couple different ones.

If I don't go with the Noro for the shawl I'll probably make a scarf with this single skein as I've already decided it won't work for the bookmarks. It isn't uniform enough in size which causes distortions in the stitches that can look arty in a large project but make something as small as a bookmark look lopsided or distorted.

wallpaper Becoming the Books

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Artist : Andre Martins de Barros

Ed and I had just finished eating at 8:30 this evening and all I wanted to do was get my post up--which was going to be my first reading challenge for 2011--but first I had to plug in my clock and find space for the books I'd brought home from the library yesterday. The clock task was supposed to take five minutes or less but it involved excavating for the power strip and that involve some minor clutter patrol so it took twenty minutes.

I had no problem finding space for the books and DVD I checked out yesterday as they just slipped into the slots left behind but the stuff returned. But when it came to the six books I bought of the Friends of the Library shelf.... Well that was a whole other story.

That involved pulling books and other things off the shelf next to my pillows under a ledge that is easy to bump my head on and is dark as a cave unless I move the pillows and shams filled iwth quilts that serve to prop me to sit up in bed. So there I was laying stretched out on the bed reaching back behind my head pulling books and misc out of the cave and piling the behind me until they were toppling and piling them in front of me until they threatened to fall off the bed and then resorting to piling them on myself along my hip and thigh and ribs on my right side as I lay on my left side.

And in the middle of all this Merlin decided he just had to get to his window perch on the ledge above my head and his best path was me. He walked up my right leg to the first small stack of paperbacks and was about to climb it when my startled yelp gave him pause and my stern 'OFF' backed him off.

At that point I had to pause and lay back to completely rest my arms and I became fully cognizant of the sensation of being buried by books or possibly composed of books. Or maybe a bit of both.

And then I made the sad acknowledgment that any books I squirreled away in this cave now would have the same fate as those I'd last put there--the very ones I was now pulling out in order to rearrange and/or redistribute to make room for the newest six--nearly six months ago.

So I've now commenced another round of soul searching and re-evaluation of my relationship to my books.

But it will probably end in the same place it always does.

I am who I am and it is what it is.

BTW it was after 11 when I got the bed cleared and put back together and by then Ed had fallen asleep in the living room recliner while watching Netlix online and I had to keep after him for another half an hour to wake up and get his self and his stuff move back to the room.

And it is now almost 2am as a prepare to click 'publish post' and I haven't even started crocheting on the baby afghan so it is going to be hard to get Tuesday's quota of 4 done by dawn. This morning before I slept I had actually crocheted five rows since waking on Monday but got to count only two towards the quota as I had removed three of them including one of them twice! I am am soooo behind on it now. At least half a week. I'm a few inches into row 43 and by Thursday dawn I should be on row 66. One 36 inch row takes me on average an hour.

wallpaper Crochet Story

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See why I've taken to call this my cockpit? I feel as though I'm climbing n and out of a fighter jet cockpit whenever I have to get up.

In the forefront there is my netbook on a tray set on a box . Usually my left foot is off the edge of the bed planted on a box that is there so my leg doesn't hang because all kinds of nasty things happen to a leg when it hangs over the edge of something. My right leg then is usually on the other side of the netbook which, if I'm crocheting, usually has a video playing.

To my left as I sit here in my cockpit typing this sits the vinyl case mentioned in yesterday's post that now contains all the newer size 10 thread. It sits atop the printer on my desk which is where the netbook has to go when I'm ready to sleep. At which point the vinyl case full of thread goes under the desk aka TV tray.

Where you see the thread on the bed is approximately where my butt is planted.

But let's take a closer look at the thread displayed there:


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These are all thread bought since late summer out of which I've made zero to two bookmarks. My camera had a low battery so I set this display up to get a single shot I could crop several times for the story(s) I had to tell.

In last night's post I said I was going to start crocheting something from one of the new threads as soon as I was posted. I didn't get posted until after 4am this morning though and almost decided to sleep even though that was two to three hours early for me of late. But I couldn't bear to wait to actually start something with one of the threads that came in the mail yesterday. So i chose the Lizbeth size 20 Bubble Gum and the first and easiest and quickest bookmark pattern--the shell stitch:

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I had a frustrating time of it, making so many mistakes and having to take out so many stitch and several times whole rows, that I'm sure I stitched the equivalent of 20 rows to get the required 12.

I should have taken that as a sign of severe fatigue and quit.

But the whole time I worked that one I was mentally drooling over the idea of doing a bookmark with the interweave stitch that I learned for the baby afghan and the color combo I wanted to see it in first was black and whit. I'd gotten a black Cebelia size 20 in my previous Joanne.com order and had sent for the snow white Cebelia size 20 in this order especially so I could do two-color bookmarks.

So as I cut the thread on the Bubble Gum bookmark, I decided that I could manage to do three rows before quitting. That would allow me to see the white on the black and the black on the white.


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So I pulled the two balls out of the small box where I keep all my sizes 20 and 30. But the white one still had its cellophane wrapper on and I tried to hold both balls in my left hand has I peeled it off with my right.

BIG MISTAKE

The black ball slipped and tumbled...


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Into my water tumbler which sets under my elbow.

Soaked like a sponge in bathwater it was.

I spent the next hour fussing with it. First wringing it out inside a towel until I could get no more drops out. Then trying to find a way to set it over the heat vents without setting it on the floor where Bruiser or Merlin would think it was a toy. Finally sticking it inside one of Ed's dress socks in the toe and hanging the top end off a stack of boxes beside the vent in the kitchen.

There I left it as I headed to bed. And there it stayed until 8pm after Ed and I had eaten. When I first pulled it out of the sock I was encouraged to feel the dry of the outer layers but when I squeezed it I felt the coolness that signifies dampness and when I stuck my finger inside the hole I felt significant dampness in the inside layers.

So I put it back in the sock and tied a not in the sock just above the ball and put it in the dryer on high heat on the moisture cycle set at the top end of the dry side. This cycle is supposed to run until the moisture level reaches the percentage indicated by the setting and I'd set it at the driest setting available. I didn't get to find out if the thing would have come out entirely dry once the dryer stopped because my MIL turned it off as they head for bed which I'd told her to do since the machines are right outside their door and that thing sounded like a tennis ball bouncing on a bass drum.

I left it sit in there another hour until it had a chance to cool down but also because at the time I was busy making an interweave stitch bookmark with cardinal red and dusty rose. I had to make the first two rows twice because of mistakes in count and skipped stitches so I stopped in mid row three to take the pictures, prep them and get posted.

First I checked on the black thread though. And found its center still damp but significantly less so and the dry layers on the outside go deeper. I can't do anything more about it until morning. The heat is off, the dryer too noisy as well would be a hair dryer so I think I'm going to go ahead and work a blank and white interweave bookmark tonight after I finish this one:


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And after that I need to get back to work on the afghan. If I don't get at least a row done before I sleep I will have skipped two day's work which adds up to eight or nine rows behind schedule. From now on until the afghan's done I will allow myself to start my crochet session with one bookmark using the newer threads but must then make my quota on the afghan before doing anymore on any other project.

Niece's labor was supposed to be induced today but we have not heard any word yet.

wallpaper Bamboo Baby Afghan at 1 Week

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The baby afghan for my grand-nephew due day after tomorrow is now 33 rows and measures 36 inches (or 300 stitches) by 6.25 inches. This represents 1 week of fairly dedicated crocheting. I seem to be averaging 4.5 rows per day.

My plan has been to crochet 205 rows for 41 inches. That last inch represents the extra blue row and the two extra rows of white at each end. I added these to the twenty iterations of the ten row pattern for aesthetic effect. I can't explain why but I wanted each end framed with two whites and a blue.

As of yesterday though I am seriously considering making it square at 36 X 36 or 185 rows. That would be two iterations less and thus four days less.

Another option would be to make the rows go the long way on a 36 by 30 inch rectangle which would mean 150 rows and thus 10 days less to finish. This would mean having a chance to get it in the mail by the second week of February. Depending of course on how long it takes to put on the fringe which is to be 5 fringe pieces in every inch on all four sides or one per row and one every other stitch.

But I've already bought all the yarn for the projected 40 inch version at one ball per 15 rows. So the 36X36 would give me one extra white ball and insure I don't need to dip into the second of each of the pastel (umm depending on how much the fringe takes). But I guess that's not really a drawback seeing as before this project I had only acquired one each of blue and white of the bamboo thread. Now I have four more pastels and a fifth on its way in the Joanne.com order due this weekend (coral) and three shades of brown and tan (twig, mushroom, natural). This means I can do variations on each of the six or seven bookmark patterns with each 1, 2, 3...10 color combinations I now have available. Fun!

But as I was laying this out for the picture I flashed on an idea. What about a detachable hood? I think it would need to be approximately 7X14 inches folded in half the long way with one side sewn together and several buttons sewn onto the two short sides that could be buttoned onto one of the corners of the blanket. This could serve as a sun shade and extend the usefulness of the smaller blanket for several months.

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Well this would be at least a five day project so if I decide to do it, I won't wait until it is done to mail the afghan to my niece as it can always be sent along later. She probably wounldn't need it before April anyway.

wallpaper Eyes Always Bigger Than

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I'm having some mental indigestion over all projects I've got going anyone of which is more than I can manage in the time I've got available. It has been a habit that defines me since my earliest memories to make big plans, have massive aspirations and huge expectations and then be surprised and disappointed when I can't follow through.

These thoughts were prompted by an attempt to do a wrap-up post on the 2010 reading challenges I signed up for. Even that wrap-up post is too big a project for one day tho as I haven't kept my lists updated since before NaNo and it is hard to face it since my failure was so huge.

This led to thoughts about all the other projects:

• The 20+ unfinished stories set in a 150+ character storyworld
• Printing good drafts and submitting of several finished stories and poems
• The dozen or two unfinished sewing or craft projects...
• Now including the 205 row by 300 stitches baby afghan now on row 29 for a baby due this week.
• Creating a for sale page on Joystory for the bookmarks or an Etsy account
• That mystery website I've been building and hinting at here since 2006! (how serious could I be?)
  
• The two dozen library books checked out
• The two full season DVD collections checked out and due Monday
• The six TV series I'm currently watching via Netflix and the two 500 item queues on my account there--one for DVD and one for streaming. (umm probably doesn't belong in this list but in the one that explains why this list gets longer by the day. Tho in my defense I am always crocheting or sewing while watching)
• The dozen or three 'junk'* boxes I need to sort
• The daily posting on a writing/book blog that no longer earns the title but has morphed into a LOLcat/DVD 'review'/crochet blog
• The 60 or so incomplete book reviews intended for posting
• The elebenty dozen research projects--for the storyworld, for posts or just because I love to research
  
• The Book Drum profile for The River Why which I began for their tournament last January that is still unpublished... (all the sections except the bookmarks are fully fleshed out but I've got 26 bookmarks for the first 10 pages and nothing for the remaining 300--nothing posted that is tho I have several dozen more prepped in my notes)
• And then there's the temptation to sign up for this year's tournament! (brayneewack?)
• A review copy of a book that came in November (during NaNo) which I've not read yet and which needs to go to top of priority now that NaNo and the holiday season is past. (ah it could make a great Book Drum profile! It's set in China during the revolution in the POV of an American missionary. The possibilities just glow and shimmer in my mind...yeah probably brain indigestion!)

Well, I started working on the Book Drum profile again after Christmas and have set myself a deadline of the end of January. I will click the publish button on February 1st regardless of the bookmarks status.

And then I may allow myself to sign up for the tournament. Tho that's a month late it doesn't deadline until April 30.

I am considering changing the parameters of the baby afghan and making it a buggy or bassinet blanket instead of a crib blanket by making it square at 36 inches or making the 36 inch rows the long side and work to 30 inches instead of 40 which would be respectively 185 or 155 rows instead of 205 which means finishing as much as much as one day sooner per four rows lesser. Very tempting.

One way or another a few of those 'junk'* boxes will be dealt with this week else I'll be replacing my pillow with that box of thread from Joanne.com due to arrive late this week!

*I put junk in quotes because it's primarily not garbage but useful stuff like craft supplies, desk gadgets, office supplies, notes, craft projects, meds and food supplements and computer attachments that have just got in a jumble. Tho I'm sure there are some who would quibble

wallpaper Sick

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see more Lolcats and funny pictures
I'm having one of those days. I want nothing but sleep but when I close my eyes I feel like I'm falling. And falling...

And the light inside my eyelids is brighter than a summer sun.

I haven't [picked up the afghan since I woke up so no progress today. I made it half way through row eight before quitting near dawn and I timed row 7 at 55 minutes which really changes the math in yesterday's estimate based on 90 minutes per row.

Today also changes the calculations based on daily quotas too as it reminds me I can't always count on getting to work at all. So an average quota of 4 rows means occasionally doing 6 or even 8 in one day.

wallpaper Snarl

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I just spent most of the last two days getting this snarl out of the blue bamboo thread I'm going to be using for the baby afghan. From 3 Monday afternoon until noon today (with brief interruptions for dinner and tending to laundry) and again from 5 to 9pm this evening. After all of that I'm not going to be able to use the thread I salvaged for the afghan or any gift quality work for that matter. I may use it for practicing new stitches or testin guage with various size hooks. Though there are long stretches of it that look fine in texture and color, there are too many snags, splits, frizzies, and dingy looking sections.

I did follow though on my idea of putting the thread balls in to separate sandwich baggies. The kind with the zip lock. I haven't tested it out in action but it does seem likely to work--to allow the thead freedom to unspool as I wok without falling off in great gobs. It also keeps the spools from rubbing against each other which will minimize friction fraying. I'm anxious to get started now. I'm three days past my intent to begin and three weeks past my hopes for an earlier start.

Oh, I did take time out last night to make another Joanne.com order. I'm so excited. When I told Ed there was another free shipping coupon in my email but for a minimum of $50 order I didn't really expect he'd be able to make it happen for me but he didn't even hesitate.

It's my biggest order yet and I'm getting several new treads. I'm also stocking up on the yellow and lilac for the baby afghan with 3 each because those two colors are hard to get in the store. The lilac is available only online and the yellow has only occasionally been available at the store. If I'd known how to estimate how much it was going to take I might have stocked up on the other colors since the white, blue, green and pink as well as the yellow were also nearly a dollar less than the regular price. The lilac wasn't sale priced and it's regular price is a bit more than the regular price of the other colors.

But I'm just as glad I don't know yet how much I'm going to need as then I'd have felt obligated to make the order about the afghan and I wouldn't be getting all the little treats. Which I will wait until they arrive to talk about as then I can have pictures. Besides I am so about getting started on that afghan NOW!

I won't

wallpaper Hoarders R Us

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Ai yi yi.

We; got home from the family Christmas gathering about 9:30 and tho I was exhausted and all I wanted to do was crash on the bed, I couldn't even sit on it until I got it cleared off. It took me two hours and it still isn't done right. Stuff is stuffed in willynilly.

The unmade bed was layered in pillows and blankets, bath towels and clothes, books, wrapping paper and tissue and product packaging and shopping bags and several of my crochet projects and several more loose balls of crochet thread and things I bought for myself while shopping for last minute Christmas gifts this afternoon.

While shopping for my gift for Ed I was also shopping for more crochet thread for two time sensitive projects. One for my Mom's birthday January 3 and the other for my niece's baby due January 7th. Besides four skeins of Sugar N cream yarn for the first and five skeins of bamboo crochet thread for the latter, I picked up two skeins of bamboo and one of cotton for my bookmark projects. I am totally running out of room to store the thread.

Recently I started keeping balls and skeins of thread and yarn in project kits in order to keep some of them out of the overstuffed drawers holding my thread and yarn collection. But now I've run out of room to keep the project bags. And besides it is another bad habit of mine (related I'm sure) to collect projects until I'm so overwhelmed I can't finish any of them.

The project for my Mom is the same one I started a year and a half ago. I was supposed to embroider a sweat pea vine on one of her sweaters that my sister had created several small bleached spots on. I blogged about it several times summer before last. I'd hoped to have it done by her birthday this year (11 and a half months ago) but had gotten discouraged by one issue after another stemming from my not knowing what I was doing. The biggest issue being that embroidery floss does not play well with yarn. The sweater is knit in a cotton sport yarn and I've been trying to find a compatible cotton yarn to work the flowers and vine for over a year now. I had looked at the Sugar N Cream brand before and thought it might work if I could find the solid colors I needed--green and at lest three pastel shades. But all I ever saw were the variegated colors. A couple weeks ago I found the shade of green I needed for the vine. Today I found lavender, rose and aqua.

The bamboo thread I picked up today was to augment what I got in the Joanne.com order last week. At the time I sent for it I thought I had until March so had not ordered enough to complete the baby afghan I had planned for my expecting niece in Montana. I'm still not sure I have enough but by the time I've used half of what I have I will know exactly how much it is likely to take to finish.

I was going to list the Christmas presents I got today but I'm wiped out. I had only three hours of sleep before Ed woke me to get ready for the shopping. I came so close to not going. Ed offered to take me on Sunday instead. That would have been fine for the afghan thread but it would have meant not including my gift to Ed in this weekend's family festivities and that didn't sit well. It has been several years since Ed gave me money to shop for him. Last year he wanted his laptop and the year before it was his MP3 player and though I went with him, he did the shopping and selecting.

This year I got for him. I'd known for months what I wanted to get him too. He had been expressing and interest in getting back into his hobby of bead weaving with seed beads. I got him a beading loom and about ten packages of seed beads covering most of the main colors in the palette. Both brights and pastels. I added a few storage containers since the packages were cellophane and would not hold the beads once opened.hub

He got me another set of headphones to replace the ones he got me for my birthday and which I killed two weeks later on Thanksgiving morning when I let my netbook slide off the bed where it landed on the plug and broke it clean off.

He added to that a USB hub with four ports. I've been complaining about having to unplug the DVD drive or the mouse in order to plug in the printer or camera.

He added to that a crochet stitch guide that is a set of cards in a box instead of a book. 101 stitches to learn.

He put all of that in a cloth 'gift bag' which will serve as another craft bag. It is just like the one he put my headphones in on my birthday only different pattern.

Ed got a set of chocolate brown fleece sheets and a cooling platform for his laptop from his Secret Santa who turned out to be his Sister for whom I had been Secret Santa.. The one I made the shawl for.

I got a set of black Jerzy sheets for the bed, a fleece jacket and a sweater-shirt from my Secret Santa who turned out to be my niece again. The niece who lives locally and is still in high-school. I was her Secret Santa last year.

Ed got 2 pair of jeans from his folks and I got fleece lounge pants and $20 check to spend on thread, beads and ribbon for my bookmarks.

Well. another family gathering begins in twelve hours.....

wallpaper Tick Tock

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Where DID the time go?

Gotta get back to work so I'll leave you with a reposting of a poem I wrote over a decade ago when I was frantically prepping handmade Christmas presents at the last possible second:


Coverstory

by Joy Renee

Sorry, this poem does not relate.
I’m running a little bit late.
It’s already half-past eight
And I’ve got still to do
Many stitches times two
And the wrapping of seven plus four.
It’s got to be ready to go out the door
Not a minute later than one.
And I’m afraid I won’t get it done.
If I continue to fiddle
With riddle and rhyme
I am sure to run out of time.
So I’ll have to forgo my remarks
On the silliness of making
A thing for protecting
Worth more than that which it guards!

############

This poem was written in 94 or 95 to slip into the gift bag with a needle-pointed book cover for a paperback which I had been frantically putting in the last stitches on the morning our gifts for Ed's family were being picked up by his brother as they left the Longview area on their way to Phoenix, Oregon.... [the rest of the post]

wallpaper LOLing About

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Just took my daily LOLcat break. Captioned several myself this week and thought I'd just share a few of those that didn't head an earlier post.

I've been crocheting like mad all week--30 bookmarks from the new thread acquired since Monday. Yeah, I know I said I was supposed to set the new thread aside after Wednesday and return to the work on the Xmas gifts which now consists mostly of tail tucking and fringe applying.

Sigh.

Just did not have the will to resist the siren calls of the 16 new colors and textures.

Well I now have two left to crochet to meet the goal of two of each new thread color and type that joined my rainbow this week. Altho I've only worked single color patterns and am itching to start combining them in the multi-color patterns, I think once I get these last two done I can set aside the new thread and return to the Xmas gift projects with resolve. I have until Friday afternoon to have them ready for our family todo.

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wallpaper A Slice of Joy

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This afternoon while making my lunch, the knife sank unexpectedly fast into the over ripe avocado and sliced across the first knuckle of my left index finger.

It was minor as far as knife injuries go. Little more than a paper cut tho it bled enough to need a bandage. But a bandage wrapped around the first knuckle of a finger makes typing a challenge. Forget speed.

Worse than that (tho I'd probably ranked it differently last month during NaNo) is the awkwardness it lends to crocheting what with the very finger that's supposed to control the tension on the thread and dole it out at the proper speed being hampered by the bandage which prevents bending and blocks the sense of touch (I can't feel the thread) and provides a slick surface right where the thread needs to lay on which it slips and slides any which way but the right way.

I can't take the bandage off until I'm sure the rubbing of the thread won't restart the bleeding. Since I'd loose several times as many minutes as I saved in washing the blood out of my work or redoing it entirely I must either accept slow and awkward or set it aside entirely for another pass time. Say reading one of those library books due next week.

Or sleep....

wallpaper Delivered

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The order of thread I've been expecting is finally here. I had to go with Ed as he left for work so that I could have it today and not have to wait until he got home from work in the wee hours. Like 4am as he did this morning. We ran by the post office and retrieved it and then he dropped me off at the entrance to the trailer park on his way to work. I've been playing with it all afternoon. Finally stopped to get a picture for this post.

Actually the four bookmarks across the top there are made from the thread I bought in town on Monday. I put them in to show contrasts in size the different types and sizes of thread make. On the far left is one made with the cotton sock yarn, Paton's Grace that I picked up at Michael's Monday as an experiment. I think it might make a better key fob than bookmark as it is at least twice the size of the standard size 10 thread seen in the Goldenrod and Cardinal Red in the middle. The two on the far right are made with the size 30 white.

The two below are made from thread out of the box I got today. On the left is a new type of thread. At least new to me. I've had my eye on it in the online catalog for months because of this variegated pastel they call Fairy Tale. It is rayon instead of cotton and more expensive than the cotton threads.

I've discovered that it is difficult to work with. It is slippery and snags easily and doesn't hold its shape well. The the stitches bunch and the bookmark curls up as you see and will need to be blocked. On the plus side, I like the silky texture. I think it would look good in embroidery as well. The thread size is hard to judge. Definitely smaller than the size 10 but I think bigger than the size 20. I was using a size 9 hook which kept snagging or slipping between the strands. Possibly I need to use a bigger hook.

To the right is the black Cebelia Crochet Cotton Size 20. I've been wanting to get a lacier black thread for awhile now. This thread holds its shape better than the Aunt Lydia size 30 just above.

Across the bottom are the four cotton size 10 and the four bamboo size 10. All Aunt Lydia brand. The four cotton are left to right: my Peacock Blue (that ran out in October and the only repeat in the box), Aqua, Monet Multi and Dusty Rose. The four bamboo left to right: yellow, green, lilac, pink. All pastels.

The three balls in the middle are the Lizbeth Cordonnet Egyptian cotton size 20. I loved the one I got last summer and now want to start collecting more colors as I can. It is more expensive than most of the other thread at nearly twice the cost for half the length. But I think it is worth it. The thread holds its shape so well just the time saved in blocking will make it worth it. And the colors are brilliant. I noticed that the Joanne online catalog is now offering the Lizbeth in size 10 but I'm sticking with the size 20 until I have collected a bunch.

I favor the variegated as they look good alone or as borders or other accents on a compatible solid color. But I ordered my first solid in that dark turquoise to go with the Turquoise Swirl seen still in its individually wrapped package. The third Lizbeth cordonnet is called Red Burst and is a variegated combining a dark red with either a burgundy or dark reddish brown.

There they are. As you can imagine I'm itching to get back to them. I gave myself this one day to get it out of my system and then I need to get serious about putting the finishing touches on and getting the Xmas gifts ready to wrap. That means a whole lot of tail tucking and fringe attaching. Meh.

wallpaper New Threads

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It was Ed's single day off this week and he took me thread shopping. Also Xmas shopping for our 8 year old grand nephew.

I'm still expecting a box of new thread from Joanne.com which is now nearly a week later than I anticipated when making the order 16 days ago. Today's excursion to Wal-Mart and Micahael's took the edge off my anxiety about that box of 13 new threads.

Today my primary aim was to replace the red (Victory aka bright red) that was down to its last layer on the cardboard tube. But I went ahead and replaced the Golden Yellow and Purple which are both over half gone. And then proceeded to add a new shade of red (Cardinal aka dark red), a new shade of yellow (Goldenrod), and a variegated shades of purple. All size 10 weight.

That is purple there in the bottom right corner. I don't know why it is so hard to get purple to look purple in the photos I take. It usually comes out looking some shade of blue. At least it isn't turquoise this time.

I added white in size 30 and two skeins of cotton yarn intended for knitted socks but which I've had my eye on for several months to see how it works for the bookmarks. I like it's feel. It is a Patton's product called Grace. I chose a solid blue and a variegated blues and purples for the experiment.

The green Sugar n Cream cotton thread is for a different project which I'll discuss when I start it but I won't use more than a few yards of it for that so I intend to experiment with it for the bookmarks too. If not for the crocheted part than possibly the tassels or braids. I'm concerned it is too thick for a bookmark once crocheted.

Getting these ten and the 13 arriving soon stowed away is going to be a challenge. And I don't even want to think about getting all the thread now in kits for the Xmas gifts still on the hook stowed. I believe the only solution is to keep several projects going at all times so that ten to twelve balls are kept in the kits and out of the two drawers which were stuffed to the gills even before my last thread shopping excursion in October (?). If I hadn't been keeping 6 to 10 in project kits since then I don't know what I'd have done. I may have to resort to crushing the cardboard tubes but that truly offends my sensibilities.

wallpaper Disappointment

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The Joanne.com order I made two weeks ago tonight has not yet arrived. It was originally supposed to come in 7 to 10 days from the moment of ordering but I didn't get the acknowledgment from FedEx until the following Tuesday and they started the 7 to 10 day clock at that time which should have made it between Tuesday and Friday of this week. Considering the season I had not hoped to see it before yesterday anyway but when it did not arrive by today I started feeling the creep of disappointment. That sinking sadness of let down. I know it is silly. I know it is childish. But there it is.

And it is not like I don't have plenty of thread to work with. And technically I don't need any of the thread in that order to finish the Xmas gift projects I have going and since there is only two weeks left for those to be finished I really shouldn't even be playing with my newest rainbow in a box until those projects are wrapped up--in both senses of that word.

Still I pout.

It looks promising for Monday though as the tracking says it left Kent WA last evening in the hands of the postal service.

So Monday. And just in case it doesn't arrive Monday I do have a substitute anticipation. Ed has promised to take me to Joanne's and Michael's to shop for replacement thread for several colors I'm running low on. Most of them needed for the Xmas projects. My red is nearly gone. I see more cardboard tube than thread. My yellow, purple and orange are low but only purple is needed for the Xmas projects.

Another source of my sadness is the discovery of a mistake in one of the Xmas gifts. I left out two rows from the middle of one of the purple coasters and will have to take out 8 rows and put them pack in after putting in the missing two.

wallpaper A Toy Story

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Sometimes I feel like someone's favorite toy. Like live entertainment. Or a cartoon.

This afternoon I was making my lunch. A sandwich and coffee. I started the coffee maker first thinking I could have my sandwich made and cleaned up after by the time it finished. But as I was putting away the cheese and mustard and bread, I noticed the lid atop the coffee maker was still standing up. I'd forgotten to close it. The heated water can't get up into the grounds when that lid is open but it sits there burbling and hissing same as when it's doing it thing.

So I had to stand around in the kitchen waiting for enough coffee to fill my cup to percolate through to the pot before I cold return to the room where I'd anticipated starting up a DVD to watch as I ate.

Upon return to the room I found safe(ish) places to set down the coffee mug and sandwich.--the latter on top of my closed netbook--while I got settled on the bed and got the DVD started. I reached for my glasses which I'd left on my netbook lid when I lay down this morning about 5. I had to reach over the sandwich which was blocking them from my view and I miscalculated their position and instead of picking them up I knocked them off and they tumbled behind the printer upon which my netbook set.

I had to get up off the bed to reach over the printer and fumble around on the back edge of my desk (aka TV tray table) but I couldn't find them with my fingers. Now I had to assume they had fallen off the back of my desk and into the closet and to get to them I would have to pull the bags and boxes out from under the desk. Bags holding crochet and sewing, boxes serving as desk drawers and craft misc storage.

I piled all this onto the bed and got on my hands and knees with a battery powered LED lamp and again fumbled around among miscellaneous objects identifying them by feel if I couldn't see them. It was hard to have both arm and head under the desk at once so I had to alternate between looking and reaching.

I was in this position when Ed came in to get ready for work. He told me to get out of the way and he would find them. So I got up on the bed and he looked under and behind my desk, moving more of the boxes out before declaring them not there and replacing the boxes. I suggested they might be under the printer than in the hollow space behind the paper tray.

I decided that I ought to move my net book off to make it easier for him to look there. To maybe lift the printer up. So I slid the netbook on its board with mouse and external DVD onto my lap. The sandwich going along for the ride.

My mistake was in reaching over to steady the printer as Ed tipped it up to looked. This unbalanced the board across my legs and netbook, papers, DVDs, headphones, mouse, and of course the sandwich, tumbled to the floor. The sandwich landing milimeters from Ed's feet.

So he had pick all of that up and put it back on my lap before he could continue looking for my glasses. He did finally find them under the printer. He handed them to me and then headed for the shower. I set about reassembling my netbook lapdesk and getting the DVD started before picking up the sandwich Ed had set on top of the printer to examine it. It had landed on one of the Netflix envelopes instead of directly on the floor so it escaped any obvious harm and I decided it was still edible.

But before I started the DVD and my lunch I decided I needed the fan turned up as all of that activity in a room that heats up near 80 when my in-laws have the heater at 73 in winter had me feeling about ready for a shower myself. So I set the lapdesk on the bed and started to get up but as I jostled my desk the box of often used books and desk misc tumbled off it onto the floor. Upside down. Spilling books, notebooks, pencils, camera, USB cord, ear buds, bookmarks, remote, LED lamp, library card, receipts, debit card, squeeze ball, and sunglasses onto the floor across my path to the fan and Ed's into the room.

I heard the shower on the other side of the wall go off as I knelt to start gathering it all up but I was still at it when he returned and once again had to help me find stuff that had slid out of view or into the shadows, behind or under something. I think we got it all. But I'm not sure I remember every last thing that was in that box. I'd been dropping things into it since the beginning of NaNo or even before Halloween.

So the stuff picked up, the fan turned on, Ed dressed and gone, I settled back on the bed and fired up the DVD, put on the headphones and picked up my sandwich off the printer. The top slice of bread was dry as toast.

Oh and my coffee was lukewarm.

I hope someone was having fun.

wallpaper Maybe You Find It With the Essence?

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Those elebenty huuard library stuffs r pressing my panic buttons. Teh string of due dates began today and for the rest of the month most weeks will have two of them. This week it is all three of the days the library is open--Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

Oh dear. There just went another minute sneaking away on its velvet pawz. Quick kitteh snach it wit ur clutchy clawz and save it from the tick-tock's jaws.