A Little Yarn On The Side

Thursday night I had some spare time, so I thought I'd get a head start on Finishing Friday with three new icicles,   and three new patchwork ornaments, trying some new methods of tracing the pattern onto the felt, none of which worked any better, and I seem to have not photographed the third one.  Oh well,  it's a heart--pretty much like the last one.  I think we can now say that THREE strips of fabric was maybe an over-estimation of how long my interest in these would last.  They are a great way to catch up on my ornament tally, and I do like them, but I am now counting the days until I can buy fusible webbing and new marking pens. I like the hand-stitched look on ornaments, so both to solve the tracing problem AND try a new look, I made a stocking which I could cut out first, THEN stitch.  It worked reasonably well, though I need to practice a bit to get my stitching a bit more even, and it's hard to see in spots, but I thought it turne...

Look what a friend sent me while we were gone! Isn't he cute?????  She knows about the ornament project and sent him along with the directions for how to make several ornaments she's made (him included).  Isn't that great? 

It may not look like it, but this is a cat with stress issues.  We flew out to Indiana for Andy's family reunion obscenely early on Thursday morning.  Because it's such a busy time of year for our friends, how much I would worry about fires with the drought this year, and because I wanted to poison the little vole-monsters who have been plaguing the garden all spring, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to board the cats while we were gone.  Because of our travel times, the cats were due to check in the day before we left and get picked up the day after we arrived.  I made the reservations well in advance, made a copy of their immunization records, and thought I was really pretty clever for coming up with this whole idea in the first place. STILL feeling like I was planning ahead, we dug out the suitcases Tuesday night.  I have joked many times about Theo getting upset when he sees suitcases come out because he hates change so much, but I always thou...

........the tough make three quick ornaments to stay on track: I had actually decided that I had enough lace icicle ornaments for a while, but this week between trying to combat the vole infestation in the garden, trying to get to the gym, doing my pt exercises every day, then trying to get the garden plants weeded and mulched before the next wave of extreme heat hits, I decided that one can NEVER have too many lace icicle ornaments.  It's best to be a bit desperate flexible with these things.............

I realize it will pay off at the end of the summer, but gardening is REALLY getting in the way of my crafting.  Dang it!

It's this hot today, and after three whole days completely off pain pills, I had a rather bad night and ended up back on full meds for the rest of the night.  That's always a bit hard to take, but on such a hot day it just sucks the life out of me.  And Theo.  Last night I did get the remaining two sets of strips sewn together, with a new color order on the smaller one,  and the original order on the set made with 2-inch strips.  I'm really rather proud of myself for moving on to the next sets.  The way I usually do things is to finish the first set, set the second set aside "meaning to get around to it," and then spend the next year and a half moving it around rather than finishing it.  Of course, these still have to make it all the way to Ornament Stage, but I think them even making it to Long Uneven Strip Stage might be some serious personal growth on my part.  Or, as close as I ever get.  In the meantime, I am keeping myse...

Last night my "helpers" and I finished two more striped ornaments, and kept an eye on all suspicious (meaning "dog") activity in the neighborhood.   (We try to do our bit for the community) It seems that we have had our "nice" summer weather, and have moved on to the "hot and horrible" phase.  For crafting, this means that the morning of Finishing Friday--like all mornings--will now be spent in trying to keep the garden alive.  The afternoons, which will now be mostly in the 90s or higher, will be spent somewhere with air conditioning.  I know temperatures are rising and everything, but I still wonder about people who lived here before air conditioning.  Did they just spend the summers naked? This afternoon's stay-in-the-airiconditioned-house project was: more ornament shapes!  I decided to try out some new shapes, and I thought cookie cutters might be a good source, and these are the ones I found.  We might have more, but I woul...