Handwork...

I am now three quarters of the way through my chemotherapy, am climbing out of some rough days after my last treatment, and I am starting to feel some new motivation.  

I'm at a place I couldn't even imagine being just a couple of weeks ago.  On my good days I do fairly normal things, am sometimes out around people (though I do have to be smart about that with a compromised immune system), looking perfectly fine...   Halfway through a chemo cycle, if you didn't know I'd had chemo 10 days prior, you wouldn't know!   That said, I have lacked any real motivation for getting back to a lot that is normal for me.  In this post, I'm referring to hobbies I used to enjoy.  I see them sitting there and I want to want to do them, but I have lacked the motivation to actually do them.  Things like crafting, embroidery, cross stitch, slow drawing (if you don't know what that is, think of it as purposeful doodling)...  

But something seems to be changing inside me, and I am so thankful for it.  I've even begun to consider taking up sewing again - like maybe clothing.  I haven't sewn clothing since...   Wow - how long has it been?   I made some maternity clothes 29 years ago.  And I made some flannel pajamas for our boys when they were little.  Okay, I've sewn here and there over the years.   Craft projects, even home projects have seen me sitting at the sewing machine.  While it was over a decade ago, youngest son would benefit each semester from my sewing skills when he needed a costume (usually something adapted from the thrift store) for a high school drama he was in.  My sewing machine has always been fairly handy, but I don't think I've sewn an article of clothing in 20 - 25 years.  

I know what has piqued my interest.   Greg has recently posted some old pictures to a family Facebook group, and in two pictures I recognized I'm wearing things I made when I was young.  In fact...  just for fun, here is a scan of a newspaper clipping of young me sewing a 4-H project.  I remember the reporter coming over to interview me and take my picture for the 4-H Fair supplement for the local paper.  Recognizing the Mickey Mouse t-shirt, I'm getting jr. high vibes, so I suspect I was around 12 or 13:

ETA 3 years later:  Wait a minute...  the description above says I was sewing a division 1 project, and I know that would have been an apron, and I would have just finished 4th grade.  Which means I would have been 10!  You know...  I do think that's right because I got glasses around 4th/5th grade, and the fact that I'm not wearing glasses makes me think I was younger than jr. high age.  I just saw a picture of 13-year old me, in my wire-rimmed granny glasses, and I was definitely older than the picture above.

So, anyway...  I provide this as proof that I used to be a sewer.  Or maybe the better word is sewist.  A maker of garments.  Seeing pictures of things I had made (and me wearing them) made me think of other pieces of clothing I've made in years' past.  These pictures and memories sparked something inside of me.

Okay...  I'm not sure about getting back to sewing clothing for sure.  I'm just dreaming at the moment.  But dreaming feels good.  And a little doing recently has done me good.

It's funny what can come along and push us out of our inertia when we are struggling with motivation.  With cooler weather right around the corner I've started looking at my clothes to see what still fits me at this point, what can take me through fall and winter, and what might benefit from some simple altering.  I found a few tops that, by altering the neckline, should be very comfortable and decent looking for me to wear.  And I'm so surprised at what has happened.  Simply putting thread to needle, and doing the easiest of clothing alterations has inspired me to want to do more handwork.  

It led me to pick up another needle and thread and start working on my Quaker Sampler again.  

I don't know how many times I can show a picture of this sampler in progress before losing all credibility that I'll ever finish it.  But I don't care.  I'm back at it for now.

And I've even gotten some ideas for hand-stitched Christmas ornaments - some "scrappy" slow-stitching kind of projects. 

This is actually a fairly ambitious project (for me), and if I'm being completely honest, I'm a tiny bit scared I'll not follow through.  Wish me well that I have enough gumption to get it started, let alone finished.   

I am so relieved to be feeling motivated again to play with fabric and thread.  To just be dreaming of things I want to make is quite the improvement.

There is nothing wrong with setting aside activities, even abandoning them completely as life changes, but that's not what I wanted.  I have wanted for so long to get back to making things - really, since our move nearly two years ago I haven't been overly motivated to do handcrafts.  And this year, with all the cancer business, my zeal for "making" has just been completely zapped.   I'm feeling relieved that something seems to have changed in me.   

I'm curious...  What do you do when you find your motivation for favorite activities waning?  

 

Good news & some spring stitching...

Good news this week!  I received and accepted an offer on my brother's house last Monday!  It's a few more weeks until closing (possibly a month), but I'm feeling relieved to (hopefully) have finished most of the work involved in getting the house ready to sell.  We still need to move a few things off the property, but that doesn't feel like too monumental of a task at this point.  Mustn't grow weary now!

On the crafting front...  after seeing Sandy's cross stitched bunny last week (at Home Ec Major) I had an irresistible urge to cross stitch a bunny, too.   So I found one, and now about half-way done, I think I might get it finished before Easter:

Also, I finished Part 4 on the Linen & Thread 2020 SAL, and added some smaller pictures:

Trying to decide if that is too busy there (in the center of the above picture), and if I should go lighter in filling in blank  spaces.  I've seen a couple that are really full and they are fun to look at.  On the other hand, I wonder if it's too much.  The wonderful thing about a sampler is that it doesn't have to look the same throughout.  So maybe I'll experiment.  

And that's really all I've got.  I think the upcoming week will be busy - hopefully, that translates into feeling productive.  It just now occurred to me (for some reason)...   Heading into tax season, we need to not only get our own taxes done, but gather and take necessary stuff to the accountant for both my MIL's and my brother's estates.  

The nuttiness of that just struck me.  

😧

Breathing deep... 

We will get to the other side of this.

If you have posted a comment to me under the name of Glenda, please e-mail me via the address found on my profile.  I will be happy to answer your question privately.  Thanks!

Some stitching...

So, back in May of 2020, Part 1 of my Linen & Threads sampler looked like this:

And after adding most of Part 4, this busy little corner looks like this:

Never having exactly the same lighting when taking photos, I end up with slightly different shades of red showing up in the photos.  

Wishing now I had thought to take a larger (or whole) picture after every part was completed, I'm going to try to remember to do that - maybe I'll post that picture once a month.  Or maybe it will be more fun to just reveal it all when it's all completed.  I'll give that some thought. 

Meanwhile... this is what the whole thing looks like on this first Sunday in March.  Almost 1/3 finished:

While it's felt like I've let this thing languish and haven't accomplished much, it's kind of inspiring to see what the whole thing looks like to date - especially in a photo.   It inspires me to maybe be a little more diligent about working on it.   

A photo of the whole thing will also better show the smaller, extra motifs I plan to add to fill in some of the spaces - spaces that were originally designed to add initials of friends and family.  I didn't really want to have a lot of initials scattered throughout the sampler - so when I saw some other stitchers adding motifs in place of the initials, I knew I wanted to try to do that instead.  I'm finding motifs in a variety of places (some books I own, some OOP books I've found online, some free from blogging cross stitch designers) - the online sources I've linked to way down at the bottom of my blog.  👇  My hope is it will look a bit like an Eye Spy picture, and will provide on-going interest and even a bit of whimsy to the finished project.  Wish me well in that.  😉

~~~~~

And Tag No. 10 in the #52 Tag challenge was easily finished yesterday:

The "theme" of this one is Suffolk Puff (I've always known these as Yo-Yo's), and Lace.

And that's another wrap for another week!  It's gorgeous today, and supposed to be in the 60's several days this week!  I could almost cry with happiness.  😂

Sampler progress...

This week was another busy week in which I'm choosing to focus on what was good - even with its challenges.  Perhaps the best thing was seeing a little crafting time in the evenings - mostly cross stitching and knitting dishcloths.  It may not seem significant, but I'm happy to report that I finished Part 3 of the 2020 Mystery SAL hosted by Linen & Threads.

This first picture is where I left off on this design in December:

And this is what it looks like today:

I'm really hoping this is the largest single design on this sampler.  It was quite a job to finish it. 

And that's it craft-wise for me.  I actually found a little time this week to declutter and even wrote a Making Space post, but I couldn't find time to take a picture and post it.  The upcoming week is forecasted to be a bit snowy and then bitter, so hopefully I'll find myself at home with more time to pop in and record some progress on the decluttering front.

I hope you all have a great week ahead.  Even though wintry weather looks to be ahead here in Indiana, I'm focusing on spring being not too far behind it. 😎

The countdown to Christmas has begun...

I have to laugh a bit now at my grand idea of a daily "Advent Calendar" of projects.  I realized before I started I wasn't going to be able to do a project a day, but this past week I only managed to open two bags in five days.  That, of course, is okay, and now I think I have a more realistic idea of what I might actually accomplish this month.  And how long after Christmas I may end up enjoying my little "surprise" projects.  😉   

The first picture below is just to give an idea of what I pull out of a bag - I won't be taking a picture every day of this since it's really not that interesting (except to maybe see what I did as I was packaging things up).  Very simple, as you can see:

The yarn is Curio (sold by Knit Picks) in the colorway, Jalapeno.

The book wasn't in the bag, it's just the source 

of any doily patterns I may work this month.

 ___

And below is what was wrought with a teeny tiny hook 

and that pretty green thread:  

Doily #23

Realizing after posting how much the design looks like 

a Sutton Hoo helmet.  Very cool.

Truth be told, it was not my favorite doily of the ones I've done so far in this book.  It wasn't exactly a difficult pattern, but I had trouble trusting the instructions.  How many times do I have to tell myself that this designer is brief in her instructions, but when she says to do a thing, I need to do it - not second guess her.

Honestly, I could have made this doily over at least two times in the length of time it took me to hesitatingly crochet what I wasn't sure of, then frog back some because I thought I'd made a mistake, then I'd re-read the instructions, scratch my head at how this was going to work out, and then FINALLY just do what the designer said to do.  Seriously, like...  nearly every round this would happen.  There was also a fair amount of my mis-reading or misinterpreting the instructions.  It happens.  And those picots!  The picots just didn't want to behave.  Still don't after blocking.  Sigh.  I'm not a fan of making fiddly picots, but the very least they could do for all the trouble they are is to behave.  Stick out straight.  Look purty.

And Advent package #2 was kitchen cotton, which meant I was to knit (or crochet, if I like) a dishcloth (or, in this case 2 dishcloths).  You may or may not be able to tell I worked two different stitch patterns on the cloths below.  I'd like to say it was done on purpose, that I had a plan, but the truth is, without thinking, I started making the one on the right in a stitch pattern that really does no favors to variegated yarn.  I remembered this about half-way in.  Oh well...  no way was I going to frog a perfectly useable dishcloth.  I had enough yarn (and some from another ball) left to make a second cloth, so I have the opportunity here to be able to show which stitch pattern works better with variegated colors.  To be clear, it's not like I think the dishcloth on the left is exactly amazing, but something about this stitch pattern makes the colors a little less unruly.  After Marsha (Lefty Crafter blog) introduced the pattern to me, the Double-Woven Stitch, used in the Darrell Waltrip Dishcloth pattern has been my go-to pattern for working with variegated kitchen cotton.

~~~~~

I also got to spend some time on my Linens and Threads sampler.  Can you tell the difference?

Two weeks ago:

Today:

I mentioned before that this is a large design in this sampler.  What you see above is maybe one-third to half-way finished?  At this rate, I might finish it before Christmas.  We'll see, I guess.

It's hard to believe there are less than three weeks until Christmas!  In a year where time has often felt meaningless, it's hard to believe it's about to just evaporate away in a few short weeks now.  I can't quite decide if I'm practically giddy at the thought of saying goodbye to 2020 or sad to be grieving such a dreadful year. 

It's my choice, so I'm going to choose to be glad.  I think.  Remind me if I forget.  Can't change what is behind, we can only hope for the future.

Are you finding time to do crafty things in these weeks before Christmas?  Or any of the things that bring you joy in this season?

A bit of stitching...

This past second week of November saw the finish of Part 3 (sounds so much better than "March's section") of the Linen & Threads' 2020 Mystery Sampler:

I am soooo behind on this project, but I'm glad that when I got back to it, I was happy to be working on it.  Gives me hope that I will finish it.  

Someday.  😉

This may be my shortest YOP post ever, but that's all I got!

Happy Handcrafts...

Life is getting back to some semblance of normal for a lot of people in our state, but Hubs and I are needing to continue to practice physical distancing from others pretty much at the same level we have over the last 2 1/2 months as we wait  for him to have knee surgery this summer.  We do NOT want him to get sick and have this surgery postponed, or him have to suffer illness on top of a knee that has grown so painful he can't sleep in bed for much of the night. He's walking with a cane, and hobbles, and frankly, doesn't walk very far.  Driving is difficult.  It's getting old and waiting is getting harder and harder.  Trying to hang onto the positive that he has a date, and not focus on the fact that it's still over a month away.   

It's a small complaint, really.  It's where we're at right now.  

Okay... onto happier things.  Handcrafts!  😊

I finished February's portion of the Linen and Threads' 2020 Mystery Stitch-A-Long:

It will probably be lost on anyone not doing this SAL, but I will be adding some motifs throughout the year in areas where they will fit in.  This is called "Friends and Family Sampler"  and each stitcher is encouraged to stitch in the initials of meaningful people in his/her life.  But that idea doesn't float my boat at all.   There are so many spaces for doing this, even if I could come up with that many initials, I don't even know if I'd be able to remember who all they belonged to when I was finished.  So...  inspired by another stitcher of this sampler, I'm looking for some motifs that I can add.  Some will fit in naturally, some will add a bit of wimsy (like animals and insects).  I have to stitch a bit more on this before I have a good feel where those things will fit, but be on the lookout for them.  Or maybe they won't appear until the Sampler itself is finished.   Unless, of course, I change my mind.  We all know I'm fully capable of doing that - and possibly even prone to it.  Anyway...  though the stitching is small and sometimes tedious, I am enjoying this greatly. 

And this week, I started a shawl/scarf project called Inner Light.   Because I'm using two hanks of yarn that are from different dye lots, I'm switching back and forth between the two every other row.  I know the two balls look the same, but one is darker than the other and it becomes apparent when working them together. 

 As usual, all you get is a peek at this stage.  😉 

I think the mottling effect is interesting in this yarn that is hand dyed in shades of bright pink yarn.  Worked up, it's not nearly as bright as I imagined it would be - which is a good thing.  It was really bright in the hank.  

And that's it!  Come back next week and see if I've made any progress!  

Stitching A-Long...

This week I began a new project that should see me through the rest of the calendar year.  Linen & Threads hosts an annual Mystery Sampler Stitch-A-Long, and while I think it might have been sometime in March when I first became aware that they hosted these annual SALs,  I just recently decided to jump in on the one for this year. 

It was about mid-April when I made that decision, and with COVID-19 affecting things, it took over 3 weeks for materials to arrive.  Once fabric and floss arrived early this week, I pretty quickly sat myself down and started on it.  And this weekend, four month's behind schedule, I finished January's part of the pattern:

When completed, the whole design will measure just under 10 inches square.  
Somewhere around half the size of the original that is stitched 2 over 2.

I'm stitching this with DMC floss (815 colorway) 1 over 1, on 25-ct Lugana in Antique White.  It's a bit of a stretch for these eyes of mine, but with a bright light I'm able to do it!  I'm also finding that a sharp needle is easier to use with this fabric than a less sharp petite needle I'd been using and growing very fond of on other recent projects.  When I cross stitched in the 80's I, personally didn't know about any other cross stitch fabric than Aida, and had no clue that there were a variety of needles to stitch with.  Always something new to learn!

I'm hoping ,with some intense periods of stitching for a few weeks, I can get caught up and maybe by early-mid June I'll be on track to be ready and waiting for each new reveal over the last six months of 2020.  I'm thinking of this as something of a commemorative piece to represent our year of COVID, so if this takes me until there's a vaccine to finish it (and it could), I guess that will be fitting, too.

And lastly, I completely forgot last week that I had finished another small Christmas stitch:

This will go into my collection of smalls that will one day be sewn into little pillows.  That's my thought at the moment, anyway...