Valentine Countdown

This Heart Crab Applique pattern came from a blog called Golden Lucy Crafts, she has a rather large collection of heart shaped things that are going to come in very handy this month. I did change the legs on one of the crabs after a helpful veterinarian friend pointed out that they are backwards as written. 

In one of the Facebook groups I participate in, a woman named Jessie Mosher has been posting photos of little crochet food items that she's making and leaving in her fiance's lunchbox along with a little pun. So new for this year's Valentine Countdown is my attempt to emulate these punny little things. For today:

If you can't read it "we love you S'More"

I free handed the graham crackers and chocolate and borrowed the basic idea of the marshmallow from a blog called Whistle and Ivy. I added some stitches in some places and took out rounds in other places. There are some really great puns coming up, I'm kind of excited about it.

And we also managed to get in a hike today. The state park hosted a Groundhog Day Hike. A day early thanks to the sportsing event tomorrow. We started our hike with a visit from "Tuttle Creek Tom". The park ranger was so excited to pull off his presentation and he really did a great job. 

He kept checking on Tom and telling us how feisty he was tonight. He picked a kid from the crowd to be his assistant and gave him a top hat so we could do it up just like the movie. They both listened to Tom and reported that he predicts an early spring. I couldn't convince the girls to pose with Tom and the fabulous top hat.

Then we loaded up and drove over to another part of the park for the hike. We went on a trail that the girls and I have walked before but we learned that there were parts of the trail that we didn't know about or had forgotten between the first time we walked it until the most recent time. Here are some pictures from October 2014. 

It's currently more muddy and has no leaves on the trees, but it was too close to dark to take any pictures. It was a lovely day to get out and watch the sunset over the lake. 

Long Month

So many people have been feeling like this month lasted forever. I'm pretty much right there with that. How can 31 days feel like 300? But we've made it. I got the January weather knitted up, I'll add in a photo after I get one taken.

I spent a lot of time this week gathering up the books that have been scattered all over the house and now the shelves look nice and neat....but there are "too many" books. *sigh* Our next task is to purge as many of them as we can bear to part with. I would build more shelves but there is literally no space in here to do that. I've been meaning to purge some of the shorter chapter books for a long time so this job is overdue.

Next up, for the last several years we've counted down to Valentine's Day by putting Valentines on the girls' bedroom doors every night from January 31st to February 13th. This year I've decided to crochet things. Heart shaped things in rainbow colors. Very exciting. I'll be sharing those for the next couple of weeks.

A Week Later

I'm just going to pick right up and act like I didn't lose a week of my life running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Because I literally just spent the last week running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. Except for the days that I intentionally sat around and did nothing. Or we could call it resting and recharging. Either way.

I skipped Zone 4 last week but I'm going to just jump back in. As soon as I'm done typing this I'm going to look around Zone 5 and pick something to do. There are lots of options, it's probably the worst zone in here.

I did manage to finish up all 3 of the squares I was working on this week.

They all three have a lot of texture, although I didn't necessarily photograph them to the best advantage. 

This is September Star designed by Aurora Suominen of DragonFlyMomof2 Designs. I'm not sure if her tension is just different than mine, or if it's my yarn and hook combination but I was just not getting the bumps in the middle section. I redid it a couple times before I finally dug around enough to find some posts on ravelry where people were using this pattern in a CAL (I think) and discussing how they got the texture to work for themselves. So I used a technique from that discussion and it worked pretty well. I would link to that, but you have to have a ravelry account to see it.

This lovely square is Oh, Starry Night by Margaret MacInnis. I wish I had spent more time adjusting the middle before taking the picture, I've missed out on quite a bit of the texture. I wish I had done the last row a little differently, but by the time I get around to joining these squares I'll probably give them a border anyway so that will help it have a cleaner a look.

So that's a little piece of this past project done, now I'm going to go do another wildlife square and I'll get back to this project somewhere down the line. I look lots of notes in my Google Drive folder with the patterns for this project so next time I get to it, I'll remember what I decided. You're welcome, Future Cheri.

More Memories

On This Day, 2010:

this morning the first thing Caelie said to me was "Zah! peas!" Translation: Pizza! Please!

As I recall she often shouted her "polite words" with a lot of conviction.

December 2011

On This Day, 2012:

Taryn is sitting at Tim's computer playing "I'm Elmo and I Know It" over and over again and singing along with it

Sounds annoying but I thought it was hilarious and awesome.

On This Day, 2015:

"Daddy, what color is Caelie's and my skin? Caelie says it's blond!"

I can't help it, these are great memories. There are currently twice the usual number of children in my home, being loud and silly and generally having a great time. Which I both love and hate, for real, they're so loud.

Firecracker

On This Day, 2013:

Taryn ~ remember when that earthquake happened when I was in kindergarten?
Caelie ~ it was probably giant robots

not this day, just cute, December 2012

On This Day, 2011:

"Your Fancy Nancy is in the van and Daddy took the van to work today"
"Daddy took my Fancy Mancy?!? WHY!?!?!" ~ Caelie

also not the exact day but a summary of my photos from January 2011

Insomnia and Busyness

This week has been sponsored by insomnia and busyness. I haven't had much time for crafting...well...that's not super true. I've mostly kept up the 2020 temperature project and I've finished 1 of 3 squares for a past project.

It's called Ad Astra by Chris Simon. It was relatively simple, but I had to redo it a couple times because I changed my mind about making it entirely white, decided to add a stripe of blue and then had to play around with how that looked. Then I was trying to work on one called September Star by Aurora Suominen. I've had to do it over a couple times because I'm not understanding some of the instructions. I think I've done other patterns from this designer and there is just something about her designs that I always struggle with. I'm on my third attempt now but I had finally found some online discussion with a photo for each round and some tips from others who had a hard time getting the desired results. So maybe this time it will work.

On Monday I had been fighting the perfectionism pretty hard. The whole FLYLady system is about finding ways to keep going when the perfectionism is strangling you. That's part of what the zones are all about. I'm supposed to work on one zone for a few days and then walk away from it to work on the next zone, knowing that next month I'll get back to whatever is left. My Zone 2 over laps with Zone 5 because this is a tiny place. So I wasted a lot of time deciding if it was better to keep the momentum of the first two weeks by continuing around Zone 5 and just doing Zone 3 next week. Like I don't have to be a perfectionist about the order of how I do these zones. Or just move on to Zone 3 because there is value in walking away from where I feel like I have to keep working...

I can even be a perfectionist about how to not be perfect. It's like magic.

So about 11:40pm I hurried up and reorganized the shelves over the toilet. Zone 3 is the main bathroom and one bonus room. Then on Tuesday I didn't have time to do anything productive at home and I think that was the day we got the notification of impending inspection.

By agreeing to live in this housing, we have to submit to inspections. So I ended up putting my insomnia to work cleaning various things wherever I could and preparing for inspection....then no one came. Today I went ahead and cleaned the bathroom sink better than it was. That's Zone 3 work. So I'm going to call it a win and move on next week. Hopefully it will be less busy and more crafty.

Wild

Last May, I came across a very cool looking crochet square pattern that was released by a blogger named Kinga as part of a crochet along she called Wildlife Graphghan.

Unlike other CALs, the squares were released as she finished designing and testing them so there wasn't a set schedule. I kept up with it pretty well for some of the squares and then got distracted with other things.

Some of the colors look better in person than what I've ever been able to get photographed.

That tiger drove me nuts, I accidentally did the wrong color on one of the eyebrows.

These squares use a technique called corner to corner or C2C. You start with a graph of squares and work diagonally.

I like to use Hobby Lobby's I Love This Yarn. It's softer than Red Heart and I've never had problems with dye lots....until this project. The Panda and Chimp used an older skein of yarn and when I went to replace it, I found that HL has replaced that color with two similar shades of green. One of them has the same name as the yarn I had, but it is not the same color. So I had to choose a different color for this giraffe and now that the full set has been released, I have all these problems to work out.

Anyway. I finished that Giraffe in mid-July. And then following the Temp Wrap, I started the next square, which I've finished today....

While I was making it, I was wishing I had different grey yarns...but the more I look at it, the more I like it. I didn't try to make the color changes as crisp as possible because it seemed appropriate to leave them a little muddled.

My big plan is to do the next step on a past project and then make the next square from this blanket. It's like using one yarn project to take a break from another yarn project.