Winter

 This year's Konza adventure was a little different from years past. I had time to go hike around midday and Jenny took the kids in the later afternoon. There were a lot of people out there taking advantage of the decent weather, which leads to seeing less wildlife. But I kept hearing little critters moving around in the dry grass near the paths.

I didn't go entirely alone, per se, I took along Princess Periwinkle Primrose Flora the Explorer.

What you can't see in the picture is that she's a backpack. Slash my purse. She loves purple and adventures.

She started out with pink straps about the perfect size for a small child to wear. So our adventures together began with a bit of "surgery" to install purple straps long enough for a large adult to wear. We like to walk around in public and listen to people react to her.

Of course, she was also naked and so very pink, naturally I had to crochet a dress for her. The best part is that when I walk around with Periwinkle, people who know me don't really react at all. They're just kind of like "this is completely normal Cheri behavior". It kind of emboldens me. It makes me wonder what else I can convince people is totally normal Cheri behavior.

October Challenge

 As it turns out, I didn't finish this challenge either. But I did complete a couple more of the prompts.

Spider and Veil

Costume

Treat

Catching Up

I didn't finish the September art challenge because I was very focused on finishing that Wildcatghan and then I got distracted trying to make a project for a friend. It's the Jahanara Shawl Wrap by Saleha Waseem. I was thinking it would be very much like a hug minus the covid risk.

Well. And between those two projects, I did several sewing projects. First was turning a referee shirt into a dress so I'd have something to wear for a sports themed sermon series at church. People were encouraged to wear sports themed shirts and I don't have any. It was hilarious. It also led to finally making a mask for the first time in this pandemic. I've been making do with one a friend made me. But it turns out that it's very fast and easy, so I made several more.

And then I fixed the straps on a backpack that was made for people smaller than me. Plus made the backpack a dress.

So now I'm ready to get caught up on some other projects. I did part 1 of the Luby Doll CAL which I'd meant to complete when it was released but then extra meant to finish in time for a Halloween mystery CAL which started a few days ago. Actually, I did two of them.

And then I started the Art & Angst October art challenge. The prompt for the 1st was pumpkin and for today was corvid.

It seems that I'm keeping my fingers pretty busy.

Twinning

On This Day, 2009, this beautiful being was 15.5 months old and apparently got her own spoon so she could steal bites from her sister's blueberry applesauce. I also noted on Facebook that she had taken her first bite of playdoh. She's always kept us on our toes.

 

This is a really horrible picture of a picture....but tell me that child doesn't look exactly like me. 

Lily's Joyful Hope WildcatGhan

 I took some days off from the art challenge to focus on a past project that I've finally finished up today. Almost exactly two years from when I started it. It's kind of a silly project, but I'm proud of how it turned out.

I started with a pattern called Bearghan by Pat Liles which was tested and typed by Chris Simon. I can't seem to find it on the internet anymore, otherwise I would link to it. The pattern is a kind of "choose your own adventure" blanket, it only provides the face square and the three triangles and some guidance on what size squares to make for the body of the bear. My first plan was to make it grey and purple with more of a cat face. I figured K-State colors and symbols would be appropriate for any baby born in Manhattan, KS.

I made the face and the three triangles right away but got hung up on how to stuff the muzzle without the stuffing sticking out. About a year ago now, when I was working through all my past projects and just doing the next part of each one, I fixed the muzzle problem and un-made the middle square because the tension was not working out.

The central square is called Joyful Hope and was designed by Aurora Suominen, Amy Carlson and Kathy Joelsen. This is kind of how I turn my well wishes for the intended recipient into yarn. Does this make sense outside my head? At some point in this pandemic, I had decided that when I got to this project, instead of doing just the next part, I would finish it. And then I realized that I had made all my plans not knowing very much about the baby, but because it took me so long, I knew her name was Lily. So I changed the color scheme and swapped out some of the squares I had started with. 

This isn't the order I crocheted them in, but this square was part of the original plan and is called Flower and Trebles by someone who goes by champygirl on the internet. The "trebles" part refers to the triple crochet stitches used to make some of the texture. I had to repeat the treble border to make this square the right size. Back to that line of thought about turning well wishes into yarn....you could say this square represents triple the Joyful Hope.

Also part of the original plan was this Puff Wheat Fields by Margaret MacInnis. Lily's older brother was born in not-Kansas, so I wanted to double down on the Kansas-ness of this project. I had also been looking for squares with a lot of texture and this one delivers big time. It was the first square I made under the new "I can use more than two colors for this" idea, so I grabbed the yarn that looked the most wheat-color to me and gave myself a huge challenge in terms of balancing the colors.

This square started out as Tip Toe Through the Tulips by Samantha of Silverdragon Crafts & Critters. This wasn't one of the original squares that I planned. I picked it because my new plan included making as many different lily flowers as I could find and I thought I could replace the tulip with one of the lilies. Which I did using a Water Lily pattern by Esther from Make My Day Creative. I split the yarn in half to make it thinner so that the water lily wouldn't be enormous. I think this square should be called Tip Toe Through the Water Lilies which is kind of like hoping that Lily gets to spend plenty of time getting her feet wet in the creek....which most people realize is one of my favorite pastimes.

I got hung up on this last square for a while because when I picked it, I meant to put the water lily on top of it like it was a flower shaped lily pad, but I had changed it and messed myself up. It was also my last chance to balance the various colors but I hadn't made the rest of the lilies yet so I didn't know if it was going to work. In any case, it's called Always in Bloom designed by Aurora Suominen and Jill Craft.

The big fun part of reworking my original plan was making as many lilies as I could find patterns for. This Lily of the Valley pattern by Camilia was quick and easy, but I wish I had taken the time to split the yarn and make them more delicate.

When I think of lilies, I first think of the kind of violently orange daylilies that aren't technically lilies at all. I had some in my yard in Maryland. And the second lily I think of are some also orange stargazer lilies I had in Maryland. I didn't find a stargazer lily pattern, so I took some huge liberties with another pattern which I will link below.

And last, but certainly not least, the delicate pink surprise lily. This is Tamara Kelly's Easter Lily but with extra stamens. It is the same pattern I heavily modified to make the stargazer lily. With all the lilies in place, I finished up the border and this two year work in progress is complete.

Momento

 In memory of Sylvia Kay Byer 1938-2020. The photo is meeting her first great-grandbaby in 2006.

Grandma enjoyed reading and learning and teaching and camping. So it seemed appropriate for Lark and April to take their books to the creek.

Cozy

 This picture really would have been better with my real camera where I could have zoomed in better. Still, I don't think it gets much more cozy than this.

I made a blanket especially for the occasion. It's a modified version of the Sitting Unicorn square from week 6 of the Unicorn Dreams CAL by Cute Crochet Makes which uses the unicorn applique from Donna and Michaelene of 3amgracedesigns.

Armor

Today's prompt is armor. I don't know if this makes sense outside my head. But, like, armor is for defense, so I think a fairy's first line of defense is to appear as ordinary as possible...

Art & Angst

 Time for another art challenge! This one is being hosted by Tales of  Kitchen Witch, primarily in her Patreon Facebook group. The rules are basically original art in any form that fits the theme. So it doesn't have to be new art, just by me. The first day is balance, so I took Lark and April outside for a romp.

Little t

 On This Day, 2009 I posted to Facebook: 

Cheri has discovered that her three year old knows how to properly speak in third person. "Taryn wants this one! NO, not that one! She wants this one! Taryn wants this one! She wants this one!" ~ for the record, she got that one and she liked it.

 I can almost hear her tiny little voice. I wish I remembered what we were negotiating about.

Here's a picture from that same day but it doesn't offer me any clues about the conversation. She was so little and only sassy in funny ways. 

Becoming

 It looks like I missed the opportunity to notice that I started this blog attempt one year ago. And what a weird year it's been.

Have you ever had a skill that you're really good at, but you hate doing it? That's a major plot point for one of the characters in the movie Center Stage. She's really really good at ballet but she doesn't really like it. I don't know how common that situation is, but I do know it's very common to really enjoy doing something while actually having no real skill in that thing. So when you find a thing that you really enjoy doing and you're also freaky good at it, to me that's a Gift.

When I've recognized that I have a Gift, my goal is to find a way to express my faith with that Gift. To give it back to my God in some way. To worship Him with my Gift.

One of my Gifts is reading.

It's kind of a weird thing. How does one worship via reading?

When I was a child, there were some books that I read over and over and over again to the point that I could practically recite them. Even if it's been several years since I've read The Chronicles of Narnia, for example, I can still recall certain passages at random. Something will happen in my life and it will remind me of Narnia and I can name the book and narrow down the chapter and often find that I've remembered word for word exactly what's there.

So it occurred to me that it would be the ultimate act of worship to become that familiar with the Bible. Not to memorize bits and pieces out of context, but to really know the whole thing so well that it becomes a part of me the way so many works of fiction are a part of me. And the only way I know how to accomplish that is to read it over and over and over again.

This wasn't the entire reason for the little bit of insanity I'm about to type up, but it was always a part of it. This desire to know the Word of God intimately, to use the Gift He gave me to glorify Him.

The way it went down was that we had a really horrible holiday season, and at some point in that mess, I thought to myself "my life was way better when I read the Bible every day". And I remembered that I had a "read the Bible in a year" Bible on my bookshelf. So I picked that up and started reading daily. It's in the New King James translation but I always forget that, I keep thinking it's something else.

A couple weeks later I remembered that I'd been meaning to look into the Chronological Bible. It turns out this is also available in a "read the Bible in a year" format. So I went ahead and bought one, it's in the NIV translation. And this is where the perfectionism comes in. Both of these books try to convince the reader that you can read the Bible in a year in only 15 minutes per day. And I'm a fast reader. So let's say it takes me 10 minutes to read each one. That's only 20 minutes. Who doesn't have 20 minutes for Jesus?

So I read both of them that year. It was intense. and kind of amazing. Also kind of crazy.

The next year I decided I would read the Chronological Bible again and just add in a little devotional thought from another book I have. I really enjoy the chronological approach. It just makes so much sense to me.

Later that fall, I was introduced to a Bible reading plan that has a strong emphasis on actually applying the Bible to how I live my life. It's also arranged to allow readers to choose a "snack", "meal", or "feast". That is, to read a small portion of Bible every day, a larger portion, or to read enough each day that you can read the whole Bible in year. Guess how I did with that?

Since I already knew I could read the whole Bible twice simultaneously in a year...

I knew that I could take the application tool and use it with the chronological reading I was already doing, but part of the plan is to be reading in the same sections as the other people who are following the reading plan and apparently I have some serious FOMO. (fear of missing out) I did that reading in the NIV as well. 

It was working out for a while because the tricky parts that are harder to read weren't hitting me at the same time in both formats. And then the next fall, I decided if I'm going to read the whole Bible once or twice every year for the rest of my life, I should check out more translations. Just for funsies. I like to read the same thing in different ways, I learn all kinds of cool things that way. I researched different translations and thought about what I'd like to read and made a plan. And then my wallet disagreed with my plans. I ended up in Walmart, which has really limited options. I came home with a really pretty purple fake leather King James translation.

I really enjoy reading from the King James. It's so dramatic. It's also easy to see the many places that people have gotten hung up and misunderstood what the Bible is trying to tell us. That spring I was also in a Bible study that was written in way that didn't make sense unless you were using the same translation as the author. So I'd grabbed a copy of the English Standard Version.

Then life happened and I had an opportunity to let go of more perfectionism. I didn't finish reading King James. I probably got through a good two thirds of it. Then it was fall and time to start the reading plan over again and I picked up the ESV. At some point, I also lost track of the Chronological reading. I'm currently one reading of the book of Revelations away from having read that 3 times total over what's now been almost 5 years.

The whole reason I started typing this is that today I finished reading the ESV And this fall, I'm going to begin reading The Message. I think this translation could be really fascinating. I'm also debating getting back into the chronological reading. I'm not going to lie, a couple months ago I did the math to find out if I could finish my 3rd chronological reading and do a 4th reading before 2020 is over. It could have been done. Probably still could be. 

But the point isn't to just read the Bible as much as possible just to say that I did it. The point is to make the Word a part of me. To allow it to change me. To let it be an act of worship. A Gift to my God.

It's a joy to me, to read the Word in any translation, in any format, in 15 minutes a day or binge-reading all day long. I'm looking forward to another year of reading, of practical application, of worshiping with everything in me.

Polar Bear

I have mixed feelings about the color choices I made, in some lighting, it really doesn't work. But in other lighting this Wildlife Graphghan square looks pretty nice. Square 15 out of 20. This project is really moving along now.

I wrote these last several posts on the same day and then published them one day at a time. Partly I was putting off spending time writing some things I need to write. Some of them may be blog-worthy and some of them maybe not. I was also hoping that by now I'd have the next project on my list ready to share. And I don't. This is equal parts my not having a realistic idea of how long it takes to do things, procrastinating, and getting hung up on perfectionism. Additionally, I had decided to actually finish this project rather than just do the next part.

Well. Today's a new day, we'll see how it goes.

Knitting the Temperature

On This Day, 2010: 

"Mommy, I don't like this orange juice. It tastes SERIOUS." ~ Taryn

"Serious!" ~ Caelie

Apparently I've neglected to blog about my 2020 Temperature project. I had finished the February highs and lows in Stockinette stitch on the first of March. I did some additional rows of purple at the end to help make it the same length as the July-December section of the project.

At the end of March, I picked up the neglected temperature project and only got 4 days knit before I ran out of yarn. I wasn't able to get more yarn for several weeks. So it was mid-May before I finished up March and then April a couple days later. I learned a new to me Garter Ribbing stitch for March and then did April in Stockinette.

From there I started doing better at keeping up with the temperature by knitting it up every few days. I did May in a 7 X 3 Flat Rib Stitch and finished this section on June 1 which is always my goal.

June was another month of underachieving and I knit most of the temperature in the first few days of July. I used Stockinette stitch again and bound off the first half of the project.

So that brings me up to July. I really knit more of the days in July than not. So it was easy to get the month finished up on August 1. I used the Garter Stitch.

You Are My Baby Penguin

Being on a bit of a crafting roll, I then spent two days at a conference watch party. In these types of situations, I typically pack one too many craft projects to keep my hands busy while I listen. But in this case, I finished both projects that I took and then had time to spare. It was a little surprising for me.

Part of the problem is that I started with the Baby Penguin from the Wildlife Graphghan CAL already past the halfway point. I had pushed myself the night before to get past the beak so I would have one less roll of yarn in my bag. Well, two less actually because I finished the lighter grey also.

The two greys don't have a lot of contrast, but there really are two shades there. I didn't use the darker grey as the designer had designed because when I look at pictures of baby penguins, that darker grey doesn't make sense to me. I should have known it wouldn't take as long to finish this square since it has so few color changes.

The next past project on my list is called You Are My Sunshine and was designed by Christine Bumgarner. I started it in May 2018 which was in the middle of when I had been working on the Solar System CAL. At the time I was seeing a lot of other people crocheting along with the releases of the pattern and had a lot of ideas about how I wanted the colors to be, but I didn't write any of those ideas down. I'm pretty sure, last fall, when I worked on part 2, I made a fresh plan and then also didn't write that down either. So for part 3, I picked out some colors and made a plan for the remainder and I'll see how it goes.

Keeping the colors simple helps the textures pop out more.

This time I wrote down my ideas for the colors. And by "wrote down" I mean, I made a document in my Google Drive in the folder with the YAMS pattern so next time I pick up this project I don't have to do all the overthinking. I'm pretty excited to see how it pans out.

Solar System Part 4

Yarn Geek Makes' Solar System CAL is one of the first CALs that I actually attempted to make at the time that it was being released. (the blog was known as Two Hearts Crochet at the time) But I didn't start off very strong. The weather kept me from getting to the Hobb Lobb for the yarn I needed so I didn't start part one until after part two had already been released. Then it just kept going downhill from there.

Part 1

Part 2

The pattern was released weekly but it took me a week and a half to do part 2 and even longer to do part 3. 

Part 3

Part 3 included embellishing the sun

By the time I made it to this point, 6 of the 12 parts had been released but I was embracing my slower pace and pressing forward. Unfortunately, someone else's Solar System project caught my eye. They were using a vastly superior purple color for their project. So I went ahead and started a second Solar System.

Part 1

I don't think it's obvious in this picture, but I did the sun differently by using two shades of yellow so it was a bit bigger than the original and had a different look.

By the time I got the 2nd part of the purple Solar System completed, the full CAL had already been released and I had other projects that split my attention away. I was still working on the third part of the purple project when my backpack was stolen with my purple Solar System inside.

That incident really rocked my world in a bad way for a while. So I didn't even try to pick up my blue Solar System either. I just let it sit. One day I picked it up and realized that one of my cats had peed in the project bag and it had dried. So I'm not proud of it, but I stuck the whole thing in a bin to prevent further incidents but also didn't really solve the problem.

The first time I decided to systematically do the next step on each of my past projects, the thing I did for the Solar System was wash it. A lot. So this time around, I picked up a blanket that is much more aged than it should be and it's scruffy in places.

I considered finishing it off and keeping it as a lap blanket.

I considered throwing the whole thing in the trash.

Then I started crocheting anyway. I used up most of the rolls of yarn that went through the wash. The colors and textures aren't the same as the yarn that was already part of the blanket. Next time I work on this I'm going to have to buy brand new yarn which will add another layer of colors and textures that don't match.

I decided that all this drama makes for a more interesting blanket. I kind of wish I'd taken a closer up picture of the part 4 rounds, but if you look closely, you can see the line about halfway between the outer two grey orbit lines. 

What a weird story this blanket will have to tell when it's all finished.

Horned Owl

Here's block 13 from the Wildlife Graphghan CAL, a horned owl. I finished it July 25th.

Can you see the mistake? I can't stop seeing it. I changed the colors that the designer recommended so that I had a very dark brown instead of black and then an off-white/cream/I don't remember what it's called instead of white. I don't like to use white if I can help it.

I enjoyed making this owl, it's so stern and the colors turned out well even if the photography doesn't show that to it's best advantage.

Pandemic Projects

Apparently in times of distress and trauma, some people are overachievers and some people are underachievers. Guess which kind of people I am. So even though crafting is typically a good coping mechanism for me, I really struggled to settle into any kind of decent crafting rhythm. I halfheartedly picked away at a few different things here and there.

I have about 16 ongoing yarn projects. Some knit and some crochet. One is a temperature project which I always intend to work on daily because it's a small commitment, but I often skip a few days and create a larger task for myself. This could be a bit revealing about other parts of my life. Another project is a Wildlife Graphghan and I consider it my most current ongoing project. So I take the 14 past projects in turns alternating with Wildlife squares. I pick up the next project on my list and complete the next step of it and then I'll do a Wildlife square, then move on to the next past project. 

In late March, I finished a Wildlife square and then gathered the supplies for the next two squares in my Moogly 18/14 CAL project. I made a post about that project in March in anticipation for completing those two squares. Then I got distracted with the April Art Challenge. I had hoped that that challenge would help motivate me to get back into my crafting rhythm, but it didn't. I also participated in a Mystery CAL that I could make a post about but I never took pictures of the final result, so that can wait. Once I finally sat down and forced my way through the squares, it only took a couple of days to churn them out.

This is the 9th block in the 2018 Moogly CAL. It's called Coral and Stone, designed by Elena Hunt of Beatrice Ryan Designs. I'm not super pleased with how it lays and the shape of it, but it's anyone's guess how much of that is a me problem and how much has to do with the pattern. 

The 9th block from the 2014 Moogly CAL is called Op-Art and was designed by Jennifer Christensen. This one was very quick to work up although it would have been better if I'd had more contrast between the colors of yarn. 

I finished these about 2.5 weeks ago and have been very productive in the crafting department since then, but I think that's enough for one blog post.