Fiber Monday

 

In Which I... Didn't do much today...

So I promise, I made progress since last week on my pouch! It's just.... not a ton.

The front panel is now finished, at least.

I even did a border around it to round the bottom corners and even things up.

Sure, it's upside down, but it's done!

The panel itself is 50 stitches across by 80 rows, plus three sides bordered in single crochet with 3sc in each corner and one stitch per stitch or row. This means that the gusset, which will be 10 stitches across, will need to be about... 212 rows? Thereabouts? And the back & flap section will need to be about... 115/120 rows? Plus a button hole? I'll know more later, when I've finished all three parts. Then I'll make some sort of strapping system (probably starting with a pair of 5 stitch wide loops to put belts/straps through)

After all three panels (front, back, gusset) and the loops are finished, I'll stain them brown somehow and then sew on the leaf detail on the flap and sew all three panels & loops together. Hopefully it works.

If it doesn't, I'll make a shoulder strap and it'll be a purse.

One way or another, this will be finished by the end of the coming month. It has to be lol.

There are other projects I'm working on, but they're secondary.

I think that'll do it for tonight!

I hope you're all working on creative things and they're all going well!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which Today Was Rough

So after yesterday's ridiculous heat, I was excited that today would be in the 70s instead of the 80s. I was even looking forward to the idea of a rainy day inside, since we were supposed to get thunderstorms (which we did... eventually).

Unfortunately, pretty much as soon as I started to go to bed, someone got into an accident and knocked out power to my block.

At 1:20AM or so.

For seven. Hours.

Seven.

In the first hour or two, we still had internet, so I reported the outage to the power company (which is owned by Spain for some stupid reason... a country over 3200 miles (5150km) away from me.

The linemen are all great, though. They're local folks and they do their best with what they're given.

It's not their fault that the power was out for 7 hours.

Somehow, the freezer stayed 100% cold, though! When I checked after the power came back on, yeah the strawberry cheesecake ice cream was soft, but the lemonade bars were still frozen solid.

I don't do well when there's a crisis going on like the power being out. I prefer to know what's up, and I largely lose the ability to find out what's up when I don't have reliable internet access.

So I had very little idea what was going on, when the power would be back, etc. Especially since when the power first went out after 1, the outage map said it'd be back by 3:45AM...

I texted my folks at 6AM because they were out of town, let them know the fridge would probably be a loss and that the power was still out. Apparently the outage map had updated with a new time, which my dad relayed to me via text: 9AM

Tomorrow.

Uh...

Yeah I just about lost my mind. I don't like power outages - I'm afraid of the dark (my eyes and brain really like making shapes in the shadows...)

He'd misread the listing because his phone still thought it was the 26th. It was due back buy 9am today.

And it came back at 8:22AM.

Which I know.

Because I stayed up the whole night.

I have only slept about 20 minutes so far.  It's uh... It's a low-brain day.

So what did I do during the 7 hours of outage?

The first thing I did was make sure there was a flashlight near me. Then I snagged the book I've been reading - "Everybody Knows" by Jordan Harper.

I read the last two thirds of the book by flashlight light with a cat digging into my lap while my neighbors' generator hummed, distant machinery beeped, the train horn wailed, etc.

I finished the book...

Go read it. It's heavy, it's fast, it's hard-hitting and harder-nosed. Neon noir grit lit at its finest.

Made me set the book down mid-read and cuss at the author (in an "I'm so jealous of how well written this is! How dare you be so masterful!" way) twice.

After the book, I had plenty of time - it was only just past 4 when I was done with the book, so I went down to the kitchen, lit the stove with a lighter, made coffee without cream, and grabbed my sketchbook.

I worked out a little sketch in pencil.

the finished sketch, taken under the light of a Maglight

Once I finished the sketch, I puttered around the house before carrying the sketchpad upstairs and running primary inks with my Pigma Micron brush pen.

I really liked the way the inks looked at this stage and decided not to do colors

With the primary inks done, I set it aside, did some digging around for a non-refrigerated breakfast (pretzels, it turned out). Finally, I gathered a few more things - the sweater I'm frogging into yarn, a pair of shorts I wanted to try repairing, my sewing kit, my yarn ball winder - and brought them down to the living room, where there was more space & light. Then I took another pass at the drawing with the brush pen!

"Power Outage Again!"; ink on watercolor paper; 2023
[DEDBERT]

Once I was done drawing and inking, I set my art aside and took out the sweater, which started coming apart even better. From one section of buttonhole/chest piece and one section of bottom-ribbing, I ended up with three balls of yarn!

Which I then set aside because I was ready for a nap.

I am beat, guys. I'm probably just gonna try to go to sleep.

I hope you all had productive art weeks!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which Heat And I Are Not Friends

I could not sleep at all last night. Between the heat and how hard it was for me to find my collection of tank tops, I was exhausted. I got up at 4:30AM to go to the bathroom and just... gave up. The sun was rising, the birds were singing, the cat was curious.

I got some coffee and went back to bed. The second time I got up, I went down for a second hefty mug of coffee and curled up on the couch while my head sloshed. It honestly felt like my skull was filled with hot water, I was so tired. Eventually I dozed until around noon, then I got my day started.

Today's temperatures were about the same as yesterday, but we had about 20% more humidity so it really just sucked.

I'm sleepy, I'm annoyed at how little I've done on the crocheted pouch, and I'm creatively washed out. It's hard to write when all you can think about is the way your armpits are sticking to themselves or the way you can feel steam building under your spine where you lay on your bed.

It's hard to draw, too - holding a pencil makes my fingers hot, and frankly, I just can't think of something to draw.

I'll figure it out by the end of tomorrow, but yeesh.

I'm pooped.

And we are not getting relief until Sunday. Our daily highs are 80℉ (26,7℃) and up, power rates just increased by apparently enough to double our bill, and we already had a brownout yesterday so it's just gonna be a really crummy summer, I think.

I hope they don't jack up the water bill, too, because I foresee a plentitude of cool showers in my future.

We'll see what the rest of the week brings, but I'm not going to fight through a heat headache to do art. If I make art, I make art.

Meanwhile, I've just dug up a bunch of old black pants that don't fit me anymore (and won't unless I drop an unreasonable amount of weight - one pair is from middle school, when I was about 13), which I might turn into various projects, I've got a pair of shorts to repair the waistband of, a winter coat in need of a zipper.

I've got work to do, in short, and I don't think this is the week it will happen.

In fact, I think tonight is just going to be for watching videos and relaxing until the glowing hate ball (the sun) rises again.

I'll do my best to keep posting.

Go Enjoy Something (maybe the beach if it's hot where you are, too),

FC

Fiber Monday

In Which Slow Progress Is Still Progress

I am typing this from a room that is only now coming down from about 90℉(32,2℃). It was so hot today. Ironically, the day I hung out at a lake with my family was quite comfy, but today was hot and unpleasant. At least it's not as humid today as it was last week. We didn't use the AC.

Understandably, most of my progress was made at the lake, not at home.

As you can see, it's getting bigger!

Again, this is eventually going to be a pocket that will be dyed more earthy-tones. I've also made several test squares - 10sc x 10 rows - which I'll experiment with using various dye matter. Maybe the winner will be iron, maybe it will be coffee, possibly tea.

Maybe I'll just dip dye each panel of the pocket into tea, then coffee, then iron? Who knows.

All I know is that I want it brown, but I don't have any brown thread.

I have brown yarn, so if I cannot get the pouch to look right, I'll just use that.

But uh...

It's worsted-weight acrylic.

It's uh.

It's gonna be toasty as heck if I do that, and September might not be the month for a hot pocket.

That is an intentional joke.

But seriously, the acrylic is 100% final resort. Too sweaty.

My next closest idea is some wool sock yarn, and that, too, would be overwarm.

I hope this project works out, especially since I'd like to make a couple more of them...

As for tonight, it's finally down to about 78℉(25,5℃) in my room and I desperately want to lay down and vent the body heat I've accrued throughout the day lol.

Go Enjoy Something

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Did A Silly Little Art

One of the things Z & I like to do is watch old commercials. They're a great way to unwind, they're low-intellectual-expenditure, and they're endlessly fascinating. The other night we were watching this block from 1988 and the bumpers for a night time movie came up. This station called their late movies "Night Owl Movies" and the illustration was absolutely adorable. Z said that I should draw the owl, and I agreed.

So this is technically fanart of a 1988 tv movie bumper from WCIX.

"Getting To Know You"; watercolor pencil & ink on watercolor sketch pad; 2023
[DEDBERT, FOOD, ANIMAL]

Getting this done was an adventure - it's been so humid this week that all of my supplies were vaguely damp, which made erasing pencil lines very hard. I also struggled to focus, since my mind was occupied with the heat. I finished the pencils yesterday, but I waited til today to color and paint it. It almost didn't happen.

This morning at around 4am, I was awakened by a bunch of rattling and crashing, like someone had dropped a bunch of pots & pans in the kitchen. Worried that the cat had gotten into some shit, I stumbled downstairs in the predawn haze and saw absolutely nothing awry. Heck, the cat was even eating the last of the previous night's dinner.

Well, it turned out that something had fallen over, but it wasn't pots or pans, and it wasn't because of the cat.

Turns out that the top two shelves in our cup cabinet let go. They're old and made of crappy particle board from 1989, so let's be real, they were gonna go eventually. Still, that was probably about as unenjoyable to discover the hard way for my mom as it gets. We're all sub 5'6" here (that's under 168cm for you metric folks out there), and the cabinets are designed for much taller people. The top shelf was about two feet (61cm) above my head, so that means a bunch of cups, thermoses, glasses, etc tumbled out when my mom went to get her morning coffee...

How very frustrating.

Mom's been wanting new cabinets for the last decade or so, so maybe that'll happen now (lol).

Anywho, that's all from me for today.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I've Felt Like I was Forgetting Something All Night Tonight...

...

...

....................

Spoilers: I was forgetting I should write the blog.

I've just been sitting in my muggy room, working on the pouch some more, convinced I'd forgotten to do something today. Then I saw that it was about 10pm and glanced at my phone.

Oh right.

It's Monday.

I do my crochet blog on Mondays.

The Fiber Monday Crochet Blog.

That's what I was supposed to be doing!

So here I am, sharing my minor progress on what will be a long, janky rectangle eventually but is currently just a smol rectangle.

It's not the neatest stitching, but it could definitely be worse!

What I haven't brought up yet, though, is where I did a significant portion (about 5 rows) of this project.

I joined my first knitting/crochet circle! I think it meets about 1/month on Saturdays. There were only 3 of us there this week, but I had fun meeting the other two ladies and both were wearing absolutely lovely hand-knit garments - one had a precious oatmeal heather cropped sweater with embroidered flowers and the other had an elegant multitoned pink sleeveless top. I might get up the courage to wear the (way too big) top I made myself last year the next time I go.

I've never really done the whole fiber circle thing before, so it was a cool experience. Hopefully next time, the weather won't be so crummy. I was pouring sweat when I arrived, despite there being no sun. It was also really soggy on the way back, but thankfully it didn't rain lol.

Anyway, that'll do it for me this week. I think I'll have more to show you from my projects next Monday!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which Today Was HOT.

I am a delicate alpine bloom at the best of times, despising any temperature above 75℉(23,9℃) and melting in high humidity like so much cotton candy.

Today was absolutely not the best of times.

Today never actually got above 80℉(26,7℃), but between the sun and the mugginess, it felt like around 92℉(33,3℃).

Needless to say today sucked.

But I wasn't about to melt into the living room rug and let the vortex of the ceiling fan whisk away my consciousness like a massive hypnotic aide, no.

I decided, soon after waking up to an oven of a bedroom, that it was time to collect the air conditioning unit from the basement and put it in the kitchen so it wouldn't be disgusting anymore.

Now, I'm not an overly burly individual. I used to be able to do a lot more than I can now, but now I'm woefully weakened.

This is not a small AC unit. This is not a gainly AC unit.

It's not a window AC unit.

No, folks, we have one of those cabinet ones that you stick the hose out the window. The ones that are almost counter-height and weigh as much as an obstinate middle schooler and have handles that are only an inch deep and are about 3/4 as wide as the stairs while being a good 4" deeper than the treads.

So it's not an easy task.

At all.

We're talking a decent logistical undertaking for someone who has been awake for 20 minutes and has only just remembered how coffee works.

Needless to say, it must've been hilarious to watch me heave that stupid thing up the stairs. I had to go up backwards, butt first. I was literally sitting 3-4 stairs above the AC, desperately trying to hold it in place while the wheels debated sliding it away from me, struggling to get my feet halfway between the AC and my butt, and once I reached the top of the stairs, I had to practically lay on my back and scoot it into the kitchen. It nearly crushed me at least once. I nearly dropped it several times.

But I succeeded in putting it where it belonged.

I hooked it up and re-duct-taped the hose (the clips broke because of course everything is plastic and everything plastic breaks in this house), and cranked it to 75℉(23,9℃) before finally collapsing in an exhausted heap in the living room.

So of course, I scrapped the random sketches I did yesterday and instead scribbled out an homage to the effort of moving the stupid AC lol:

"The Struggle Is Real"; watercolore pencil & ink on watercolor paper; 2023
[DEDBERT]

I was tiredly chuckling the entire time I drew that lol.

I hope you guys are all holding up well during this trying time.

For now, I'm gonna go listen to some music and rest. I advise all of y'all to do the same!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which Progress Is Being Made...
Slowly

It never fails to shock me how long a rectangle can take to come together in crochet. I've got more added to the pouches since last time we chatted, but most of my time has been taken up by making a stab or six at a dragon companion.

At first I wanted to make this fellow, and I still love him a lot, but he's rather... big. And I have very limited supplies. Instead, I'm going to try to make this little beastie. My first problem is this: I only had 1 shade of purple worsted weight yarn, and it was very dark. I wanted that for my dragon's body, but some variation would be very nice, so I went hunting in the yarn piles for another purple.

A sample of my basic purple, partly worked into a soon-to-be frogged star blanket

Now, I could not find a second shade of purple. I only have the one dark color, and I needed some sort of contrast.

I found no acceptable yarn in ball, cake, or tangle form.

What I did find, however, was a lovely handmade sweater from my mother's mother with a disastrous pick in the front, a size or two too small for me, and in a shade of purple that, while lovely, makes me look unwell when I wear it.

So I found one of the knots inside the seams and picked it free.

And now I've frogged the entire right front panel of the sweater and caked that panel into a usable ball!

As you may be able to guess, there's a lot of sweater left to frog

I will be balling the yarn from this sweater and also from a nice red fair isle sweater she gave me that has a moth hole and a few missing buttons. Both are acrylic, so I will be able to reuse the yarn for plenty of different projects. For now, the purple sweater is becoming a dragon's tummy.

Working from a video is not particularly easy, especially since I'm bad at going back & forth, keeping up with instruction, etc. Also, Chrome likes to make YouTube forget where I was in the video so I have been writing down what round I'm on.

I don't have progress pics of the worsted version of this dragon yet, but when I do, you'll all see them!

For now, I've got some old episodes of America's Most Wanted and a cup of chamomile tea to keep me company as I dismantle more of this poor old sweater.

I hope you guys are having a good time working on all of your projects, and I hope you

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which There Are Updates & Art!

First and foremost, my dad was diagnosed with COVID last week, which sucked big time. No one enjoyed that. 0/10 do not recommend. I'm pleased to be able to say he's already recovered and testing negative! Fortunately, my mom & I were masking and washing and disinfecting and avoiding each other as much as possible, so we've both tested negative, too.

Unfortunately, this is Summer in the Northeast, which means weird air quality, high humidity, and air pressure weirdness, and even more unfortunately, my mom and I have trash sinuses.

So of course, we exhibit sinus infection symptoms all summer.

Which are, of course, also largely Covid Symptoms.

Imagine my deep relief when I tested negative. It's been rough.

Since it's High Summer, high moisture, and high temperatures, I've been struggling to get enough sleep, struggling to get enough to drink, struggling to maintain my salts & minerals, etc.

I didn't like my gums' color today so I snagged a G Zero out of the fridge.

I forgot how much I hate G Zero.

I used to love orange Gatorade. Used to chug it.

Now, the sucralose makes me shudder and there's something in the mix that stings my throat (and it is just the Gatorade, my throat does not sting with water, cranberry juice, or coffee). Maybe there's some kind of melon extract. I should probably not risk it again.

So that was a low point this afternoon.

In other news, I managed to do some art!

"Dedbert"; watercolor pencil and micron pen; 2023
[DEDBERT]

I've been toying with a few other pieces today, but they're not coming together like I hoped, so I'll just table them til next week.

For now, though, I've been up since 5AM and could really use a power nap or something.

Also probably another gallon of water to get the sucralose flavor out of my mouth, eugh.

If you'd like to have a say in what I draw or paint next week, drop me a donation over on Ko-Fi with a message telling me what category (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Food, Dedbert, Location, Geometric, Word) and I'll doodle something up to post on the blog!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Am Working Along

Last week I talked about how I was going to do another leaf, then work on the body of the pouch, and I'm absolutely doing that.

It's gonna take a bit.

See, I've upgraded to a 1.9mm hook, and the white thread I have is a little heavier than the red, which you'd think would mean it'd be a lot faster, right?

But I'm using 100% single crochet in each row of the pouch body.

I used a lot of double crochet on the leaves, and chain spaces, which work up faster and longer.

So the bodies will take a while. And the sides will take a while too.

I have options, of course!

I could switch to a 2.25mm hook! I could find another thread or yarn to use for the body! I could give up and start over (which I won't)!

Lots of options.

You know what I can't do?

Rush it.

It's just a rectangle. It's about as uncomplicated as a project gets.

But it's tiny, and I'm struggling against insomnia, and I am very easily distracted by trying to figure out how to get high enough to reach the monuments in Tears of the Kingdom.

Also I keep trying to find my book so I can read.

It's not lost - I'm looking right at it.

I just forget why I'm getting up every time I go to grab it, ending up sketching or crocheting or gaming instead of reading.

I'll grab the book tomorrow.

For now, I'll get back to crocheting - it's barely over an inch long at this point, even 15 rows in.

A strip of white crocheted tread laying on my laptop.
We're 50 stitches across, approximately 15 rows long.
It's about as wide as my hand.

I know I can bang these pouches out before September. I hope I can actually finish them, dye them, add their hardware (they need straps!) and test them before the Ren-Faire, though.

And of course, my brain keeps pinging me with other, much worse ideas lol.

For now, I hope you guys can all

Go Enjoy Something!

FC