Year of Projects Round-Up (2018-2019)

It's time for another Year of Projects round-up!   It is so satisfying to look back over a year of making and take stock of the variety of handcrafts I have seen to completion.

I discovered the pleasure of crocheting doilies and mandalas:

And while working with thread, I discovered some bookmark patterns that are quick and satisfying: 

Speaking of quick and satisfying, who doesn't love the quick gratification of small projects?

Looking back over the last 12 months, I'm reminded that this YOP year is when I learned to knit hats:

And continued to crochet some favorite hat patterns, too:

I also continued knitting and crocheting scarves.  BTW, the scarves below and the hats above were mostly made for gifts and charity.  I thought I'd mention that just in case anyone wonders if I wear all these.  😉

 

On a non-yarny note, I finished my first embroidered pillowcases with a crocheted edging.  Now, these are for me!

And finally...  a yearly look at projects made would not be complete without a round up of all the blankets crocheted.

There were baby blankets:

Some larger blankets:

And two special-to-me Spicier Life Blankets that represent many hours each of crocheting and sewing in ends.  

Oh, the ENDS!

And that, dear reader, is the end 

of this past Year of Projects!  

Thank you for coming along with me 

on this look back over the last twelve months.  

It's all squares this week...

June has been a slow yarn month for me and I don't know that this coming week will be much different.  

It's been a good month - doing good things (for myself and others).  Some new things have presented themselves.   Some things I've written about, some I've not.  While I know part of the reason I've lagged in interest in working with yarn is due to busyness, I also know I've lost some steam for some reason.   But then I've also been reading more and that kind of interferes with holding a hook and yarn.  😉  Hopefully this lag I'm in will change, or I'll figure it out and recalibrate.  At the moment, I'm feeling a bit rudderless.  It's weird.

All that said, though, earlier this week I managed to get all those crazy ends woven in on my BAMCAL square.  It's not going to require a hard blocking, so softly steaming this Flying Colors square is going to suffice for now (maybe forever):

Not my favorite square (because of my color choices and placements),

 but it will make a decent contribution to a larger blanket someday.

~~~~~

Even though I haven't crocheted much this month, my knitting needles have continually had a dishcloth on them.  While it seems pretty uninspiring to report, over the course of the last three weeks I turned this (and some other odds and ends):

Into this:

~~~~~

Now, if you're like me, when making dishcloths, you end up with lots of little odds and ends of cotton yarn left over.  Sometimes those odds and ends are too small to do much with, but I got to looking at some bags of these leftover bits of cotton yarn and I wondered how it would work to splice some of the yarns together into "magic balls" and make more cloths from them.

Playing it safe, I pulled together two different, but coordinating variegated yarns and did a braided join. 

Here's a picture that shows what that braided join looks like:

Basically, you take two ends of two different yarns, loop them around each other, split each into two sections (doesn't matter how many plies are in a section).  Then braid each side (the three sections of the braid will be the two split sections from one strand of yarn, and one whole strand of yarn).   Do this braiding on both sides of where you looped the yarns together and then wind it into one ball.  Then just keep adding different yarns and colors to a ball until it's the size you want.  Those stringy ends can get snipped off once you've knit or crocheted your item together (I made a little knot of those stringy ends before snipping, but I doubt it's necessary).  

If you want the braided section to more completely blend in, do this braiding at a section in each yarn where the color is as similar as possible.

Anyway...  I knitted up my magic ball and this is what I got:

Kind of cool, I think.  Definitely fun to watch it grow as I knit.  It would probably be even more fun if I combined more disparate colors into one "magic ball".   😀

Oh my goodness...  after posting I decided to look to see how others might do a braided join.  I found this video!  I like her method even better than what I came up with.  

While some may think the braiding isn't worth the effort, to me it was a small thing I could do while my mind was on something else, or my ears were tuned into something completely unrelated to what I was doing with my hands.  And when the item is finished there are no ends to weave in!  Magic!  😃

I'm starting to pull together other scraps of yarn to do this with (and regretting all that I've thrown away over the years).  I suspect variegated or a combination of solids and variegated will work the best with this.  I look forward to finding out.  

And that, dear reader, is all I've got!

2019 Yarn Stash-Down progress:  47.06/100 skeins!

Taking stock...

This third Sunday of June, I'm taking stock of some projects I'd like to finish - or at least make more headway on before beginning a new YOP year on July 1st.

There is truly no reason at all that I cannot finish this Fairly Isleish Sweater:

 Seriously, girl!  Just apply yourself to finishing this already!

And maybe even this Blue Tit Cushion:

And this Flying Colors square I made (and almost finished) yesterday - its sole purpose being to distract me from the projects I ought to finish:

I'm on the last round.

So close, and yet...  soooo far!  😧

That's all I've got!   

Another post that almost wasn't...

The title of this post is starting to make a regular appearance.  Not sure what that means, but somehow I always seem to muster the motivation to make another post!  A post that almost wasn't.

It was a week that started off not so good.  But fortunately improved...

On Monday I found I had done something to my back (though I don't know what) and by evening all I could manage to do was sit with a heating pad, knit some simple dishcloths or watch Netflix.  I can't do both at the same time anymore, unfortunately.

BTW, I recommend the Ken Burns documentary on The Mayo Clinic,  the movie called The Sapphires...  and something else I can't remember the title of, but it was a documentary about Industrial Musicals.  Hilarious!  And very interesting - to me, anyway.

By Tuesday morning my back was no better and I had to cancel my ESL session.  By Tuesday afternoon I was starting to improve (meaning I could move without yelping), and was bored out of my skull so I finally got out my crochet hook and cotton yarn and started making a Market Bag:

Wednesday I was actually feeling okay enough to meet a friend for a walk.  Walking was probably  good for my back because it was all uphill from there.

Thursday I did grocery shopping.  Whee!

Friday was interesting.  A young friend (actually a daughter of long-time friends) had a booth at the Hoosier Hills Fiber Festival near my home.  I offered to come over for a while to give her a break.  She welcomed the offer and it was fun seeing her adorable crocheted cacti.  I didn't think to take my camera with me, but here is her Etsy shop:  Handmade By A Friend.   Seriously, though...  I wish I'd had a camera.  She is so clever in her presentation of these fun items and, while most are smaller than they may look in the pictures, they look better in person.  Each one unique.  And she had some terrific containers for the cacti she showed in her both.

I spent some time wandering through the vendor hall, and my first time through I bought a little rug-hooking kit.  Little is the operative word.  This little kit is supposed to make a finished project the size of a postcard.  I'm wishing I hadn't bought that, in all honesty, but it looked so fun at the time.  Ugh.  Why is it so easy to impulse buy things  like that?

And the second time through I bought some yarn:

I like the color, and I imagine it will make something pretty and soft one of these days, but it was an impulse buy, too.  Kind of wishing now I hadn't bought it either, but at least it was on sale.  On clearance, in fact.  I wonder why???

Anyway... impulse buys aside, the Fiber Festival was a pleasant way to spend a few hours.  While it seemed improved in some ways from when I attended a couple of years ago,  I do wish there were more vendors. 

Saturday I worked with Ruth (companion care).  And shortly before lunch the power went out.  I heard a loud boom and then we were sitting in the dark.  The power was on at my house, so we got in the car and drove there for lunch and an activity I had planned for us to do together.  Later in the day I ran the sound board for Sunday's worship team's practice.  All in all, another pleasant day.  And my back was still more improved.

And then there was today.  A rainy day, but a lovely day in many respects.  Church was very good, the music was great😉, the sermon was convicting, and then we enjoyed lunch out with friends where we shared good food and laughter. 

And that was my week.  Three more YOP weeks left this year!   Check out what other YOPers are up to by visiting our group on Ravelry.

2019 Yarn Stash-Down progress:  44.06/100 skeins!

A finish. And some frustrations...

I've got a finish!   I drug my heels a ridiculously long time on this small Bertie Blanket, but I'm happy to say it's done and I'm sure I'll make more (I already have colors picked out for another one).   

I intended to make a more interesting border, but with the variegated yarn nothing I tried looked quite right, so it got a simple single crochet border.  And I decided that's good enough.  

~~~~~

Now.  As you look at the next picture - of my partridge in a pear tree cross stitch - you may ask yourself "why does this look different than it did before?"   

It's a sad and too-long-to-tell-here story, but it involved not being one bit happy with the back-stitched feather detail and the only way to redo it was to rip out all the main color on the wings.  At which point I decided to try another color, which I like just fine, but now I'm afraid to try any more back-stitching on it.  On paper, in the small picture the feather detail looks okay.  In real life it really doesn't.  And without any feather detail, the points and curves in the red sections don't make much sense.   

So I'm not sure what to do with this.  Does it look okay to just leave it like it is?  I've considered lightly drawing some shading on the thread, but I could seriously mess that up and then I'm right back to my only option being to rip it out again.  And I just can't imagine doing that again.  

I'm okay with the thing as a whole, but the wings have me flummoxed and discouraged.   I've put it aside to think about before stitching it into a small pillow, or just tossing it in the circular file and calling it a "learning experience".   

Ideas are welcome.

~~~~~

You'd think that would be enough disappointment, wouldn't you?  Well, after putting my partridge aside, I  decided to get out the Evenweave fabric I bought recently at Jo-Ann Fabrics and start another project.  But after I stitched half a small project I realized that the weave of the fabric is not even.  Unfortunately, it took some stitching before I could see the distortion.  Ugh.  I'd show a picture, but I ripped it out before that occurred to me.   An online search netted me some reviews that told me I'm not the only one who's had this experience with this no-company-name-on-the-label product sold at Jo-Ann's.  Be forewarned.  Don't buy it!

I'm returning two unopened packages this week, but this was a disappointment.   Between my partridge's wings and the Evenweave that isn't even,  I lost my steam to do any other cross stitching the rest of the week.    

~~~~~

All that aside, though, it was a busy and interesting week - most of which I can't really write about here.  But a fun part of last week was visiting with my husband's Uncle Art and his wife, Beth, who traveled east from California for various family events.  It was a sweet time spent with them on Thursday evening.

Also this past week, I donated a couple of kitchen-sized garbage bags full of yarn to a fund-raiser rummage sale, but don't go patting me on the back.  Midweek I bought more yarn when an online retailer was offering free shipping and they had in stock some yarn in a color I've been trying to get ahold of.  I don't feel badly at all about that purchase, but as soon as it arrives and I log it into my Ravelry inventory, my stash-busting numbers (recorded below) are going to take a serious reversal.  

So, while at the end of June it will probably only appear that I'm inching toward my goal, today I take pleasure in seeing a number that makes it look like I've made some significant progress toward reducing my stash by 100 (or more) skeins of yarn this year.  

2019 Yarn Stash-Down progress:  58.04/100 skeins!

One last thing.  Last week I forgot to mention any dishcloths knitted up during May.  Probably because I didn't do much.  I made a whopping three cloths: