Doilies and hats...

Crocheting and knitting a little over the last couple of weeks, I made two more of "99 Little Doilies".

Crocheted in Artiste #10 thread in the color "Peach Ivory"

Tiny little doily #31 doesn't really inspire me at all, but it will be a fine addition to a collection of small doilies in a few different colorways that I hope to finish and display together some day - even if just on a table top.

Doily # 22, crocheted in Curio #10 thread in the color "Hawk"

It wasn't until I saw this dark gray doily in a picture that I saw what I imagine to be a round stained glass window without the stained glass.  So I named this "Lead Rosette".  So glad I decided to skip all the picots in this one.  They would have driven me crazy, and I like the edges on this so much better.

~~~~~

Another project has presented itself, and sounds enjoyable - as long as my neck doesn't go back into "stiff mode".   Last month we attended a volunteer dinner (as quests) where youngest son, Ben, attends a church that hosts a community  food distribution.  That night they announced they also plan to host a toy/hat/blanket giveaway in early December - and they were "calling all yarnies" to knit or crochet hats.  I placed a loose mental sticky note in my mind that I could knit some hats to donate, but honestly, it wasn't until Ben mentioned it a week or so ago (just on the chance I might be interested) that I got a bit more serious about it.

Knit and crocheted hats can be great easy projects - taking just a few hours each - some less.  At least that's how I remembered it...

Well, this weekend I started with knitting a simple Benefaction Hat, and decided I'd add some colorwork after watching a few YouTube videos to see how it's done.  I thought I'd do a "fade" pattern with several colors.

The "fade" is where things started getting a little challenging.  The concept of stranded knitting (especially on this level) is simple enough, but I need a lot of practice to get my stitches and tension more consistent in that part of the knitting.

To a non-knitter's eye, I'm not sure this looks all that bad, and some of the unevenness can be blocked out, but I don't think I have it in me to finish this.  And I'm not sure I like the colors I chose, so there's that, too.  I may hang onto it, and use it as practice later, but since the more immediate goal is to actually produce some hats (not improve my knitting), I'm moving on.

I looked back at my Ravelry project page, and I see the last hat I crocheted was in September of 2020.  The last hat I knit was almost a year before that.

Armed with that knowledge, I suddenly feel kind of rusty and am wondering if volunteering to make some hats was a good idea.

Ah well...   the evidence will present itself here over the next 4 weeks.  I've pulled out lots of colors of yarns from my stash, and I've given myself a goal of wrapping up hat making by mid-October.  Come October 13th, I will either be relieved to be done, or feeling very satisfied with what I accomplished - maybe both.  Either way, it does feel good to have a purposeful project to throw myself into.

 

Eight more days of summer...

I had such good intentions of posting a bit more regularly at the beginning of September, and now here it is half-way through the month, and I have been waylaid from that good plan. 

Shortly after I posted my last post, I ended up getting a whopper of a sore neck.  I reviewed my activities leading up to that point, and honestly, I don't know which or if all of the things I did put my upper shoulder and neck in a bad spot.

The day after my last post, I started out feeling fine, but I had a dental appointment in the late morning, and oh my goodness...  I spent way too long in the chair.  At one point, I asked to be put upright so I could give my back a break.  The thing is, as much as my back hurt then, it didn't hurt in the spot that later flared up.

 

Picture of dentist tools taken earlier in the year when I was getting a root canal

Two days after being in the dentist's chair, I found myself in my dermatologist's chair getting a suspicious spot removed from the side of my nose.  My back hurt then too - but, again, not exactly in the place I was later sore in. 

It was later that week I finished up the baskets I showed in my last post.  At no time while I was crocheting those did I feel sore, but sometime the week after my last post is when I got the worst pain in the neck I think I've ever had.  

Then I remembered...  over the course of the week before my sore neck took hold, we had some beautiful weather.  I took advantage of the reprieve from summer heat to take care of some late summer garden chores.  

Those chores may show up in a bit more detail in future posts, but to keep this post from become a total monster, here is the Reader's Digest version...

First, I started pulling green beans plants.  In retrospect, that decision was possibly a little premature, but they weren't producing as prolifically, and I had grown weary of watering them nearly daily.  I also wasn't crazy about the Kentucky Wonder green beans - more on that in another post, possibly.  I simply didn't want to can any more of them.  I was ready to be done.

All but one trellis of green beans were pulled and carried over to the fire pit where I painstakingly unwinded twisted vines from rusty wire.  A tedious, but oddly satisfying job.  

This actually happened over the course of two days as I had the time.

I think it was a completely different day that I decided to start pulling out no-longer-producing tomato plants. The roots were surprisingly long, and it took a fair bit of pulling to clear the garden of most of the 25 tomatoes I had planted in May.  I then tried to dig around and wrangle the wooden stakes loose before I finally cried "uncle" and asked hubs if he could get them out.  It was hard work for him, but compared to my struggle, he made it look like a piece of cake.

There were 8 tomato plants left with still ripening fruit when I finished pulling those first ones out.

The day of tomato plant pulling, I also trimmed or entirely removed things that had become infected with powdery mildew (zinnias, yellow squash, fading zucchini plants...)  Anything with powdery mildew got bagged and taken to the curb. 

In some of the newly opened spaces, I planted cucumbers, kohlrabi, cabbage, pok choy, radishes and zucchini.  A fall garden is a total experiment for me. I'm guessing because the nights are cooler, and the angle of the sun is already more southerly in the sky, the plants may grow at a slower rate.

And add to all of the above, I also thinned out the strawberry patch. That involved a lot of bending over, bending forward, getting up and down from my knees... Exhausted at the end of that, I raked the refuse up and bagged it for trash collection.

I would have blamed any one of those things if my sore neck had followed directly on the heels of them, but the pain seemed to come days after I was finished with all of that work. 

Ibuprofen and Tylenol were of little help.  Hubs gave me deep massages where I could point out knots; I spent hours with a heating pad around my shoulder and neck.  I'd start feeling a little better, then it would come back with a vengeance and a headache that radiated up from sore muscles - usually at the end of the day.

After at least a week of that, finally desperate for some lasting relief, I called and got an appointment with my GP, hoping she'd write me a prescription for a muscle relaxant.  And then the very next day (the day of the appointment) I woke up with a much improved neck.  Not perfect, but not nearly as sore.  I had been able to turn over in bed the night before without yelping with each little movement.  There was still a remnant of pain in the morning, but I woke up with a motivation I hadn't felt for over a week.   

I cancelled my doctor appointment.

This calling the doctor, and suddenly feeling better is not the most satisfying of treatments, but it does seem effective.  Nearly every time.  Am I the only one for whom this is true? 

I realize my injury is surely healing itself slowly, and knowing that, I try to patiently wait it out - looking online for things to help me feel better, and reading opinions about how soon to call a doctor.  Here's the thing...  it doesn't seem to matter whether I call as soon as I feel it's legitimate to do so, or if I wait a week or two beyond that, the result is almost always the same...   I don't call until I'm desperate for pain relief, and I almost always feel better within hours of getting an appointment with a doctor.  It's frustrating and greatly relieving at the same time.  

It feels like a phenomenon that should have a name.  

I'm back to crocheting and knitting and have a little progress to show on Sunday.  Today is the first time I've been on the computer in nearly two weeks.  I'm cooking and grocery shopping again, and I'm toying with pickling the most recently harvested banana peppers this weekend.

What's left of my 25 tomatoes plants are looking shriveled and brown, some green tomatoes hanging on have me wondering if they will ever ripen.  I'm still picking sweet peppers, and cherry tomatoes, and enough green beans off of the last lonely trellis to serve them up once a week.

My once lovely garden looks sad now, but I'm so thankful for the strength it gave my body as I worked it, and, in the end, the speed at which it helped the summer to fly by.  A few weeks ago, I thought I'd be sad to see summer end this year, but as normal, I'm already eagerly anticipating autumn.

And look what just arrived in the mail!   

I'm going to wait until our heat is passed (it's supposed to be 90 degrees tomorrow!), but I am sooo looking forward to getting this German Extra Hardy hardneck garlic in the ground and trying to grow these new-to-me leafy greens.

Just eight more days of summer!

Soft baskets...

Last week, I wrote that I was making a crocheted basket, and I was wondering how difficult these might be for me to make - having some arthritis in some fingers.  While I did need to give my hands breaks and stretches more often than normal, I didn't suffer later for some of the manhandling required while wrangling multiple strands of yarn together and pulling it hard through the stitches below.  In fact, after I finished my first one:

...having plenty of this yarn left over, I felt compelled to start a second basket.  This time I crocheted handles into the last two rounds:

While these probably aren't practical for holding really heavy stuff, they certainly could carry pretty much anything. It's just that large, heavy items would tend to pull the soft side out of shape, and they might not look so great after a while. 

Into the larger one I put our collection of "medical equipment" that have become common use items.  Things like blood pressure cuffs, an oxygen meter, and a digital thermometer.  

We don't use the thermometer or oxygen meter very often, but this is a handy (and kind of hidden) way to store these items together so they're easy to pull out when someone wants to check their vitals.  Curious...  are we the only ones who've made a party game out of passing the blood pressure cuff and oxygen meter around the table after dinner and some laughs over a table game?   Or are we the only ones who have this much fun?

Or, maybe that's just what happens when you keep these things in the dining room.  

I love that this stuff now has an attractive container - where they can be kept handy, but hidden from view:

Now I am looking around the house wondering where else might I tuck more of these cute baskets, and what colors would work where.   The real fun of making one of these is combining colors and watching those colors change as the basket grows.  

And there is great satisfaction in knowing I'm using up a bunch of yarn that previously had no obvious use.  I'm pretty pumped about these baskets on several counts.  Be on the lookout for more to show up here eventually!

I provided a link to the video I followed in my last post, but here it is again in case it's helpful:  Artisan Market Basket crochet tutorial from Crochet Southwest Spirit. Great for craft fairs! (youtube.com)

Managing to crochet a little...

It has not been my intention to be so scarce here, but we've had some beautiful weather - perfect for working outdoors.  But as good as working in the garden and yard feel to me, it's also been exhausting. 

And then there were a lot of veggies needing picking at the same time. Preserving some of the harvest has also been satisfying, but tiring.

And somehow we've also been living life, coming and going, spending time with friends and family, physical therapy, fitting in a new exercise regimen, "fall activities" starting up. This past week, we celebrated our 44th Wedding Anniversary. 

I feel like I've got at least a half a dozen blog posts in me to write.  Though they'll likely never be written.

In the evening, when work and play is done and I've been torn between sinking into the recliner or sitting at the computer to type a blog post, the recliner has won every time.

That said, I have crocheted a bit here and there, and managed to finish a larger doily I've dubbed Autumn Splendor: 

Crocheted with Curio #10 thread in the colorway Clementine

The pattern name is Summer Splendor, but for some reason I always seem to make this doily in autumn colors.  I've also apparently given away the others I've made, and I was wanting one for myself.

Also, a crocheted basket project has been calling out to me for a while, so I finally dug out some yarns and started making one.

This is the tutorial I'm (more or less) following:

I really like the handles shown above.  I'm hoping I have a leather belt or two hanging around - that I didn't donate in one my recent decluttering challenges.  

Here are the yarns I'm starting mine with:

It will be fun when I make color changes.  This is a great project for using up yarn scraps.  I have a feeling once I finish one of these baskets, I may want to make more.  That said, this is not the easiest thing to crochet - I'm using 4 strands of worsted weight yarn together, and crocheting with an 8mm (or size L) hook.  With a bit of arthritis in my hands, I find stopping and stretching often a good thing to do.

Someone commented on the last post that the doilies I've been making lately have an autumnal feel to them.  That would be because I recently pulled out some autumn colored threads to work from:

I do the same with my "kitchen cotton" yarn.  I pull together yarns that evoke the season I'm in (or will soon be in).  Whether I knit or crochet anything with those yarns is only evident when the next season rolls around, but gathering certain yarns and threads in seasonal colors is a regular thing here.  

Some people decorate with the change of seasons; I change out the yarn colors in handy baskets I can pluck from when inspired.

Do you do anything similar?

Time is going way too fast...

Can someone please tell me how we are approaching the middle of August already?!?  Summer is not my favorite season because of the heat and humidity, but this summer, except for a week or two here and there of temps in the 90's, it's been pretty pleasant so far.  We've not had droughty conditions, as we often have through July and August.  I'm thinking I might almost be sad when summer is over, it's been so nice here.

With produce from the garden needing picking almost daily, and having enough green beans to can a batch every few days, added to the normal stuff of life, I haven't been crocheting much.  Last week I finished a couple more little doilies, but it was just last night that I got around to blocking them.

First up is Doily # 44:

Made in Curio #10 thread in the colorway, Turmeric

The spoke shape in the middle was a bear to work.  I  struggled to make total sense of the instructions to make FPdtr's (that's Front Post Double Triple stitches) criss-crossing each other, so finally I just studied the photograph of the finished doily and made this section the best I could.  I'm not normally a fan of crocheting via diagrams, but this pattern would have benefitted from having a diagram to consult.  

The first thing that came to mind as I looked at the picture of this one was a carousel, so that is its name.

Nearly beat by Carousel, I thought I'd look for a simpler doily, so I worked up Doily #17:

Crocheted in Curio #10 thread in the colorway, Clementine

This one wasn't hard until the last two rows.  For some reason I kept drifting off, and I ended up having to repeat one or more of the last two rounds two or three times.  

In the end, I'm not sure I completed this one correctly, but on the final row of many fiddly picots, I started to not care.    Finished was better than perfect, I decided.  I named this one Windmill; you may be able to see the four "blades" better in this picture: 

Or maybe not?  

That's all for now on the crochet front.  It appears there's another gorgeous week ahead, and I may be pulling up the green bean plants since they're taking up a lot of space and not producing much at this point.  For the first time ever, I'm considering planting some things for a fall garden. 

The last jar of green beans before going into the pressure canner.  Tomatoes are up next!