R & R

 I am taking a few days of R & R.  See you on the flip side.  

Be productive for me.  

Shiny New Things

 If you are anything like me, you like shiny new things. For me this includes yarn. Sometimes I am right in the middle of a project. I have the rhythm of the pattern down pat. My audio book is playing.  Then just in an instant I notice a skein of yarn.  It is saying hug me. Cuddle me. Make me into something beautiful.  Put down that project, just find a bag for it and finish it later.  However, I have a very bad track record of repeating this cycle over and over again.  

I am currently in a cycle to finish UFO’s.  I was really excited when I made it through a whole basket of UFO’s.  Then started organizing the knitting room.  I found 2 more baskets and a very large bag of UFO’s.  I have since made it through most of the huge bag. I am also slowly moving through other projects.  So with the exception of car knitting, crocheting or class work. I am trying very hard not to start more projects.  

I also need to take photos and log them in my Ravelry account.  Then I will have at least 4 bags of finished projects will leave the house.  

I guess it is time to go back to pencil and paper for my to do list.  Here is my attempt from 2023. I am still going to try again.

Making Progress Everywhere

 My body is still trying to adjust to more activity due to cardiac rehab. I am finding that I had adjusted to less activity better than I thought. My calorie intake had adjusted to my activity levels.  I have just sent that out the window.  This has lead to eating at odd times and falling back asleep because my body is still trying to heal and manage calories.  I find that I can not eat as much as I use to.  I got up at 6 am for breakfast and then got sleepy. I slept until noon.  I had really intended to be at the mall around 10am for my walk.  I did make it there by 1:30pm. Take today for instance, I tried walking at the nearby outdoor mall.  I have not yet been cleared for graded walking so no walking around the block yet. I found that after 20 minutes of the 40 planned minutes I was very tired. I was walking too fast. I know this because my mileage was too high.  I have to figure out a way to walk slower and obviously it was not my current audio book.  I guess that I will have to ask what beat of music I should be walking to and creat a playlist. 

In Tunisian crochet, my Skill Builder Hat by aklori designs has picked up its pace.  I finished round 11 of the crown.  I am now have begun round 2 of the body.  Having never made a top down hat before has left me wondering when the body will turn into a tube. I can say with certainty that it will not occur in the first few rounds.  The body is the easiest part of the hat so far.  The body is also much faster to crochet.  

Time for tonight’s progress picture. When it is finished, if the orange is not the right color for me, I have the perfect friend to gift it to. It is starting to look very orange to me. 

Happy Halloween

 I don’t know about your trick or treaters post pandemic, we have had noticeably less trick or treaters.  Since I tend to offer candy and non candy items for the children I have found that they love the following items in order of what goes faster.  

1. Pencils and erasers. #2’s go the fastest followed by colored pencils, lastly pencils that are anything else. The animal erasers that you can switch the parts around, go the fastest. I never buy them around Halloween, but other times in the year when they’re on sale.

2. Candy - it does not matter which kind, just not marshmallows. 

3. Crayons  and bubbles for the younger children. 

4. 3D printing errors and benches.  All the benches come from printers that have left the house.  

5. Various Halloween items. 

This year to get some extra ice packs out of the house, I gave away sets to parents who were with their kids.  I still have one set left and it comes with its own canvas bag. Let me know if you want it.  

Have a good weekend.  

Boo-boo Fixed

 I had to rip out row 9  of the Skill Builder Hat by aklori Designs and crochet the whole row again.  I have to admit that the row looks better than trying to patch things up.  I am just not that good at Tunisian crochet yet. So I went with my strength and ripped the row out. By the way I prefer ripping out Tunisian crochet over knitting just because I don’t have to be as careful.  I just put a stitch marker where I want to stop and rip away.  Then I got to row 10 the hardest row for me so far. It required dropping 2 stitch markers to accommodate a change in the pattern.  As you can see from the picture below I am starting to add the 2 rows of curves for the medium size hat.  It took 1 1/2 television shows to get through row 10.  I think I should be calling them rounds, because I am crocheting in the round. Rows just sounds better to me right now.  

I have one more row to crochet before I start the body.  That sounds very easy after rows 10 and 11.  Just the Tunisian knit stitch and the Tunisian simple stitch for a lot of rows.  The good news is that I will be down to 1 stitch marker.  Then I get to the brim and have to learn 2 new to me stitches.  Wish me luck.  

Tonight’s progress.  You can see the first row of scallops that I added tonight.

It’s been a very hard day on my body so I am calling it an early night. 

One Booboo

 I have found 1 boo-boo on round 9 of the Skill Builder Hat by Aklori designs.  Tonight I just gathered up the stitches and put a stitch marker to hold it together.  Tomorrow I will go to the back side of the work and pick up the stitch.  I am hoping that the repair work will be similar enough to just pick up the stitches and put them in there proper places.  After all I have over 26 years of experience and people hand me their projects to fix all the time.  If it comes down to the worst case scenario, I will just take out round 9 and fix it.  I have really started to get my rhythm down on the crown work.  

Without further ado, here is the current picture. 

Not So Visible Progress

 In the not so visible progress I managed to start the next round of a bespoke shawl for me.  I am only using “luxury yarn” from my stash.  I am 3 full skeins in with skeins 4 and 5 currently being added.  So far I have used a merino and silk blend for 2 skeins.  One skein of llama.  Currently being added are 2 skeins of 100% silk yarn.  The center panel is Tunisian Simple Stitch.  The first 2 color blocks are a half double crochet.  The current round is Tunisian crochet in the round. Honestly it went much faster once the stitches were picked up off the half double crochet round.  I am not sure how big it will become.  Whether or not, I will add more yarn to the project. Or call it quits once I go through the current skeins that I have picked out.  Only time will tell, and of course more crocheting.  

I added a couple of more rows to a charity scarf tonight.  All progress stopped when the television shows became too interesting. 

Of course 30 minutes of house work and organizing required a 2 hour nap.  The antibiotics are just zapping my spoon level to the basement.  I even sat down to sort the silverware.  I have to say it was a little awkward, although everything was put in the proper place.  

My new Apple Watch is a bit more jumpy than I expected.  Putting away the plates triggered an alarm for loud noise. Excuse me have they ever had a baby crying in their ears nonstop? Smashing a bug that landed on my arm,  elicited an alarm for “did you fall? Do you need medical assistance?”. Cleaning and organizing has had multiple alarms for me to sit down immediately and rest.  At this point I’m not even sure if I bought a watch or a portable mother hen.  I have been using smart watches for a long while.  I have never had one this jumpy.  Of course my last watch refused to give me the temperature in Fahrenheit, one day it decided all it would do with Celsius no matter what I did. When it started dying I gave up brand loyalty and switched to an Apple Watch.  Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make the watch less jumpy? I would love to hear your thoughts.