A fairly productive week...

Last week went fast!  Busy with productive things and socializing, but still plenty of time to craft. That's a pretty perfect week in my estimation.

The strawberry plants finally got uncovered, and the garlic I planted amongst the strawberries last fall appears to be thriving.  

I'm thinking some garlic cloves must have not sprouted, though, as I only have about 50 plants (between the strawberry bed and another small spot in which I planted about half as many as above).  For some reason, I thought I planted around 90 cloves.  Or maybe I'm dreaming that.  To be completely honest, I don't get great sleep, and I've been having a lot a weird dreams lately...

I've dreamt weirder things than planting 90 cloves of garlic, that's for sure!

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And look at what bloomed this weekend!

The amaryllis my neighbor gave me last Easter, I brought out of the garage into the sunroom in February to bring it out of dormancy.  It was so top-heavy, I scrambled to find something to hold it up before it toppled right over.

We crafty folks are resourceful.  

To the non yarn-crafty reading this, that is a 

knitting needle serving as a stake.

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A friend and I got together for a couple of hours one afternoon and mod-podged spring/Easter eggs - using flower designs cut from pretty tissue paper. 

It was messy, and I'm not sure I ever want to do it again, but  the finished eggs are kind of cute:

The eggs were inexpensive ones from Hobby Lobby, and are probably even more deeply discounted this week - in case anyone reading is inspired to do this. The eggs I bought are made of a ping-pong-ball material, packaged in a half-an-egg crate.  

If my friend wants to get together one more time to finish the job, I'll decorate the last three of my dozen...  Otherwise, those will be donated to a thrift shop and I'll be happy to call this done.  I've concluded I'm better at mod-podging flatter objects.

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At some point, these Tunisian-stitched hotpads were finished.  Made with a sturdy cotton yarn, they are a decent thickness for hotpads:

The one below (crocheted with a softer cotton yarn) is a little flimsier, so it will likely become a washcloth:

I like these a lot.  And they are not the least bit hard to make, but my arthritic thumbs grew pretty weary holding the long Tunisian hook in one hand, and the cloth in the other.  I think I'm done doing Tunisian crochet with cotton yarn.  

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And lastly, having recently enjoyed making some dishcloths using the moss stitch (aka linen stitch), I gave making moss stitch granny square cloths a go, and I am a little bit in love.  These fast projects made with colorful yarns are fun to make, and hopefully will be fun to use:

The orange one on the left was made with a sturdy kitchen cotton (like Sugar n' Cream or Peaches & Cream). The others are made using Hobby Lobby's I Love This Cotton Yarn in various prints.  This soft cotton yarn makes super drapey cloths, and the cotton "prints" work well in this stitch pattern.  

Though, the perfectionist in me did finagle a bit to get the colors to go 'round and 'round in a pleasing way, instead of congregating on one side, as they tend to do if you change directions each round.  Changing directions with each round keeps the squares from skewing.  To overcome the colors' tendency to pool when doing this, I did a lot of snipping and magic-knotting. In fact, I'm something of a pro at this now.  I've never before trusted the magic knot, but I figured dishcloths that will get abused and washed many times will be a great test of its reliability.

The video tutorial below is, by far, the best one I have found for making these:

I hope those of you who observe and celebrate have had a meaningful Lent and Easter!

Guess again!

Another week has flown by that saw just a bit of crocheting on my Christmas blanket and completing a little bit more of my mystery cross stitch.  The guesses were interesting last week on just what this might be, but no one was even close.  Perhaps today's picture gives a bit more of a hint:

You can click on any image to embiggen it in a separate screen.

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I did do another little crafty thing.  It's simple really, but it makes me smile and feel just a little clever.

Some background:  This summer I've been helping out a friend by watching her daughter most  Thursdays while mom works.  It's been fun for me (a mom of three grown sons) to spend a little time most weeks with a girl-child.  

We've done a variety of things, but most Thursdays I've tried to get in a little crafting or some "handy" project.  We've tried doodling, painting with watercolor pencils and water brushes, crochet, cooking and baking...  

For this past week's project we got a little messy.

Using cardboard heart-shaped boxes (that were miniature chocolate candy gift boxes), we painted them with some white chalk paint...

then decoupaged them with napkins:

Simple, I know.  If we'd had more time I'd loved to have layered more on these.  And those more experienced with decoupage would have some suggestions for making these fancier.  

But for a quickie little craft, I'm actually kind of impressed that we pulled this off with few hitches  -- other than spilling half the bottle of decoupage medium  😣, tossing a loaded paint brush when a rogue wasp startled my young charge  😲, and lastly... having my cell phone turned off (accidentally) so her mother couldn't reach me for a half hour when she got off work.  😟   I promise...  it was an accident!  She assured me she wasn't worried.  She just texted me and told me to bring her daughter home when I was ready to.  👍   

About 30 minutes after I thought she would have called, I checked my cell phone - and yep.  There was the message (along with the record of calls she tried to make).   And the volume on my phone was turned off.  Checking it later, I saw it was in "airplane" mode.  I have no idea how I had done that! 

I was embarrassed that this happened on my watch, but it was nice to have the extra time to finish our little projects.  😏

School starts next week, so this was our last time together for the summer.  It was fun while it lasted! 

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Somewhere over there!  👉