Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which This Week is Heavy

So. My father has COVID.

I live with my parents.

Thus, I am currently in Quarantine, hoping I don't catch it.

It'll be hard to tell - my allergies are awful lately (the damp really aggravates them), and hand sanitizer/cleaning supplies make my sinuses itch & ache, so uh... yeah. Not gonna be fun.

We're taking precautions - Clorox everywhere, hand sanitizer, masks, hand-washing, ventilation (despite the rain) - but man, could we, collectively, catch a break, here?

I've got friends down with the 'Rona, my dad's down with it, my mom and I are doing our best to avoid it, and I don't get to hang out with my partner this week, which makes sense but sucks, and all of this is not fun at all.

I'm trying to stay upbeat and trying to keep my mind occupied. I have crochet, Tears of the Kingdom, books, art...

And I should be fine. Vaxxed to the gills, taking precautions, avoiding standing too close to people.

If I can, I think I'll go outside tomorrow. I might be able to sneak in some outside time between thunderstorms.

Besides brief forays outside, my plans for tomorrow include... art, really. I have some ideas I'd like to try out - some are fanart (not all Zelda-related, believe it or not), and some are just ideas I've had. We'll see. Optimally, I'll get some sleep tonight and wake up refreshed enough to paint like crazy. Maybe I'll even be able to finish some really good ones and scan them!

Maybe nothing will get done - maybe I'll stare at blank pages and wish for better luck.

I'll probably paint though.

Regardless, you'll hear from me on Thursday with *something* to post.

And if I finish my art in a way I'm satisfied with, I'm going to read, dammit.

And write. I've been neglecting both since May.

For now, I'm just very sleepy (I did not sleep well last night because of the thunder, rain, and sticky air). I hope I sleep well tonight - it'd be nice if my brain would politely slip into dreamsville on command lol.

With how much I've been crocheting, I'll have the 2nd leaf finished for next Monday, plus I could even get the pouches themselves finished... that's probably overambitious, though, so I'll just aim for leaves lol.

I might also make a leaf crown for myself (or a leaf necklace...), and I am still trying to figure out my Shoulder Dragon concept...

I'll post whatever crochet I do next Monday, then I'll give you life updates next Tuesday.

Tonight is for silly videos and snooziness.

Tomorrow is for art.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Am Fried

I spent the last week or so out-of-office, as it were, cat-sitting for my sister & her husband as they honeymooned abroad. The apartment was delightful, the cat was a precious hauspanther with the cutest white spot on his chest, and the town was marvelous. Z & I had a blast! But...

Tiny, the cat, prefers to get fed at 3am.

And neither Z nor I are morning people, naturally. So today was a recharge day.

Not that I slept in - I got up at 8 and was out the door by 9:15 to run some errands.

You would think, that, having not slept for 7 or 8 nights, I'd have gone to bed early last night.

Lol no, I was playing Tears of the Kingdom. It took until this afternoon for me to reach the surface and I just got my paraglider.

I did get to keep Chonkers the Giant Horse, though, so that has been fun!

Also I do keep falling to my death. Shocker.

Also I suck at Recall.

While Away, I did actually figure out how to write part 2 of my wrestling story! I will keep writing the other story, too, but it felt so good to figure out where I was going!

I'll get back to doing wordcounts next week, but for this week, I'll just get on with writing and resting and arting.

I do have at least one finished piece that I'll be showing next week, and I'm making progress on a hilariously oversized piece. I may also try to do some fanart this week, but we'll see.

For now, I'm going to change into pajamas because it's basically bedtime, and hopefully wake up early enough tomorrow to actually do things.

The plan for this week is to write a bunch, read a bunch, have art done for Thursday, and take some pictures of the small progress I made crocheting for Monday. It's a weird project and I don't know if I can actually make it work, but I'll try.

If you'd like to have a say in what I draw/paint/pixel this week, feel free to go over to my Ko-Fi and send me a coffee with a message Recommending one of the following categories: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Location, Dedbert, Geometric, or Word. I also take commissions as seen in the sidebar!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Needed A Day Yesterday.

Yesterday sucked. I'll just be honest here, it was a garbage day and I felt like garbage the whole time.

I was 100% people'd out, but people kept wanting to talk to me, which would be great on days when I miss people, but I'd already had my fill and did not want to keep talking. I just wanted to exist, maybe watch some videos, listen to the rain.

Definitely didn't want to crochet.

Certainly didn't want to try to figure out why following This Pattern ended up with the stitch counts NEVER ONCE MATCHING UP FOR SOME REASON. Honestly, what a migraine of a pattern. How did our ancestors do it?!

Also, my vintage Boye Steel Hook 3 has a very obvious bend at the tip that sometimes disrupts my crocheting, but I cannot bend it back with my bare hands because, again, it's steel.

So yeah, yesterday was a complete and total bust where I never felt right or good or creative or smart or anything positive.

At least I didn't feel negative, and I'll take "just wants to stare at rain in silence" over "anxious about uncontrollable stuff and also self-loathing" any day.

Today was the exact opposite of yesterday, I'm happy to say, and I managed to go for a little walk, picking up some little treasures to put in my Goblin's Purse that I made previously. You can find my collections here, if you're interested! It wasn't as long a walk as I'd have liked, even though it was only about 60℉/15,6℃. The problem was that it was also 98% humidity! I got sweaty in less than a mile, so I headed home with a can of coke, some rocks, and a general sense of satisfaction.

As for the rest of this week, we've had a taker on the "tell me what to paint" front! You'll see what was requested on Thursday, but if you'd like to give me even more work to do, you can hit up my Ko-Fi and send me a donation with a message telling me which category (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Geometric, Location, Word, Dedbert) you'd like me to work from! I'll do my best to finish any pieces I receive in the next 24 hours by Thursday at noon Eastern :)

Here's the schedule (tentative):

• Thursday: art! You'll see what was "commissioned" this week
• Next Monday: Hopefully something!
• Next Tuesday: Blather from Me To You!

That'll about do it for me today. I'm pretty tired and this blog was supposed to go up 2 hours ago lol.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which A Break Was Taken

Everyone who knows me knows, by now, that I am absolute garbage at remembering dates, holidays, and birthdays. I barely remember Christmas, Halloween, and my own birthday. So of course, I did what I always do.

I forgot it was Father's Day.

Thankfully I have an understanding father and a stockpile of yarn and the internet.

I sat around for an hour or two trying to figure out what to make and then I realized that a bag you can hang off of a horizontal board or pipe or whatnot would be useful for him. Mostly, he'd be able to toss the Roku & tv remotes, a tablet, maybe a netbook into it easily if it was looped around the arm of the wooden futon in the other room.

So then I went looking for something nice & masculine. I have a lot of masculine colors right now - black, red, dark green, etc. I chose a brown and green combo that wouldn't look too out of place while camping. Some of my best childhood memories are of camping with my family, dad teaching us axe, knife, and fire safety (no river stones in the fire pit!, say thank you when you have a grip on a bladed object that someone is passing you, point the front of an axe away from you), overboiled hot chocolate in little brown plastic cups that kind of smelled and tasted like detergent no matter how well you washed them, hamburger helper...

Rain literally every single time we set up and took down camp. Every single time. I don't think we ever struck camp on a dry day, not even when we were using the camper.

I also remember fishing trips where I never caught anything but logs and grass, but I got to enjoy sitting with my dad. I remember hiking and canoeing, though I was terrible at both.

What I'm saying is, when I was little, we were outdoors a LOT.

So I chose a pretty cabin pattern charted out on Ravelry by Abi McIntyre @ GetYerHookOn. If I were to make a suggestion to other crochet artists - don't do this pattern while tired and actually read what the pattern dictates. I just used the chart, but the actual pattern itself looks amazing when followed correctly.

Seriously, go download that pattern and follow it to a T, and you'll be so, so happy.

I'd say, though, that for doing everything in Single Crochet, carrying the colors through, and then making it into a bag (which I modified without a pattern!!!) it looks pretty great!

The shapes are pretty well-defined!!!

And the colors are pretty nice!

What you cannot see here is that I made the back of the bag by using the same yarn and the same hook and the same stitch tension and alternating 7 rows of brown and 7 rows of green until I had 49 rows (7 more than the front). Then I started row 50 with ch3, skipped the first stitch, dc in next 6 sts, turn, and repeat from ch3, placing the 6th dc in the top of the previous row's ch3. I did that for 25 rows, then slip stitched the end of the dc-based strap thingie onto the opposite side of the back from where it began (see above). Then I ran a row of sc around the outside of every flat surface, joining front to back.

If I were to do this again, I'd take a little more time making sure the seam looked nice. Maybe instead of an sc row, I'd sew the seam shut properly. I'd also ease my tension significantly on the front!

That being said, this came out really well, and if you put the body of the bag through the handle to secure it to a surface like a railing or a futon arm, it really does hold up to even a Dell Latitude laptop or an iPad in an Otterbox lol!

I'd like to make a few more bags in the future, too. I really enjoy doing mosaic work, and I adore doing filet crochet, so some fun character bags (there's a super cute pattern with a squirrel and an edging/insertion lace that could easily be used for handles that's all acorns and oak leaves!!!) might be in order.

Don't think I've been totally neglecting the Secret Project aka the Mushroom Bag, though! I worked a whole bunch on that strap...

It's just that slip stitch rows are... very very very thin. And that means building up to a proper strap width is taking quite a bit.

I might go the i-cord route for the hanging loop I'll make for the top... or do a single-loop slip stitch instead of the double-loop I'm doing for the should strap...

In any case, there you have it! A finished Father's Day gift that has been delivered and is, to the best of my knowledge, currently in use.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday - Cyberstruggles

 

In Which There Almost Wasn't Even This Much Of A Blog

You may have noticed that there was a big ol' outage with a certain shitty web carrier today.

I didn't get anything uploaded and it's a little late to start now :|

Still, I did get a lot of crochet work done, and I got working on some art, too, while I was at it! No clue as of the blogging as to why the network was down, but it was. And it was super annoying.

I do hope to have more of a Fiber Monday blog up next week, but we'll see.

Actually, I do have a couple fiber-related things to report!

A) I ordered some silk hankies (mawata)! They're gold and should get here with the new Universal Remote so that I don't have to cross the room to fiddle with the volume anymore...

2) I'm going to try to build a drop spindle this week! Wish me luck because I have NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING LOL

III) I started another new project but that's not really news so much as just another day of the week lol.

That'll about cover it for me on this gray and frustrating Monday!

Go Enjoy Something (provided your internet is functioning)

FC

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have Been Working...

You may not know it from following my Twitter account or my Facebook or just talking to me, but I have been slowly continuing my work on my various and sundry crochet projects. I've also been struggling a lot with my focus and ability to maintain motivation, so things... they're progressing very slowly across the board. I have all these ideas, but lately I've just been so tired that it's hard to get anything done.

This is, in fact, a closeup from last week, but you get the idea. Add 2 rows lol.

I know this isn't much of an update, and I'm sorry about that. I'll try to keep y'all up to date on what I'm up to, though!

Tomorrow's another day!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday 315

In Which I tell you about my day:

Today I:

• Wrote 400 words of my novel (so far)
• Read over someone else's work (it was really good!)
• Worked on the bottom of a shopping bag with a 4.5mm hook and some hemp cord I've had laying around for years.
• Discovered that I am, in fact, likely allergic to hemp (sneezing, eyes watery and itchy)
• Have not gotten dressed

I haven't worked on the Lady Sibyl, but I probably will this week.

I also haven't finished either of my headscarves and hope to this week.

I'll be back tomorrow for a more robust life update for y'all ;)

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday 314: DA Lady Again

In Which I continue the work

Still working on that Shrug, guys. It's taking a loooooooooong time.

But I like the lighting on this image, at least...

I still hope to finish it in the next two months, which is possible, if I just focus on actually doing it instead of getting distracted every five minutes.

I hope you guys are keeping up with your creative endeavors, where possible. I hope you're staying inside when you can. I hope you're well.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC