Year of Projects 2020-2021 Round Up!

This always seems to be my favorite post - where I take stock of all the crafty projects I've finished over the past year.  Even though personal life events over the last 12 months took a toll on my ability, motivation, and even desire to craft at times, it's still fun to see what I did manage to get done.

I didn't explore any new crafts, but I enjoyed again crocheting with thread:

And yarn:

And, cross stitch has become more and more interesting to me:

While this sampler didn't get completed, it remains a favorite:

And I was very happy to recently finish up some projects that I had stitched up years ago, but had never done anything with:

While this round-up doesn't look like much compared to YOP years past, looking back over these projects and compiling this post does make me smile.  And I think it increases my motivation to pull out some of my languishing projects and get cracking on them.

Thanks for stopping by and letting me share my year of crafts projects with you!  😊

Gettin' there...

Life got a bit hectic this past week.  Somehow a little fire got lit under us and we made contact with a realtor and started visiting some properties in search of our next home.

We've been saying for years that we need to downsize, but in our heart of hearts it's not downsizing we're needing as much as leveling our living space.  In other words, we feel we should look for a home we can grow old in and the tri-level we live in is not that.  Anyway, with a bit of a flame lit, we made some steps in the direction of beginning to think about buying and selling homes.  Knowing us, this will take a while, but then again...  if the perfect house (for us) presented itself, who knows?!?  It's with some excitement and trepidation we dipped our toes in that water.

And this weekend, we enjoyed having visitors (the daughter of a much older, deceased half-brother - who lost her mother recently, and her husband). Amongst discussion of the losses we've both had, there was lots of catching up on our families and family history.  Heartaches were shared, as well as laughter.  It was very good to connect after many years, even if I am finding myself emotionally whipped here on Sunday evening.

All that, and other activities, kept me from actually accomplishing much that was tangible last week.  But that's okay.  Another week's a comin'.

My probably-not-so-mysterious amigurumi gained an arm and about three quarters of a head, but ahead lies the scary part - the face. Meaning, the whole thing could be crocheted, stuffed and sewn together, but its success hinges on me being able to give it a cute face.  😟

Fearlessly, I will plug away on it.  Trusting that all will end well. 

And that's all, folks.  Thanks for stopping by!  

A fun little amigurumi...

I didn't manage to get any crafting done for most of the week until I finally summoned the motivation to work on a little amigurumi project I'd been thinking about crocheting.   Anyone want to take a guess what this may be when it's finished?

Something new I'm trying is making jogless stripes in crochet.  I don't recall ever doing this before, but I'm amazed at how easy it actually is.  I used this video tutorial to learn how to make a "circle join" stitch.  Note: the video is long, and the speaker goes slowly, but you only need to truly watch from 3:52 to about 12:00 to understand making the circle join stitch.  I only use this stitch about two rounds before changing colors.  Otherwise, on long stretches of crocheting one color in the round I simply crocheted in a spiral.

I hope to have this finished next week.  The face (in this case it will be just eyes) is often the deal maker or breaker of an amigurumi so wish me well in that.  😉

Later, gator!

You've been a good month, May...

As life resumes normalcy - more things opening up, group activities getting scheduled, and with warmer weather bringing more outside things to do, at the same time, for me personally, life has slowed down a bit (and it is welcomed).  With all of that, I'm finding myself getting to the end of a week and wondering what I did with all those days!  It's funny...  that was what would happen during the slower days of severe COVID restrictions too, so perhaps it's more the nature of life than it is due to specific circumstances (for me, anyway).

I think that's one of the reasons I like these weekly YOP posts.  Even if I have little to show, I almost always can come up with something that makes me go, "Oh yeah!  I did that." 

Today, taking stock, I'm reminded that I worked on the blue and white ripple blanket (never mind that working on it involved ripping out as much as I crocheted this week).  I've also decided I'm making it a birthday gift later in the year so I'm hereby releasing myself of any feelings of "oughtness" about thinking I can't crochet other things while this big project looms.  I'm hereby declaring it non-looming in my life.  😉

lotsa ends!

I decided to start another Little Sheep Virtues cross stitch:  

I think I'll have this one done by next week, so I'm just going to reveal which one it is at that time.  If you know, don't tell.  😉

And since it's the last Sunday of the month, I took stock of my dishcloth knitting and counted 14 dishcloths all finished, awaiting their final destination (whatever that ends up being):

~~~~~

And while this isn't crafty, I did finally pull out the Kitchen Aid stand mixer I inherited from my MIL, and a nice dough hook I bought as a Christmas present to myself,  and FINALLY made some rolls:

  After a second rise, ready to go into the oven:

Now...  truth be told, I made a big mistake and accidentally turned the oven off after placing these in the oven so they didn't turn out nearly as amazing as they should have.  But aside from the time required for the dough and then the rolls to rise, making them was actually a piece of cake!  So to speak.

Not to let 2 hours of rising time go to waste, I reheated the oven, put the rolls back in to bake until I guessed that they were done inside.  I had no idea how they'd be to eat, but with expectations low, I was pleasantly surprised to find they turned out to be like biscuits in texture.   Yummy, yeasty biscuits that were actually pretty good, if not as lofty as I had originally hoped.  Spread with honey butter, they even made a nice dessert later.

So...  in addition to everything else I did (or didn't do ) all last week, these things  make me smile.  

As did hanging bed linens out on the line to dry one day and smelling that outdoors scent as I drifted off to sleep that night.  And it made me smile to take donations to the thrift store, and make and freeze three meals worth of chili - which used up about a quarter of the tomatoes a friend invited me to pick from her garden last summer!   It made me smile to remember picking them, too.  😊

I'm curious... what small thing(s) made you smile recently?

3 1/2 year-old me - in 1962

Hubs has been busy 

transferring old slides 

to digital pictures  

😊

We've gotten lots of smiles out of those.

   

Did I say I was getting rid of stuff?

This is kind of a funny post to make after declaring on Wednesday that I'm getting back to my "Making Space" challenge (i.e. getting rid of stuff).  And after writing last Sunday that I planned to take my 30 year-old sewing machine to the repair shop to see if I could get it fixed.  Well, I did make a trip to the sewing machine repair shop, but since I was already in the mind to start looking for a newer replacement for my old machine, I was an easy (and willing) target for a sparkly new sewing machine when I walked into the store.

So...  now I'm the owner of a new Janome Sewist 721.  Ain't she purty?

If you're so inclined, you can embiggen the pictures by clicking on them.

It's a fairly simple mechanical machine, but it has some extra stitches and it sews soooo smoothly. 

This week, my 30 year-old machine will be posted online - free to someone who'll come and get it.  I've had it apart and oiled it and gotten it to (sort of) work, but it needs for someone to remove more than just the top and bottom of the machine.  It looks like it will require removing multiple pieces of moving machinery so that the old dried-out grease can be cleaned out and replaced.  From, watching Youtube videos, I think for a person who's interested in doing all that, it might be worth it, but now that I've got a shiny new machine, I'm hard pressed to want to do that.  And truth be told, I'm as likely to break the old one as to fix it, so I'd rather let someone else have a shot at it.

Also this past week, I got some fun mail.  I don't recall where I heard of Cross Stitching Supplies just north of Indianapolis, but I'm so happy to have discovered them.  I ordered some cross stitch fabrics (in colors I hadn't been able to get at my regular online cross stitch resource), and a bunch of overdyed floss - since they offered a nice discount on the first order.

I can't  wait to dive in and start stitching something new.

Lindsey, the owner of Cross Stitching Supplies is a good communicator.  She even notified me that she was giving me a partial refund on one of the fabrics because it had a random dye spot on it (that didn't belong).  I thought that was very nice, but I imagined I might have to sacrifice half the piece of fabric (for what I wanted to use it for, anyway).  But when it arrived and I saw her hand-written note on the fabric, I looked it over and it was the tiniest spot that didn't appear at all on the opposite side, so the whole piece of fabric is totally useable!   

It's pretty handy that Lindsey is located on the north side of Indy while I'm on the southside, so my order got here lickety split.  I will definitely be checking first with Cross Stitching Supplies when I want to place an order in the future. 

~~~~~

And on the crafting end of things, I managed to finish off more of the little stitches I posted about a few weeks ago - some of which have been waiting years (okay... decades - lol) for this day...

They aren't perfect, and I'm still learning some things about finishing small cross stitch projects into mini-pillows, but I'm so glad to have FFO's rather than the small bits of projects these were before. 

And that, dear reader, is all she wrote!

Cross stitch smalls...

It was tempting to skip posting again this week, but crafting mojo is so elusive lately, I thought I'd better post while I have something current to show.

In my last post, I was making plans for finishing some older cross stitch projects.  Well... I finally stitched a few up into little pillows:   

The hardest part was just deciding to do it.  Though, it did take a bit of time to cut everything out, iron on interfacing (to make the projects nice and smooth - I heard somewhere to do that).  And I left too small of openings for turning them right side out, so I had to unpick some stitches.

But seriously...  It's embarrassing how long it took me to finally set myself down to do this.  I've had the cross stitching finished on this one since last October:

In the process, I found out my 30 year-old Singer sewing machine is frozen.  I'm thinking all it needs is a good cleaning and re-oiling, and whatever a repair shop does to get a machine in good working order again.  Meanwhile, I'm sewing on my MIL's nearly 70 year-old Singer and it hums along so nicely.  It's tempting to just chuck my old frozen one, but it is very handy for quickly zig zagging edges, and creating buttonholes - whereas doing these things on my MIL's machine requires fiddling with attachments.  So sometime this upcoming week I'm thinking of biting the bullet and getting my old machine to a repair shop. Wish me well in that plan. 

And that's all she wrote!

More little things...

Much is happening here, but most isn't really shareable.  Or somehow it seems that way.  Truthfully, the visible part of what we are doing is so mundane it isn't worth writing about here.  The emotional part is yet to be fully realized, I suspect.

We're moving into a new stage where I can feel free to make decisions about my brother's things that I've not felt free to before now.  It is good to be at this place because it will start freeing up our home, but there is an emotional cost to this that I don't know how to count right now.  On the surface it feels something like relief, but deep down it feels like something else.  Another loss. 

Sigh.

Meanwhile, while I ponder this somewhat elusive place I am in, stuff does get done.  I do laundry.  I grocery shop. I cook and eat.  Too much.  That last thing doesn't help, I know.  I go to doctor's appointments.  They tell me to eat better and get more exercise.

I know.  I know...    

I will.

And I stitch.  I'm so thankful God gave me this gift of enjoying making things with my hands.  

This week I stitched a little on the bunny cross stitch I showed last week - it's nearly done.  And I kitted up a small seasonal project I'd like to start soon.  And of course I don't want to totally neglect the mystery sampler I'm only 7 months behind on, but I have completely ignored it for a week now.

Today I have crochet to show.  I got out some pretty spring-colored crochet threads and made two more little doilies from the book, 99 Little Doilies by Patricia Kristoffersen.

Doily #4, which I'm calling Sweet Thing:

and Doily # 24 - which I've dubbed "Parasol": 

I'll just say upfront, I did #24 wrong.  But that's okay.  That makes mine an original.  And a good blocking made it all better.  Truth be told, I like my mistake better than the original.  Isn't it nice when that happens?  😊  This one I made with size 3 thread, which means it's thicker than a typical doily, and it should make a nice little coaster.  That center part is just the right size for fitting under a glass.

That's it!  That's all I've got on the crafty front - on this second day of spring!    Well that and tomorrow I'm scheduled for my second Pfizer COVID vaccine.  Yay!  Moving closer to normal!

Goodbye February!

It's been a week!  A busy week and a beautiful week in our part of Indiana.  Sunshine, warm weather, an occasional spring-like shower...  The birds are singing, and I'm expecting tulips and daffodils to start popping through the soil any moment.  

But it's only February 28th.  And it is still winter.  So I'm cooling my heels doing estate settling stuff, slipping in a little hand-crafting when I can.  I kept Ruth company for a couple of hours one day - I have missed spending time with her during this COVID time.  In all the busyness and distractedness of February, my mindless knitting was dishcloths.  

The pattern for the solid cloths is Boxes, 

and for the variegated cloths I use the Darrell Waltrip pattern.

Since it was the month of "love" and "hearts" I gathered together a bunch of cotton yarns in pinks and purples and set myself to working through it.  On this last day of the month, I'm knitting up my 14th cloth. 

Someone usually asks if I have a plan for these cloths.  The answer is no, but a plan always seems to find my cloths somehow.  When the plan finds them, I am ready!

~~~~~

And this week's theme for the #52 Tags challenge was "Bits and Pieces" with a 'found' component.  Seems to me that every week's tag is made up of bits and pieces just found amongst my stash, so this one was relatively simple:

The "found" bit is the shiny beige strip of fabric, second from left, that I found as the lining of a tie of my brother's as I cut it apart - thinking the tie's outer fabric might be useful someday.  Actually, the lining fabric of the tie was much more interesting so I cut it out and put it in my stash.  There's a bit more of it, so it may show up in another tag at some point.   The rosette was made of a piece of crocheted edging that once upon a time was attached to a pillow case.

By the way, the pictures above were taken on the deck - where it was 60 degrees today.  The pictures in last week's post (scroll down) of crocheted snowflakes on top of snow were taken on the same deck.  Amazing the difference a week makes.  Yes, it's mighty nice outside right now.  

I hope you're enjoying some pleasant weather where you are!    😊

Small things...

 'Twas mostly a quiet, if busy, week at home due to the deep freeze many of us in the U.S. have experienced for a week now.  When I turned to crafting it was small things that caught my attention.

I decided to finish a snowflake I started back in early December.  It was one of the few advent crafts I did - remember that grand plan?  And while I had the crochet thread out, I decided to make a second snowflake by the same designer:

The Frostvale and Wispweave snowflakes are beautiful, if stunningly challenging (to me, anyway) on the last round.

And, actually, I think I also made the following two snowflakes in December, but I just recently blocked them:

Hesperiidae Snowflake and Merrymaker Snowflake

And, as often happens when I start crocheting with thread, my fingers just want more of it, so I looked through my 99 Little Doilies book and decided to make Doily #8 for the second time.

I gave away the first one, and I was missing it.

It's kind of crazy how much I want to make another doily.  Doilies can be addictive.  Until I make a really hard one.  Then I don't want to make another for a very long time.

And lastly, I finished Tag #7 for the 52 Tags Challenge:

The theme for this tag was "Hexis"

These cute little Hexis were made by starting with a circle and folding it and ironing it.  If you're at all curious, the video I followed is here.

And that's pretty much it!   This week will probably see my brother's house being listed for sale.   And then we wait...  hopefully, not too long.  I've already received one cash offer (it was too low), and am told there are two agents interested in showing it already, so we'll see!

Still lots to do on the homefront.  And the legal front.  And just keeping up with things.  

With the temps warming up a bit, I'm hoping I can motivate myself to get into a walking routine.  All that snow covering our yard will hopefully be gone by mid-week, and the piles maybe by next week.  It will be fun to see it go!

52 Tags Challenge continues...

Winter has finally set in to central Indiana - like it has in most of the eastern part of the US, it seems.  While it has had the effect of slowing me down, fortunately it doesn't appear that it will be sticking around longer than through this upcoming week.

Last week started off with some work being done at my brother's house, and me dealing with an eye infection.  Ugh.  It's the third eye infection I've had since October.  The first two cleared up pretty quickly within a few days by simply using hot compresses.  This time, though, I needed some help.  After several days of antibiotics, it's still there, but it feels much better.  Not quite as scary red and swollen.  

The reason I'm sharing this is in case it benefits anyone else.  The eye doctor said they've seen a lot more eye infections this year and they are wondering if mask wearing is contributing to it after all.   The fact that I didn't even see a doctor for the first two infections I had, I have to believe many infections clear up without ever being noted.  In other words, if doctors are seeing more eye infections in the office, there are even more likely going unreported.

Honestly...  listening to my doctor and doing some research about it, it now seems ludicrous to think masks couldn't be a factor to an increase in skin and eye infections (as some articles I encountered still suggest).  My husband also had a skin infection just under one of his eyes several months ago. I don't know if he was told his was staph, but he was treated for it and it took weeks to clear up.  

My point isn't to not wear a face mask.  I'm not there - yet.  If you have dry eyes and/or experienced eye infections since wearing masks, I suggest reading up on the problem, as it's multifaceted.  No one is suggesting that face masks directly cause eye infections.  Conversely, articles that dismiss the problem by stating "face makes don't cause eye infections" are misleading and don't get to the point or deal with the problem.  And worse, articles that simply call such claims false are written by lazy writers who do a disservice to people looking for real information. 

For me, a person with dry eye syndrome... this means, in addition to continuing to be fastidious about washing my hands and wearing fresh masks when one is called for, it may serve me well to take some extra precautions because those pesky sluggish oil glands in the eyelids (which is one cause of dry eyes) are more susceptible to infection.   I bought me a Bruder (eye) Mask to make warm compresses easier to do - hot, wet washcloths helped when I took the time to fiddle with them, but a mask that stays put and holds its heat longer makes it all much less tedious.   Bottom line:  take care of and pay attention to your eyes.  Dry eyes are more susceptible to infections.  If they're feeling dryer than normal, it could be more than just the dry winter air that's affecting them.  Regardless, it's wise to address the problem of dry eyes - not only for comfort's sake, but for the health of your eyes.

~~~~~

And with that PSA finished, now I'm on to what usually brings me in here on Sunday afternoons - my Year of Projects post.  After the busyness and not feeling so good the first half of last week, I found myself finally inspired on Friday to work on two more tags in the #52tagshannemade challenge.

The theme of Tag #5 is "Kisses"

Can you figure out how the theme "kisses:" is played out above?

And the 6th tag's theme is "Bevy of Buttons"

I think this one is self-explanatory.

If you're interested in Anne's Brooke's 52 Tags challenge, you can see her tags and videos here!

And that, dear reader, is all she wrote!

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. 😎