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.

   

Making Space...

A random collection of items has either left the premises, or will be leaving soon.  I have hopes that I can find someone who'll want to take a shot at fixing my old sewing machine.  And the cabinet (which isn't valuable, but would be useful to either someone who takes my sewing machine, or has another machine to fit inside) I hope to find a new home for, too.

The machine looks better in this picture than it does in real life.  In person, the plastic parts are more yellowed with age.

And then some random stuff that I had that I'm more than happy to rehome (some hangers, some socks that didn't work out, a wooden tissue box holder, an old purse, a floppy pillow, 3 or 4 bandanas, a glass candle holder, a plastic snowflake ornament, a couple of pillow shams):

It's not pretty, but I'm calling this 12 items being donated or trashed.

Week 31:  169 things gone (or soon to be gone)