What do you enjoy listening to?

A lot of people crochet and knit while they watch TV.  I try to, but since I take my glasses off when I do handwork, and I need my glasses for TV viewing, I either end up doing a lot of frogging, or rewinding.  Actually, to be perfectly honest, I do a fair amount of both those things and it's often less than satisfying.

My happiest arrangement is to watch/listen to YouTube videos on my phone while my hands are busy with something else - especially if my brain doesn't need to be deeply concentrating on what my hands are engaged in.  The types of YouTube videos I watch rarely need me to pay close attention to a screen.  I also listen to Spotify sometimes, and more rarely, I listen to a recorded book while doing my handcrafts - rarely only because I have trouble concentrating on someone reading aloud.

Recently, I have rediscovered two of my favorite podcasts from the not-too-long-ago past now on Spotify (and other platforms).

I was pretty hooked on Darkhorse Podcast from its inception, but once COVID hit, and it soon became evident the news media were doing their best to keep us frightened and ignorant, I found Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying a breath of fresh air.  The insights, that come from their professional backgrounds as biology professors, who also have real world experience, were (and I'm sure still are) an exercise in thinking logically.  Never downplaying the seriousness of COVID, they pointed out many of the things that didn't make sense in how it was being handled.  For those of us who were nearly driven crazy by the blatant censorship of information during the most worrisome years of COVID, I found their podcasts to be a dose of sanity.  Instead of fear mongering, they applied their intellects to the situation, and while they certainly didn't always have answers, they had logical responses.  All that said, they are two very long-winded and heady individuals.  While I love that up to a point, even I can only take so much.  In time I watched them less and less, probably as COVID became less and less scary (thanks to their insight, if I'm honest), hence now I'm re-discovering them.  I see they've moved on from COVID, and appear to be applying their intellects to various topics that I imagine are interesting to a wide audience.  Not everyone will like everything, but there's probably something in their catalog of videos that will interest nearly everyone.

A few years ago a fellow blogger made mention of SmartHerNews, and when I checked her out I was truly impressed at the non-biased news reporting Jenna Lee does.  I don't know Jenna Lee's story well, but she says she left traditional news media (at the time, she was with Fox), so that she could cover the news from as unbiased a position as possible.  She was among the first people (even before mainstream media) who had contact with a journalist on the ground in Afghanistan right in the middle of the evacuation in 2021.  I have not been disappointed in her or her interviewees.  I only wish she produced more content.  I was just wondering where she was, and why I hadn't heard from her in a while, when an email today pointed me to her podcasts on Scoop and Spotify.  Jenna Lee is actually the inspiration for this post.

I look forward to getting my fill again of these podcasters while I crochet, knit and stitch.

And now, to finally share my latest finished crochet project.

You may remember seeing this some posts back:

It has turned into this:

This pattern is, no doubt, available free somewhere by another name, but I used The Bertie Blanket pattern, and I have to say it is a fun stitch to do.  I've made it differently in the past, and I can imagine a number of possibilities using this pattern with scrap yarn.   I don't remember if the border I made is the same as the pattern's, but in case you're curious, the final round of the border is the crab stitch - it's single crochet stitched backwards.  It always sounds impossible to do when I haven't done it in a while, but it's actually super easy, and makes for a nice, understated edge.

Soon, I'll have another blanket to show.  I just need a sunshiny day to get some good natural light inside to photograph with.

Enjoy your weekend!

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: