Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have A New Project:

So I have a Ren Faire to attend in September. This means I need an outfit. I have a lovely top from Holy Clothing (a Torvi top in Huntress Green), and I have some tan jeggings that, covered by the top, will look almost like deer suede. I will probably try to wear my boots, but if it's gonna be wet that day, I'll just wear some good hiking shoes and sacrifice fantasy aesthetic in favor of not losing my feet or damaging my good suede boots.

But just a tunic and leggings isn't very... fancy, is it?

No, I want a ridiculous, complicated, lacy skirt.

I admire the designs of a lot of the skirts I've seen, but I wanted to make my own 100% of the way. So far, I'm using white crochet thread and a 1.5mm hook. I've only just started the waistband.

As you can see, it's not that big

I'm hoping to have this skirt be double-fastened with ribbons and some sort of buttons or hooks as well.

I started by chaining 51 and then single-crocheting 25 rows of 50 stitches each, chaining one and turning at the end of each row.

The next row, I single-crocheted 10 stitches, chained 10, skipped 10 stitches, single crocheted into the next 10 stitches, chained 10, skipped 10 stitches, and then single crocheted the last 10 stitches before chaining one and turning.

The next 5 rows are all single crocheted, single crocheting into each chain and stitch across. Then I kept repeating the spaced-rows and the 5 rows of single crochet. I'll keep going like that until I'm satisfied with the way it wraps around my middle, and then I'll probably do another 50 rows of just plain single crochet, just to create a comfy overlap to prevent any gapping (not that anyone will see the waistband at the Ren Faire, but what if I want to wear it elsewhere?!)

My plan after the waistband is done is to create a row of half-double crochet along the bottom edge to which I'll eventually attach the skirt, which will start as wide as my waistband and then I'll keep adding stitches until it's wide enough to be swishy and fun and long enough to qualify as a skirt and not just a flirty little coverup. I already know this girl's gonna be heavy, and I'm debating whether I want to add beads to make it even heavier. 

I'm considering all of the laces and trims that I've found on Ravelry. There's a very old squirrel one I think would be absolutely darling as a feature of the skirt, but we'll see how that goes.

Alright, I think I've said all I can say so far on this project. I'm only maybe 20% done with the waistband. Maximum. We'll see where I'm at next week!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Am... Not Done.

Now, usually, when y'all are kind enough to visit my blog while I'm working on art, I have the art finished, or at least presentable for you. This is... not the case today. That's nobody's fault but mine! I embarked on another "let's experiment with colors, math, and pixels" journey and... it's really neat looking, but it's barely half finished.

So I figured I'd give you guys a peek at how this particular image is going!

"Squares ver 0.1" digital art; 2022

No, you resolution isn't off, it's just TINY for now. I'm going to fix that once I'm done by decreasing the white space and increasing the pixels-per-centimeter, but for now it's tiny and blurry. The blur is intentional (sort of) because it's something of a color study! I'm pretty stoked about how it's coming along, and eventually, Squares ver 1.0 will release lol.

As for why it's going up so late on Thursday, that's because I'm kind of frazzled this week. I have no excuse for that besides the wind. It's been windy as heck up here.

The threat of possible nuclear war certainly isn't helping me sleep either, but I'm not gonna talk much about the situation in the Ukraine because I'm not a journalist or an expert on European geopolitics. I am anti-war, pro-democracy, and I'm getting really sick of constantly having the world change for the worse. That's where I am on that subject.

This is not the kind of blog that hyperfixates on the state of the world regarding COVID or ongoing wars. I'm just trying to make art and sometimes banana bread.

I hope that's alright.

Anyways!

So I'll be continuing to work on Squares, versioning it up until it's 100% done, and then I'll post the finished piece!

It's been snowing a lot here, so the plows have been going by a lot, and between the noise of the plows & the wind, and the yo-yo temperatures, I'm constantly wiped. I'll be back on schedule soon, though, I think! Can't wait to tell you all the stories of my cat, the ducks, the crows, the deer, and just general blatheriness!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

No One Asked For It, But Here It Is Anyway:

Hey, so it's uh... it's really hard to crochet 7644 tiny single crochet stitches when it's super cold (and it's been between 8℉ and 23℉ (-13,3℃ to -5℃) all week), so I haven't got the next part of the Secret Project done yet. 

It's going along, just... slowly. And with very cold knuckles.

Weirdly enough, I can still sew with cold hands, though I do risk stabbing myself with the needle more often that way lol. The difference is probably that when I'm making my draft dodgers, I'm using old towels, which have more loft and warmth to them than smooth, thin cotton thread in single crochet lol.

Speaking of which, you'll need the following if you want to recreate a draft dodger, a fabric tube designed to keep drafts from coming underneath a doorway or windowsill and a necessity in older homes in colder climates:

• An old bath towel
• Two old wash cloths
• Thread
• A curved mattress needle (available in a pack of upholstery needles at places like the Family Dollar stores for the grand price of a single American dollar... aka they're cheap and I'm wordy)
• Scissors (We'll just be using these for the thread)
• Pins (optional, since I couldn't find my t-pins lol)
• Patience & something to sip on when you get frustrated or just to warm your fingers with - I recommend either coffee or tea, since the warmth is very good for cold days and also I overindulge in both lol

Also, you may want a camera to photograph the process, but not one on an older Samsung Galaxy because apparently those die horrible deaths... Yeah, I'm a bit bitter over about 3/4 of my process shots coming out with black lines all across them. And also annoyed that it randomly crashes when I'm at around 50% battery... grumpgrumpgrump...

Now that my crankiness has subsided here is how you do this thing:

Step 1: Fold your towel in half lengthways.

Step 2: Roll your folded towel from the open side so that the ends are hidden inside the roll. Roll as tightly or loosely as you want. Tighter will have a narrower circumference (not great for blocking drafts on doors with wide gaps at the bottom, but great for jamming up against thinner spaces for a more aggressive stoppage), looser will be much floppier and better for taller gaps or places where you need to bend it (say, a window or a particularly poorly insulated section of your room). 

My desperate attempt to show how you roll a folded towel, though it's hard to tell...

It should kind of end up looking like this:

There should be no bound edges showing!

Step 3: Sewing Time! If you have pins, pin your folded edge down along the body of the dodger, then thread your needle. You'll first want to secure your thread at the start however you like (by knotting the thread, making some kind of stitch that knots things, or however you feel most comfortable and/or works best for you), and then start making a... it's called a ladder stitch? I think? I don't actually know.

Make a stitch on one side of the seam you're making, pulling the thread all the way through

Then make a stitch on the other side of the seam, trying
to start it parallel to where you finished off your last stitch!
Tighten your stitches as you go and they should disappear!

Stitch all the way down the length of the seam. Yes, you're trying to connect two floppy rounded pieces together. No it doesn't matter if it's perfect your first time, but at least forcing the needle through one layer of actual towel and not thicker fabric like the bound edges  is really easy, so it's worth doing it this way. I recommend pinning, though I didn't have mine on hand, since if you pin the seam in place, it won't squish and flop all over the place like mine did and that will cut down massively on frustration! Once you reach the end of your long, long seam, secure that end as well.

Something I learned from hand-sewists on YouTube is that you shouldn't have too long a thread or it will get tangled. They're right. You probably don't want your initial thread to be longer than your armspan, and if you're being very cautious, maybe don't make your initial thread longer than a single arm. I went for armspan and it only took two threads to get from one end to the other. I am very short, though, so your mileage may vary. Literally.

Step 4: Let's cover the ends!

This step is optional, but I find it looks nicer if you do it,
since your stitches will stand out a lot on the thinner sections
and the end of the roll is pretty ugly, tbh

First, take one of your washcloths/face cloths, and lay your tube about halfway up it:

As seen here

Then wrap the tube in the cloth:

Like the ferrule on a pencil!

Here's where I got a bit... artsy. You can actually just fold the top over and sew it all together so it's a little bag, but I liked the idea of folding things all creative-like...

Sorta folded the top of the cloth down like a present?

And then crossed those corners over each other

Now unfortunately, all of the images I took of me sewing this section came out with black stripes and bars across them, rendering them useless, but basically I sewed the corners together, then sewed the folded-down hem to the rest of the cloth, then sewed the bottom of the wash cloth to the actual tube itself, making an origami-like cap to the end of the tube!

Repeat the process on the other end, and you have a draft dodger! Or draught sausage! Or whatever you want to call it (door snake? Should I add googly eyes?!)

A completed Draft Dodger!

I will admit, it's not the prettiest thing in the world, and I do worry that the ones I made might lose stitches here & there because I'm not the most confident hand-sewer (which looks like such a dreadful word in print...) but I am assured that they work! I made a smaller one by rolling half of a towel, sewing that into a tube, then cutting off a leg from a pair of torn-out leggings and sewing the cut end shut, putting the towel tube into the legging bag, and tying a knot to keep the towel-tube in place - that one's for a window specifically.

In the future, since I'm getting better at hand sewing, they'll look nicer, but what works works and I won't feel bad about helping someone keep warm! If you live in a cold place with a drafty house and you have some grungy towels you don't mind sewing up on-hand, I strongly recommend trying this out. If you're a strong handiworker you may even be able to machine-wash these without them coming all undone lol!

That'll about do it for me, guys. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them (I'll see them - I get an email when you try to post comments so that I don't get anymore spammers :|)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Have Finished The Big One

I sometimes bite off more than I can chew. In the case of my supposed "Thanksgiving" artwork... well, y'all can maybe tell it took longer than I wanted.

I'm pretty damn proud of it, though.

This has to be the largest amount of characters I've drawn in a scene in my life. I showed the sketches a couple weeks ago, and I've actually been working on this since then. My first two attempts failed because I was trying to sketch straight with colored pencil instead of regular pencil. Also, you'd think sketchbook paper would hold up better to erasing than it does...

So it's instead on my big watercolor paper.

The 11"x15" (27,9 x 38,1 cm) 140lb/300g stuff.

So yeah. It's pretty freakin huge lol!

"Anyone For Dessert?"; Colored Pencil on watercolor paper; 2021

Oh my god the detail I put into this made my hands and eyes ache but I'm very proud of myself! Each critter has their own personality, and there are some... references within (plus one very silly in-joke between my boyfriend and I, since I made this for him!).

Southern Hairy Nosed Wombat (detail); 2021

Here we see a Very Done wombat who deeply regrets asking an owl to bring dessert to a Friendsgiving with primarily herbivores. He's not surprised, not at all, but he is quite disappointed. In himself.

Groundhog (detail); 2021

Did I base this groundhog off of Chunk the Groundhog? Yes, of course I did. I love that little guy! I drew him with his trademark open-mouthed horror and butterfingers. The tomato will, of course, get scooped up momentarily. Five second rule and all that...

Beaver (detail); 2021

Nothing like nibbling on a twig and then finding out your friend has brought a horror show for dessert, eh, Mr. Beaver? He's knocked over his log chair in surprise!

Sea Otter (detail); 2021

If you know me, you know I've spent the bulk of the panini watching the livestreams of Joey the orphaned otter pup growing up. I've rendered him in watercolor pencil, cautiously stashing a clam in his shirt pocket as he wonders what this dessert thing is all about.

Lop-Eared Rabbit (detail); 2021

A few years ago, I started following Insta-famous bunny "Tato" (short for "Worried Potato") and fell in love with his floopiness. How could I resist putting an homage to the first bunny-blogger I ever followed?! Obviously, a bunny will be nervous around an owl, but now they're 100% convinced they'll be the main course next time! Don't worry, lil buddy, Dedbert's got two bunnies as adoptive brothers. You're safe!

Dedbert (detail); 2021

Here's my boy, proudly showing off the Chocolate Mouse he made. He has no idea what the fuss is about. Wait, what do you mean there's a second S? Why are you guys freaking out? This is good stuff! He hunted all night for those mice!!!

All in all, I am insanely proud of this piece, and I cannot believe how well it came out. Are there things I'd change? Yeah, of course, but being an artist always means stopping before it's "done" or you'll never finish anything.

This won't be the last time you see any of these critters, by the way. I have... plans for this month. Starting in 10 days, in fact.

Do with this information what you will.

But for now, I am exhausted and my hands smell like watercolor and wood. Good night folks!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday(ish)

 

In Which I Am Always Late, It Seems...

I was supposed to start working on this blog over 12 hours ago, but I just can't seem to get going right now. How annoying. I will say this, though, my dreams last night were bizarre. I woke up right after having the equivalent of a political style cartoon imprinted on my dreamscape with a guy holding a large mason jar filled with orange tornadoes and bragging that he'd "collected the world's most valuable tornadoes".

What the heck, brain?

So it's been that kind of day - off-kilter and weird.

Also painful because my dumb butt walked 3.2mi (5.15km) in the pouring rain because I love books and there's a new bookstore in town...

It's a really nice bookstore.

I'll be going there a lot.

Unfortunately for me, about 3/4 of the way there, the backs of my ankles got blistered and now we're in the stiff-and-painful stage, so I couldn't take the 3 mile (4.8km) walk to the boardwalk I wanted to take. Today would've been a pretty good day for it - no rain.

Unlike the rest of the week.

But this is not the whining about things blog, that's tomorrow. Er... technically today.

This entry is specifically for my crochet work!

And I FINISHED SOMETING!

A cropped tanktop!

This garment has been in the works for quite a while, and... I'm not 100% pleased with it, but it's a great early effort, if I do say so myself. Which I do. Say so. Myself. uh... moving on.

Closeup on the construction

I feel terrible because I cannot for the life of me find the pattern I used for the yoke on this piece to recommend it to you. I want to say it may have been in another language because I couldn't understand the rest of the pattern and just freestyled the rest after the twisted-stitch yoke... which may have been less of a good idea than I'd hoped...

If you recommend this yoke pattern, please let me know lol

I used a simple V-stitch for most of the garment, though I did interrupt it every 14 rows with another round of the twisted stitch for cohesion. I wish I'd been more diligent about fit-testing as I went, though, because... boy is this revealing.

Like, I understand that croptops are short and meant to be a bit revealing but...

I made it too wide and the armholes WAY too deep.

I cannot wear this in public is what I'm saying.

Makes a wonderful sleep shirt, though, and now that I understand (partly) how I went wrong, I can probably make more tops in a similar vein!

So there you have it: my very belated Fiber Monday :P

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

Guess Who Forgot To Post Until Midnight Again?!

I have no excuse. Today wasn't even that hot - it never got above 75℉ (23.9℃) outside, was barely sunny, and never got above 80℉ (26.7℃) in the house. I just... never got around to posting. I didn't even get around to sketching today. It was a very hard-to-focus kind of day.

I lost track of time, conversations, random crap around the house, and I spent three minutes looking for my razor in the shower when I was holding it in my other hand. It's just... it's been that kind of day.

So sorry it took me so long to post!

But I do have at least one image for this week:

"Misty Afternoon 1"; watercolor on watercolor paper; 2021

For having limited lighting, no plan, and having completely forgotten my techniques, I'm pretty okay with how this little waterdoodle came out! I'll be doing other landscapes and hopefully a cityscape some time (hmmm... violet does make a very nice sky, especially when it fades to rose...) - and I have some killer sketch ideas thanks to some friends of mine!

Now, just so I don't keep harping on how much I suck I want to immortalize the few things I did manage to do today, focus be damned.

• I managed my first attempt at darning (which I'll show off next Monday I think...)
• I unraveled two failed crochet projects and started another new one
• I learned about the Colosseum in Rome!
• I dug up my favorite summer top!
• I put away two more skeins of yarn
• I obtained a new skein of very pretty cotton yarn
• I finally detangled one of my Big Spools of cotton thread
• Came up with an idea to draw each of my OC Trainers & their starters... Haven't thought about Flare (Crystal) and Sabore (Red) in literal years. Mick (GO!) I see regularly, and I don't even remember what I named my poor Y trainer. I think my Moon trainer is named Haku... Anywho, I'll try to remember everything and throw them onto a page. May have to include a new OC I've been thinking of, too. I'll have to figure out how to draw tattoos though... And Porygon.
• Also dug up some capris I'll probably need tomorrow (if I don't need pants - I heard it might be something ridiculous like 58℉ (14.4℃) somehow!)

That looks... like rather a lot, to be honest.

No wonder I'm tired.

That and it's technically Friday...

Oops!

Well, that'll do it from me for now...

So Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk - Yard Care In The Outback?

In Which I Drew Another Cute Pic!

Blogger is being a bit finicky today, so I'm trying to copy/paste images as opposed to use the tool they built into it.

Also, it's really beginning to alarm me that the underline under my title keeps turning red...

Regardless, I have, in fact, drawn a picture! And it's another Australian mammal! Specifically another marsupial!

It's another wombat - nature's lawnmower/tiller.

"Lawn Care Down Under"; graphite on printer paper; 2021

This is a Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat who has just finished grazing the lawn down to an appropriate height. She's quite satisfied with herself and the enormous meal she's given herself lol!

I should draw more of these odd, large-nosed marsupials. I love how they waddle along, how their butts are both a shield and a weapon, and how they're just so cute! Just... wonderful critters :)

There may not be a drawing next week - I'll be getting my second Moderna shot shortly before then and may be out of commission for a bit.

How are all of y'all doing?

Until next time, then,

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday - skulking in at the last second

 

In Which I Am LLLLLLAAAAZZZZYYYYY
But Also Not

Well, look.

I'm a lazy person.

I always have been.

But today was not as lazy a day as it sounds! Sure, I didn't move much or go out to enjoy the sunny 57℉ (14℃) day, but I did... a lot.

And it's that A Lot that is why there was no Fiber Monday yesterday.

See... I have been working on a project for a while, and I'd produced a 3" long, 50" circumference tube of Fine-weight yarn on a 2.25mm hook with a nice lil v-stitch pattern... and I hated it.

I despised it.

It was taking forever, I was running out of yarn.

I wanted to make a whole thing in a very specific way, and I couldn't. So I did what any frustrated fiber artist does: I bought more yarn and I frogged the project.

Probably 200yd of it.

Alllllll over the place.

And then I started over, using a really pretty crop top pattern by shylercrochets on YouTube as a base.

So I won't be able to share more than progress shots with y'all, since the pattern is hers and not mine. I do recommend all of her vids, though, she's a genius.

But all that is very Fiber Monday-ish, and today is, ostensibly, Talk About Tuesday.

I told you about the weather, about my flubbed Fiber, and about my general laziness...

Here's the plan:

• Thursday - art. What kind? Who knows!
• Saturday - I finally finished that game so maybe I'll get off my butt and write about it?
• No promises for Sunday - they're pretty busy these days!
• Next Monday - a photo at the very least, come on, me!
• Next Tuesday - blather

That all sounds... doable if my brain doesn't decide I need to just throw the blanket over my head and hide from life again.

In the mean time, though, please accept my scatterbrained apologies for being an inconsistent blogger, and...

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk (Oops It's Friday)

 

In Which I Have A Minor Update

I've been working on this bonkbubble piece forever, guys. I am really, really making progress (we're a good ways in, I promise!) but it still feels like this project is eternal.

I did, however, add a bunch of new colors! So here they are:

• Cerise (DA3895)
• Anzac (DBA64C)
• Clay Creek (8F8655)
• Charm (D883A3)
• Zombie (D4E193)
• Pharlap (A1807C)

I'm quite happy with these colors (even if Pharlap sounds... inappropriate, vaguely...)!

And poor Bone only has one shape left being outlined entirely in its own color - otherwise it's been mixed with various other tones at this point! And we have our first intersection of Aero Blue and Saffron (which resulted in Zombie)! I'm very eager to see just what the final color turns out to be, too, since everything else is being mixed in... weird quantities, to be honest. It's not as simple as "Colors A, B, & C all intersect, so the final color is an average of the three" - it's more like "Colors A + B bonked first, and their average is now being averaged against C, which they've bonked into while conjoined" and it's a lot of math.

Pretty simple math, yeah, but math all the same.

The averaging of colors is done this way:

(Color A Red Value + Color B Red Value)/2

(Color A Green Value + Color B Green Value)/2

(Color A Blue Value + Color B Blue Value)/2

So for Aero Blue + Saffron, that's:

R (191+234)/2 = 212

G (255+196)/2 = 225

B (241+53)/2 = 147

R 212, G 224, B 147 = Hex code D4E193, and when I plugged that into icolorpalette, it tells me that the common name of this Hex code is "Zombie", ergo, Zombie is between Aero Blue and Saffron.

If that made no sense to you, I apologize lol. It's half past midnight. I should really be asleep right now!

But I forgot that I needed to actually post the blog and not just do the bubbles :P

So that's my braindead art update - I am slowly progressing on this massive artwork (the canvas is currently 10k x 12k pixels), and I like the pretty colors :)

That'll do it for me tonight!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday Late Edition

 

In Which I'm Late... As Usual lol

If you know me by now, you're aware that I am chronically late. Believe it or not, I've always been this way. I just get caught up in whatever I'm doing (storm prep today, since I'm in the Northeastern US and we're being CLOBBERED tonight/tomorrow) and forget to do the Big Thing I'm supposed to do.

I did actually work on crochet this week! I even got some of the deer head done on the stocking!

Those are Red Heart Super Saver skeins for scale!

Closeup on the bottom of the face

So I'm not being lazy, guys, I promise! I made two scarves in two days for the local library (a really nice Trinity Stitch scarf from Red Heart Unforgettable in Polo and a long half-double crochet scarf in a really annoying Aran weight blue squiggly yarn that I absolutely hated working with, both on J hooks), walked them down there, and donated them to a project they're working on along with a scarf I had already finished a while ago, before I blogged about crochet. I also made a camel stitch washcloth for my partner out of an old green cotton yarn I've had laying around - sometimes ya just need something to scrub with!

I only have about... 15 rows left of the deer, then I'll do a round of ribbing. The name will be cross-stitched on in either red or green (depending on what goes best with the sky blue, I might stick with white though...).

I've got a few other projects I'm working on, too, but those won't appear for a while lol. For now, though, I'm going to bed and hoping that I don't have another dream about being put in the Army against my will lol.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which Business Breeds Lateness

November being National Novel Writing Month, I am (predictably) working on my first novel. It's long, hard work, and I don't get my word counts down more often than not, but I am plugging away! The first part of the novel is 11.7k words long (and unedited), and the second part, which I'm currently working on, is currently 14.7k words long and... only about half done I'd estimate. I've been working on this novel for about a year now, all told, and it's the longest I've ever focused on one project. Which is why it is currently 3x longer than anything I've ever written, makes more sense, and doesn't suck (according to my First Reader).

You'd think I was fueling this mad dash for literary completion with a flood of my morning instant mocha blend, but instead... I've switched half of my hot beverage intake to tea. I've mentioned my testing of various Chamomiles (and the new Bigelow chamomile I've been drinking lately isn't quite the same as the... aged variety I found in the back of the cupboard, but it's still incredibly good), but I have needed to branch out into other kinds of non-herbal teas, so my mother was kind enough to deliver me a box of Morning Thunder from Celestial Seasonings.

Morning Thunder is a black tea with roasted maté. When my mother was in college, she swears she would drink it because she hadn't yet converted to coffee and she believes that, forty years ago, it contained roasted carob instead of maté. It did still have a buffalo on the box, though! I have to wonder if she perhaps is conflating Morning Thunder with Roastaroma, which is sold as a caffeine-free coffee alternative? It's over thirty years old, so perhaps that's what happened.

Morning Thunder brewed in my nice teapot!

The teapot has a bit of a story to it, too. My mother has had this teapot and its four little matching cups for as long as I can remember, but during one of her Object Purges, she decided she didn't want it anymore. I rescued it from the Goodwill bin, always hoping that one day I'd find a tea I liked and use it. One day, I set it down and the lid flew off, breaking into pieces on the floor. I was devastated. I was also very careful with the mending epoxy and unless you look inside the lid, you have to almost have your nose on it to see the hairline crack! I have the chips I rescued saved on a piece of tape in a plastic bag just in case I get one of those repair kits where you fix something with silver or gold.

I brewed the Morning Thunder in my pretty pot the other day and tried it, hoping it wouldn't leave me pulling faces and dumping it out like the Red Rose with Lemon experiment (yuck - that had to have been a bad lemon!).

I know my first mistake was in only using one bag for the teapot. My second was being impatient, but...

It was still quite nice!

It definitely had that... soggy flavor that most teas impart on me - a dark, rounded tone that reminds me of hiking in the woods of Camden Hills State Park as a kid right after a downpour - but it was balanced out by the stronger, drier flavor of the maté, which you could certainly tell was roasted! Overall, it's not a mocha alternative, but I'll drink it again and gladly! I tried this tea naked, but my partner had milk and reports that it was a bit weak but still quite good.

I'll brew it stronger next time, and we'll see how that goes.

I've since used the teapot to make two separate pots of Chamomile from Bigelow. The first attempt was with two Chamomile bags and another bout of impatience which left me with a fairly weak flowery tea that was still enjoyable but nowhere near my usual four-to-seven-minute steep (I may or may not take the steeping time to go take care of whatever the quickest chore is). My second attempt was a single teabag but I left it in the pot and poured myself several smaller cups of tea until the pot went cold.

This is a major issue, because I cannot finish an entire pot within one hour while crocheting and writing - it's physically impossible.

Solution? I'm making a tea cozy for it. Now, that yielded its own problems because, again, I'm impatient. I don't like having to hunt for the perfect pattern, and Ravelry failed me. It would seem that no one has made a free pattern that I like for a vertically handled teapot. They're all side-handled. Boo.

So I'm making my own pattern using the ugliest yarn I have because there's not enough of it for much else, and I love it in spite of the fact that it's a grungy taupe, navy blue, denim blue, and bright orange. I'm using an F hook, and you can expect pattern notes next Monday if you, too, have a light DK weight yarn you'd like to convert into a teapot sweater.

I think that'll do it from me tonight - it's past midnight and is now officially Wednesdaymania, but I'm both impatient and lazy, so I won't change the title or the content :P

I'll get back to bobbling and weaving my way to cozy perfection and then go to bed.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tues... oh heck...

 

In Which It's Late, and I'm Tired, so Here's a Story.

Not gonna lie, today's blog is Wednesday's blog because I flaked. This is on me lol. I probably could've written this an hour ago if I'd been paying attention, but, well, y'all know me by now.

Why do now what I can panic and half-ass five minutes before a deadline?

Today was another super-saturated day - muggy, warm, very foggy. I baked some marmite bread (it was really good and we demolished it before I got pictures of the loaf because I'm impatient and gluttonous). I watched a lot of non-Herb-Abrams UWF. It was a good day.

Since I'm so sleepy, I want to tell you all a lil story, and since it's basically Falloween (oh my god, really, already?!), I'll make it a bit of a spooky one.

This is the story of the Y2K Ghost.

I've mentioned, I think, that my father is an IT guy. He used to be in the Air Force, but he got out before I was born and moved on from that into a lengthy career in tech. I tell you he was military so you know he was a man trained for combat. I tell you he's in IT to let you know he's a fairly logical person (though as many will tell you, logical people are often still highly emotional... which doesn't factor into this story, but he is an emotive dude).

The IT career is also why I have the story.

As you might've guessed by the title of the story, my dad had to work on Y2K bug fixes in the later part of 1999, and they'd just moved into a new facility. I say new, but the building itself is quite old. I'd heard rumors of it being a factory where people had died (rumors he, himself, had told me). I'd had harrowing experiences in the basement (okay, that was because I was a pre-teen helping to build an elaborate Halloween Haunted House and maybe it was a bit much for my wimpy lil self). It was a big, creepy building which almost never had the lights on, and my father was running on stress, cola, and very little sleep.

And one night, as the deadline for Y2K approached, he was working alone in the server room, running updates and bugfixes when he heard someone typing away on their clicky mechanical keyboard.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

My old man is a bit confused by this - the business, a call center, basically shut down after 7PM, and he was in the server room near midnight pulling another 18 hour shift in a long line of 18 hour shifts. No one should be up in the area he was in.

So he went looking for the mystery typist.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Was it one of the programmers, staying late to build a software patch? But no, the only programmer who would have stayed that late was his brother (my most musically-inclined uncle who lent me my first D&D novel), who would've said hello and chatted with him if he was staying late.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Maybe it was his boss staying late to get work done? No he'd said good night hours ago.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

One of the owners? No, he was in Sweden, visiting family (he would send me stamps, from time to time, because I collected them).

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

The sound was really starting to get to him, so he kept looking and looking, but he couldn't find anyone on the entire floor. He checked the conference room. He checked the cafeteria in case it was someone using their chunky 1990s laptop. He checked the ancient typewriter in the hallway. Nothing. No one. He was completely alone.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

In the end, he just left work and came home, wracking his brains for what he could possibly be hearing. He told my mother and me - my sisters all in bed, and me having another sleepless night because I just can't sleep sometimes.

But of course, the story can't end there, can it?

Of course not!

He went back to work the next day (no days off during the tech crunch of Y2K!) and asked around - no one knew what he was talking about, and no one had stayed late.

Strange.

And 7PM rolled around, and everyone left except for my dad. And one other person. I don't remember if this was my uncle who stayed behind (possible, he did networking as well as programming, and the Network had to be Y2K Compliant, too), but whoever stayed that night heard it too.

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

And they searched the whole floor again. There was no way for it to be anyone upstairs - the floor and ceiling were very, very thick to prevent the call center above from having noise pollution from below (and vice versa). There was no way for it to be anyone in the floor below - there weren't any offices below, only storage!

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

It was driving them absolutely batty.

Batty?

Hmmm...

There had been bat problems before, so they started listening to the walls.

Nothing. Not a scratch or scrabble from mouse, rat, or bat. Nothing there. But when they pulled their heads from the wall...

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

ticka ticka ticka ticka ticka

Infuriated and slightly alarmed, my dad and the other man wandered around trying to figure out what it was for a good hour or so, but it wasn't until the printing room needed to be checked that they finally realized what was happening.

ticka ticka tiCK CKLCKL CKLCKL

Opening the door to the printer room made the clicky sound much louder, but it also changed what it sounded like. Instead of a fingers-on-keys sound, now it was a rattly clatter like... like something was stuck in something else.

Like maybe something stuck...

in an air vent.

My dad looked up and saw it.

A strip of clear plastic (maybe tape?) that had somehow gotten caught in the air exchange vent and was fluttering around, flicking against the vent cover.

There was their ghost.

(Years later, my father would pick up an inflatable T-Rex costume and we'd joke that it was cousins with the dinos that had sacrificed their lives for the Ghost Plastic.)

So I guess the moral to this story is: Ghosts are usually something much more disappointing than an actual ghost.

And always look up.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Mon.... I Can Explain...

 

In Which I Keep Falling Asleep...

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it on here before, but... I have issues with sleep. Some nights, it doesn't happen at all. Other nights, I sleep like a rock the second I lay down.

Last night was the former. I was up past 7 and crashed for maybe 4 hours. Got up, showered, started my day with some yarn.

So here's a Trinity Stitch dish cloth with a fancy border because I felt like it lol

And a little Granite/Moss Stitch coaster to go with it!

Both of the above projects were completed using a 100% cotton worsted weight yarn and an H/5.00mm hook!

So since today was a day where I was constantly tired and distracted, I... missed my deadline. And now there's *another* Fiber Monday blog popping up on Tuesday.

In my defense, I stayed up until 7AM and took a nap until 11AM. I'm running on empty.

I also broke my phone charger because I move like a concussed hippopotamus and tripped over the cord the other day, so I had to keep my laptop on in order to even slightly charge my phone (it was at 15%)! So I was super sleepy today.

My eyes burn as I type this.

Hopefully I'll have something up before 1AM for Talk About Tuesday - maybe I'll give y'all an update on my novel? That'd be fun!

Whatever you guys are working on, I hope it's going great!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday: Shawling Behind...

In Which I Work Hard Despite Being Sleepy

I haven't found the 2.25mm hook yet. Sorry! I have, however been working on a few things!

A bad photo of a sewing pattern I'm working from

I found a really cool vest pattern that I want to make, but since it's a pain in the tuchus to get to a fabric store, and really, I cannot afford nice fabric right now. I have plenty of crochet thread, though, so I'll be making what amounts to a mockup from crochet.

Why?

Because I'm insane.

Another terrible photo

So it's a huge pattern.

There are several pieces to this pattern, though I won't be crocheting the lining, so that'll cut things down lol.

Rough cut sections of pattern

I still have to fully cut out the patterns (probably a tomorrow pattern), but first, let me tell you why this is going up so late.

I fell asleep around 4am this morning because I suck at sleeping. Unfortunately for me, the weather decided to be very rainy. And unfortunately, something somewhere couldn't handle a lil downpour at 6AM and the power went out with a sound like a bird hitting my window.

So suddenly, I was awake in an electricity-free home, wondering when the power would come back on, two hours of sleep under my belt, and trying to light the stove with a lighter (the wand kind, not a Bic) so I could have coffee. Thankfully the power eventually came back on, but I just wanted to sleep, so I finished my cup, took a shower, and then went back to bed.

Two hours late, my cat shoulder checked her way into my bedroom and woke me up by rustling around in some of the boxes in my room. She power-stared at me for a moment and I went to go grab another cup of coffee. After that I gave up on sleep and just began working on my shawl.

Magnificent Marge shawl, Part II

You may have noticed I've switched over to a dusty rose color. This is for a very simple reason: I ran out of the beige spool I was working from and the pink was the same weight lol.

Regardless, I plan to take this as far int Part II as I can, and then I should be able to switch over to a different beige thread.

But not for a while - this is only the first 5 rows of Part II

Hope you guys had decent days! Sorry I'm late lol.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC