The perseverance of this flower growing in concrete tiles as if it was allowed.
Hello there!
Crochet & Knitting
This fortnight was so fruitful I am surprised. But it’s true that I spent most of the time at home because the weather is not my cuppa. And even when I had people over or travelled somewhere, I had a project in my hands almost all the time.
Gotta note my hands hurt for about three days, and I was off crafting for the next two days because the pain was too much.
The sleeping blanket
This monstrosity is finished! I spent so many hours on this project, and I can’t wait for it to leave my house. Let’s start at the beginning because I documented it well.
The first step was to decide how many squares to make. Because I was limited by the amount of yarn I had (and I was against keeping any scraps) and pure mathematics: a blanket has two sides, and the multiple of those two sides makes the total amount of squares.
Luckily, I am a programmer, so I wrote a small console program that did the factoring, filtered some sizes, and showed the approximate blanket dimensions.
This looked promising
But I still had more yarn, so I ended up with 88 squares. There was maybe enough yarn to make one more, but I wasn’t ready to make a scarf: 89 is a prime number.
One square is one hundred clusters. I did all 88 of them:
Weaving the ends was faster when doing it at once, and I did not mind it that much. It’s pretty mindless, and I watched some good movies or was able to participate in a conversation:
Ends are woven in, so it’s time to edge every single square and hide those ends as well (the total was: 352 ends to hide >_>)
I couldn’t find a way to connect the squares because I was playing yarn chicken with the white yarn. So I slip-stitched them together (only inner loops), then did a single crochet border around the whole thing and was left with a tiny ball of white.
Mind you, sewing one short side took almost one hour. My back and my hands were not happy with that process.
But as I put it together, there was a big big question: will the yarn bleed and ruin the whole thing? To remind you, the purpose of this project was to use up Chinese yarn I got a while back. Fun fact: it’s the same yarn that people get from TEMU now.
After washing it, I let it dry for two days on 40 °C heat outside, and it does not smell like a crappy warehouse anymore. It’s nice and soft and doesn’t bleed.
So, it’s done and off my shoulders. Now I need to find a home for it.
Vanilla socks
The nasty weather made me home-bound, so my on-the-go project was not getting any attention. I decided to finish it, and I managed to do that:
I love them. They are comfy and definitely not for this weather. I will cast on another pair soon, surely.
And there is one thing I realized: I noticed that seasoned knitters were encouraging beginners to make sweaters, and I did not feel alright about making one. I was not intimidated by the craft but by something else I could not pinpoint. Now I can: my tension is all over the place. So spending several weeks on a sweater that will start with a correct gauge and then change and make the wearable unwearable is not something I wanted to invest my time in.
My tension changes a lot as I am learning the flow of stitching. Also, holding the needles still feels a bit awkward at times, for example, when doing k2tog.
However, I might be intimidated by the “picking up stitches for the sleeves/collar” parts because I read somewhere that you have to pick up only some stitches and not all of them along the sides. And I am also afraid that the pattern will not be detailed enough and let me hanging in the middle of a big project.
I decided to look for super popular patterns on Ravelry and make something totally vanilla, preferably with worsted weight. I found a raglan sweater pattern and checked that I had enough skeins of red heart retro stripes. That might be my next project. We will see; I don’t feel that brave just yet. And I miss making amis.
Ad-hoc doggie sock
I had people over with their doggie, and he came hurt. He kept licking his paw, and as it was the weekend, the vet was not available. So we decided to bathe him, add a skin disinfectant, prevent him from licking it and go from there.
We needed something breathable, so I whipped him up a sock:
A little close-up:
He did not mind the sock at all; I guess the bath and the disinfectant did their magic.
When we took it off a couple of hours later, the pup was all happy and did not lick his paw anymore. Win-win.
The rainbow blanket
This is a headache project, aaaaargh! Or was.
I could NOT figure out the stitch pattern that would be good with this thin, fuzzy, variegated and unfroggable yarn.
So I made a swatch with my preferred choices: the suzette stitch, the moss stitch, the garter and the stockinette. They all sucked.
I needed a stitch that would give the yarn a bit of weight. But also a stitch that would look good in variegated yarn. That felt like an impossible task, so I was patient and started looking into ripples and then granny ripples. And that was it, so I made a sample with Jacob’s ladder (to keep the knitting spirit in it):
I knew the same yarn bled like crazy in a different colour, so I added a strip of white and washed it. Here you can see it pinned on a chair outside because I was a lazy ass that did not want to fetch the blocking mat:
It worked out, and I love it. It’s gonna be totally adorable.
The good thing is that I will not have to count stitches and then rip back a row because this pattern is self-counting if you know what I mean.
I will start it once I get one more project done.
Gamer Bunny
I already told you that I missed making amis. I got back to my gamer bunny, and the only thing I managed since I last showed progress is the hoodie:
Isn’t he just adorable? He is getting finished soon.
Cross stitch
For some weird reason, I enjoy cross-stitching a lot. Don’t ask me why; I would need a decade of therapy to understand myself.
I can’t say I enjoy counted cross stitch that much, but I will make do with the project I have in progress.
Sunflower
Can you tell that this got at least ten hours of attention?
Yeah, me neither.
I had to add the grid because it was impossible not to get lost in the confetti pattern. As a newbie, I used a pencil, but now I know a fishing line would be better. But I don’t plan to go into counted cross-stitch again. I mean, I have an Xmas TARDIS pattern that’s counted, so maybe… I don’t know. Other projects are not on my mind now; I need to finish this one first; otherwise, it will never get done.
Yarny chit-chat:
We haven’t had one of those for a bit, and I wanted to check in with my NYRs (New Year’s Recommendations)
- Make a full-size-person blanket: check, done, twice.
- Knit a hat: check, done.
- Knit a pair of socks: check, done.
- Send 50 postcards to the world: 30/50 right on track.
- Be mindful when buying yarn: NOPE, this one is a fail. At least for this half of the year. Not for all the months, but hell, I went crazy a few times.
My personal goals are a bit more on the uuugh, so-so, 50/50 side. But I managed to do something I would’ve never dreamt of achieving. I don’t procrastinate almost at all. You know, mindless browsing, social media, hours lost, and guilt guaranteed. All gone.
I would like to share more stuff on Instagram, but I don’t feel like visiting the site at all (and there is no way in hell any social media app would be invited to my phone). I think that’s a good thing; I will probably go back in a controlled fashion.
Thanks to that, I’ve discovered all the awsum 24 hours of every day. I sleep enough, stay on top of my house chores, exercise, socialize and can go back to hobbies I did not have time for. And sometimes, I ask a friend to pick a random number and let them decide my next activity for an hour or so because I am done with everything. It feels great, but I smell a tornado coming my way. Something will happen; the universe cannot let me be happy for a long time.
Until it comes, I’d like to share a bit of progress on a book I am reading; each section is one hour-long session outside:
One of my personal goals was to go back to reading and read 10 books in 2023. I have 7 books on my nightstand. All started, none finished. So I picked an 8th one: easy fantasy. Not a million names to remember, not written in dense chunks that require mind processing (one of the nightstand tenants is Marcus Aurelius, he is getting evicted). I made time for it, and it works just fine.
Today, I will start slowly integrating another big chunk and hope my not-procrastinating mind will not crumble. I don’t plan to add more hand-crafting time because my hands and back need to rest. I strained my body with the sleeping blanket; it was not fun.
Let’s hope it will last without a tornado for a bit.
See you in the next post ~