Yarnification

Last night I made some badly-needed coasters. Pattern: Super Absorbent Coasters, except I didn’t do the color inserts because that looked like more trouble than it was worth. Also did not make the case. I plan to make another four in a matching color. I got four coasters out of one ball of Bernat Handicrafter with a couple of yards of yarn left over, but my coasters were bigger than the 3 to 3½ inches the pattern listed, probably more like 4 to 4½ inches though I haven’t actually measured them.

I kinda guessed on hook size since either the pattern doesn’t specify one or I didn’t read it all that closely. There’s probably a 50% chance it was me; lately I’ve been suffering from the dread If Only You Had Read The Damn Pattern, You Would Not Be Having This Problem Syndrome. You wouldn’t believe what I did to a doily I’m working on the other night, resulting in my having to frog about three rounds, including one consisting of a jillion popcorns, and all because I did not actually read the directions, though at the time I was sure I had. Anyway, I just used an I hook because the yarn label called for a G, and I usually have to go up two hook sizes because I crochet tightly.

(Clickable for full-size. )

They’re better-looking in person than the photo, really. When I tried to arrange them on top of each other all fancy-like to take the picture they decided they wanted to curl up and look funky, but if I just set one down on a table it’ll lay flat.

Hope everyone out there who celebrates it had a very happy Thanksgiving!

I was away from the internet for over two days, so I’ve been slowly catching up on things. I’m going to be internet-less tomorrow, too, so I’ll be incommunicado a bit longer…

Hey, first I wanted to say that I don’t think I’ve answered any email at all for days (and some for much longer because I am flaky about things like starting to reply to an email and then saving it in the draft folder and never ever remembering to finish and send it), and I promise I’m not ignoring anyone on purpose and will try to get back to everyone who’s written in a reasonable amount of time but probably not before the day after Thanksgiving.

I’m having a bit of a tough week on account of spectacularly bad cramps and related nonsense. I accidentally left the heat packs at home today, too, which is a major bummer because I’m allergic to ibuprofen and heat is my friend. I’ve been taking Tylenol and that is just sad because Tylenol just does not help with this at all.

I expect I’ll be feeling better by tomorrow but I’ll also be super-busy what with the holiday coming up and all.

Since it’s been going around…For the record, I heart mashed potatoes. I’ve been totally rooting for them in Lori’s poll but they are trailing behind turkey and stuffing so I really think you should go vote for them.

You Are Mashed Potatoes

Ordinary, comforting, and more than a little predictable You’re the glue that holds everyone together.

Lately I’ve been seeing more and more yarn snobbery, and it’s really starting to grate on my nerves.

First, let me say that if you engage in yarn snobbery for yourself and can afford to do that, that’s great. I’m not trying to judge how other people spend their money, being as it’s none of my business and also that I’d certainly spend more money on yarn if I had the money to spend. I am not trying to attack other people’s yarn habits.

But I am SICK TO DEATH of hearing people say things like, “If you think the project is worth it, then you’ll buy good yarn” or “If you think your work isn’t worth the extra for high quality yarn, you won’t have quality work.”

I have my thermostat set to 53° for most of the day. This is because we can’t afford to heat the house with gas this year. We owe more money in medical bills than I’m even comfortable thinking about, much less disclosing in public. We do not make a great deal of money, and we have a mortgage and bills to pay.

Yarn is an extra. A luxury. I buy it if I have a few extra dollars, or if my folks send me money for my birthday, that sort of thing. If my choice is between buying affordable acrylic yarn or not being able to crochet AT ALL because I can’t afford to spend $100 on yarn for one project, who the hell is anyone else to judge my choice and say I don’t think my work is worthwhile?

Nobody, that’s who. And I don’t give a rat’s ass who thinks my work looks “cheap” or who thinks that I’m setting back the public image of crochet by making an afghan out of *gasp* acrylic yarn. I know I make nice things, and so do the people I’ve given them to.

I just got a very happy phone call from my mom, where I learned that:

1) My sister’s fiancé just got home from Iraq, a month or so earlier than scheduled.
and
2) My sister is moving to Pittsburgh sometime next year (Pittsburgh being about three hours from here, as opposed to 12-14 hours away right now).

Yay!

Last night it hit me how many things I plan to crochet before the holidays and how totally next-to-nothing I’ve done about any of those things. Granted, they’re mostly small things, but they’re small thread things, so there’s blocking and all that, not to mention mailing.

I did start my mother-in-law’s doily. Then I decided not to use that pattern because it was working up too big. She’s looking for an itty-bitty doily, and the one I started wasn’t quite itty-bitty enough. The other day we were in the city and I picked up a copy of Patricia Kristoffersen’s The Big Book of Little Doilies for something like $4.77 with a 40% off coupon, and I think I’ve settled on #23 for this project.

It needs to come out seriously small, so I’m using the recommended hook size, which should make it come out the size I need it to rather than the size the pattern says it’ll be. The pattern calls for a size 7 hook, and ordinarily I’d automatically pick up a size 5 to get the right size, but I want little here.

Ooh, I definitely need to felt my #7 hook now. The one I already felted was the #5, and it’s all soft and nice to hold.

I also plan on sending a flurry of snowflakes (ha! I made a funny!) to my family members, so I really need to get cracking on that. I haven’t made any snowflakes in a while, what with the wrist issue, but that really does seem much better now, and having tried out the felted hook I think that’ll solve most of my troubles.

I haven’t finished my shawl yet, either, and I’d like to before it gets truly cold here—I have already finished one warm shawl this fall but would like to finish this one before the cold, too—but I want to get some of my gift projects taken care of first. Once I see progress there I’ll take a break from the teeny tiny stuff and work on the shawl some more. It is working up pretty quickly when I take the time for it. I was about ready to bang my head against a wall with the Seraphina pattern for the first few rows, but once the pattern repeat was set up it got really easy and quick to do. I think my four balls of RH Symphony (and let me repeat, $2.12 a ball! I love Hobby Lobby!) will actually be way more than I need since I’ve gotten probably halfway done and only about a ball and a quarter so far, so there’ll be plenty left to make something else with, too. Maybe a hat and scarf. That yarn would make a nice soft, squishy hat and scarf…

Found this one at Kari’s. I always did like the Ents the best.

Entish

To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
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Hey everyone…

I don’t have much to post about today, but I wanted to thank everyone for the well wishes and advice and let you know that I’m alive and not sick anymore and all that. I drank about a gallon of cranberry juice over about a 24-hour period, and I got better, so apparently I started in on that soon enough not to need antibiotics. If I hadn’t been better by the next morning after I posted, I would’ve gone to the doctor, but luckily I didn’t have to (and good thing, too, because we had a tire emergency a couple of days later and had to spend the money I would’ve spent at the doctor’s office buying a tire instead). By the next morning I wasn’t in much pain at all, just a little twingy, and I was entirely better other than being tired by the end of that day.

I hate it when that happens.

I haven’t touched any crochet in about a week. I was really tired all last week and just didn’t have any energy for it. Maybe tonight…

I think I have a urinary tract infection. Okay, there isn’t much “think” about it. I’m pretty damn sure I have one.

Don’t you wish you were me?

Plan of action: 1) Chug cranberry juice. 2) If I still feel like this in a couple of hours, call doctor’s office and beg for prescription for whatever it was he gave me last time without a visit on the grounds that I know good and well what a UTI feels like. (Also, I still owe them $50 from my last visit when the nerve block cost way more than I expected and don’t want to rack up any more bills.) 3) If neither of those work, go to doctor tomorrow.

Ack.

I just finished catching up on the posts in Anne’s Brain Blog to see how her surgery went. I’m so glad to hear that she’s doing well and coping well. My thoughts and prayers are with her for a speedy and complete recovery!

At the same time I was poking through photos in the temp folder I use to download from the camera and saw that I’d taken a photo of the squares I sent for Anne’s comfortghan before mailing them off. (I couldn’t find the thread at Crochetville with the photo, but I found this post at Donna’s blog which has a photo.) Tandy at Crochetville did the hard part, organizing the whole thing and joining all the squares.

The color isn’t very true in the photo because I messed with the brightness/contrast settings to get them to show up at all; this was taken before I caught on to that thing about photographing dark objects against a light background and vice versa. (They’re Caron Simply Soft in sage and dark sage, if that gives a better idea what color they really are.) Clickable for full-size version:

The solid square is pretty basic; there’s a pattern at the bottom of this page at Priscilla Hewitt’s site. I like that pattern a lot, basic but pretty; it’s the same square I made my Wine & Roses afghan with. The third square is also one of Priscilla’s patterns: Amber Waves square.