Yarnification

Lookie what I found for a dollar apiece at a flea market this weekend:

It was hard to narrow it down to those two. The place had a ton of leaflets, and if I weren’t on a budget I could have bought a dozen of them easily. There was a Battenburg doily leaflet that I’m kinda kicking myself for not getting. (The flea market is somewhere in Dover, OH if anyone lives around there and wants to check it out. I’m a little hazy on where exactly since I don’t know the area well.)

I’m slowly continuing to finish up a few WIPs here and there during TV time—hopefully some pictures soon.

There might not be many posts from me in the next couple of weeks…I am Becoming Organized and Getting a Grip on My Life, which is about as much of a drag as it sounds like but which is also urgently necessary.

Then again if I can figure out how to manage my time you may see just as many posts as usual. But there’s a big backlog of Stuff I Should Have Done Ages Ago, so if I go missing, that’s why.

Excuse me while I have a procrastination moment and fill out some quizzes…There, that’s better.
(Read on …)

I think I forgot to mention that I decided to do the Knitting Olympics. I’ve been trying to learn to knit for over a year, and though I finally got over a major obstacle a while ago (finally figured out how to purl) I still haven’t actually made anything other than wonky-looking swatches.

Then Julie went and learned how to knit and got me all inspired to give it another try and actually make something other than endless freaky-looking swatches. I think I’ve really gotten as far as I can with swatching and need to make a real thing.

Then I read about the Knitting Olympics in Anne’s blog and figured that would give me the nudge I needed. Now, there are all kinds of people doing this who actually know how to knit, so I feel slightly pathetic with my goal of making a dishcloth, but given that I’ve never made anything but swatches (very ugly swatches!), I think that’s a decent goal and not biting off more than I can chew.

It doesn’t start until February 10th, so I have plenty of time to try to wrap up some of my other neglected projects before then…

Almost, anyway. My mom’s doily is finished, has been since last week, and guess what? I haven’t blocked it yet. I know, I know, you’re shocked.

I fully intend to do it this evening.

Then! Then I’ll start finishing up the five million other projects I have underway. I almost did the WIP Wednesday listing (on Thursday, because it just wouldn’t be me if I did it on the right day) but I figured since it was nearly identical to the one I put up a couple of weeks ago I wouldn’t bother.

A bunch of the time I usually spend crocheting has been eaten up by my attempt to learn to play the mandolin. I’ve been spending what’s usually my TV/crochet time playing with that, instead. (I can play about four songs now, two of them badly and the other two very, very badly, but I consider this progress because I couldn’t do it a few weeks ago.)

Yet another project burbling around in the back of my mind: A strap for the mandolin. I can’t see my way to paying for one when I’m perfectly capable of making one. I’ll need to make something that won’t stretch much, though, and that could be a little tough. (Maybe I’ll figure out how to make I-cord?)

I do not want to be cooped up inside today. You have no idea. Well, look at these and you’ll have some idea:

Today:

Average temperature for this time of year:

So you can understand my pressing need to go out and play, right?

Seen in various places, but I filled these out days ago and didn’t post them, so I’m not sure where. Actual crochet content coming soon!

I’m still working on Lori’s questions—they’re more involved than these ones were so I haven’t had time to adequately answer them yet.

This is really long, so I’m trying out something so it won’t take up three miles on the main page… (Read on …)

After Vera’s comment I got to thinking (yes, a dangerous thing sometimes!) and went to the Internet Wayback Machine and searched for Denise’s site. I couldn’t find anything under the site she had most recently, but look what I found when I searched on her old site! I didn’t look too far, but I got the doilies page and a few pattern pages to load. The actual photos of the patterns didn’t load on the pattern pages, but the thumbnail photos on the doilies page were loading, so you’re not going into something totally blind.

And here is the Dreaming doily pattern—woohoo! The photo doesn’t load, and something in the background is weird so I had to highlight the text to make it out against the background (I think a lighter background used to be there but didn’t get archived). But the pattern is there! Yay! I definitely need to print out some patterns from there, even if I can only get the little thumbnail photo to put with them.

Photo of the doilies, clickable for full-size…I just now came back and replaced the original photo with a somewhat better one, much less fuzzy and the colors are truer, but it’s also a little more washed-out looking than the last one, so the usual disclaimers about my photography skills apply. I went and checked, but it looks like Denise Augostine’s site is still offline (sigh!) so no link.

It feels like it’s been forever since I posted a finished item. Probably because it has. I got most of my mom’s doily finished at the doctor’s office yesterday, so I’m hoping to get it blocked and photographed and mailed within a few days (give or take, since I’m working a couple of twelve-hour shifts over the next few days so I supposed I need to cut myself a little slack).

Fortunately everyone in my family knows what a procrastinator I am, so nobody is likely to be surprised to be getting Christmas gifts halfway through January!

Hey folks…

Doily status: MIL’s doilies are done and on the blocking board. Major accomplishment; they’ve been done for something like a week but I’d been putting off blocking (my back has been worse than usual lately, and even on a good day blocking tends to make my back achy from hunching over the board). Pinned them out last night, and they were just slightly damp this morning, so I should be able to get a photo of them tonight and then mail them off tomorrow.

Here it is—proof that I finally got off my butt and did it:

That board is a 4 foot by 4 foot square of super-thick cardboard (actually it’s folded in half, so really it’s 4 by 8 feet), and I finally got the doily and snowflake blocking patterns on there. (Packing tape is my friend!) Having patterns to block to was a help. (I did the itty-bitty coaster-size doily on the snowflake pattern rather than faux-laminate a second doily blocking pattern.) I had some trouble centering things properly on the patterns but even so it was much easier to see if I was keeping things even. (Link for the blocking patterns, in case anyone wants copies: Blocking patterns and blocking boards. The snowflake one is under the “Making the ultimate snowflake blocking board” section, and the doily one is here—the link on the site is broken right now* but this one seems to work—and the instructions for using it are further down under “A diversion into doilies”. You print out four copies of it and pin them all through the center to make the big circle.)

(* Thanks to Heather for letting me know that link was broken!)

The nice thing about the size of that giant blocking board is that I no longer have an excuse to put off blocking the pineapple square thing, which I made ages ago but couldn’t block at the time since I didn’t have anything big enough. Now I do, so that’s on my to-do list for the near future.

I’m sure I meant to talk about something else, but I’m completely addled today. I don’t know why; I’ve finished my coffee, I got a decent amount of sleep, and I can’t think of any other reason why I’m so out of it. But I am, so I’m done. Will be back later if I remember what I meant to say!

Oh, came back to say I remembered: Where do you folks get those T-pins that I keep seeing in photos of things being blocked? And are they much more expensive than regular stainless steel pins? Those round-headed pins were about killing me last night. They were never much of a problem before, but with this very thick cardboard it’s harder to push them in, and I think the T-shaped kind might be easier…

Okay, folks, I normally don’t do much of this kind of thing, but this here is important. Really, really important.

Sunshyn is someone I’ve gotten to know online first via a mailing list and then from reading each other’s journals. She and her husband Will have been raising their three-year-old grandson for I think about two years now. More than half of his life. Roo’s had a lot of struggles for such a little guy. He was diagnosed early in 2005 with an autism spectrum disorder. Since then, he’s come a really long way, from being completely non-verbal to reaching the point where it was recently determined that he no longer qualifies for special-needs preschool.

Then this past Saturday when Sunshyn went to pick up Roo from his visit with his other grandparents, they handed her a court document saying they now had full custody of Roo and wouldn’t even let her say good-bye to him. She and Will had no knowledge that they were seeking custody, no chance to have their say in court.

Roo needs to be back in his home, and lawyers and custody battles cost money. A Paypal account has been set up for donations to Roo’s legal fund. Please go read these two links below, and please, please help get this little boy back home where he belongs.

The Unhappiest New Year (Sunshyn’s journal entry after Roo was taken away)
Background info on Roo from Sunshyn’s annual Christmas letter