And Then...

Some days.  I just can't even.  I must have Covid Brain...

Do you feel like that sometimes?  There are days when I get up and think I have so much ambition and I'm going to get so many things done today, and then suddenly it's 4 p.m. and what did I do today?  Nothing.  Good heavens, it seems like the whole YEAR has gone that way!

Squirrel!!

Today for example.  I was going to go down to the sewing room and do some machine embroidery.  I put scallop shells onto linen napkins for baptisms at my church.  I have a stack ready to go.  I have thread and stabilizer.  The design is loaded up.

Instead, after I combed my hair (I really need to schedule a haircut!) and made the bed and took some antacid because breakfast didn't agree with me, I sat down at my desk and started cruising Amazon.  For what, I asked myself?  I don't need a thing.  Well, just let's check out any new books that may have come out since Wednesday... squirrel!

So I decided that I needed to figure out just what I DID finish this year, or at least since Covid made us all stay home more.

First, I made a few shop samples.  This was just a top, someone else quilted it.  There's a kit you can buy, at least there was before Christmas...

This table runner I pieced, quilted and bound.  Granted, the quilting is pretty basic, diagonal lines.

I also knitted a few things, finished completely!  The first big one was Miss E's Harry Styles sweater.

Then I finished a Wave of Change for a gift.  Sadly, no pic of the finished sweater...

This was a UFO that had languished for ages.  Finally finished both of the sleeves and I'm done.

This is a second Wave of Change, modified for stripes.  Again, sadly, no photo of the finished sweater, but it was gifted on Christmas Eve.

The same young man who got the striped WOC sweater got this quilt.   I actually quilted this one too,

with a wavy pattern and swirls.  My shoulders ached for days after doing this on my home machine!

Next thing I found a photo of was this pile of pillow cases.  It's what you do when you have 24 inches of fabric left over.

I completed two quilt tops for the preschool at church and passed them along to our quilter for finishing.  They were auctioned off as a fundraiser for the school.

This was a fun project, I actually did two of them.  Three strands of worsted held together, and crochet with a BIG hook for about three days and you get a basket to store your extra yarn in, or whatever have you.  They fold flat when empty.

I also did a blue top called Traffic Jam, it's a Pat Sloan free project on her website.  I donated this top to our church guild, but I'm so loving these blocks that I have enough for a red top and nearly enough for a green one!

I also knitted about a dozen kitchen dish clothes...

AND I finished this Camaro sweater, which was going to be for me but ended up gifted to Miss A, who liked it a lot.  No pic of the finished sweater yet.  Maybe she'll model it for me.

And masks...

OK, so not such a lost year after all.  Hmmm, I'm inspired to go down to the sewing room again!

Sew on...

Just When You Think You Know Anything...

So today (Wednesday, December 23) I'll be hopefully getting the last of the Christmas deliveries.

I read somewhere, who can remember, that there was going to be a problem getting quilt batting due to Covid caused shortages and shipping delays.  Our guild at church uses these rolls for all our quilts, and we generally go through two rolls a year.

I decided I'd better start looking to get another one on order, since rumor had it that the wait could be up to three months.

On Monday, I went on line to search rolled batting.  I found a roll of what we usually get on the Walmart website, and placed my order.  Delivery date?  

Wednesday.  December 23.  2020.

Oh my!  Well, I hope there's a spot in my garage to store it so it can sit until I can deliver it to church.  Having it delivered to the church building on December 23 was just not an option, because, well Christmas.  Services are being held on Friday and Sunday with the expected increased numbers in attendance of people who only attend at this time, and Live Nativity taking place on Friday afternoon.

Go figure.

Well, the good news is, there doesn't appear to be a batting shortage after all!

Sew on...

Covid and Other Things

Knock on wood, I haven't gotten Covid 19 or tested positive.   I haven't even been tested.   

It doesn't hurt that I don't go much of anywhere.  Seriously, I don't even go to the mailbox!  Well, I'm not allowed to go to the mailbox because if I went to the mailbox, I might SEE the mail before the Inspector General sees it.  Not that we get good mail in the mailbox anymore.

I get my packages delivered to the porch.  Packages don't need to be inspected, LOL!  The IG sometimes brings them in and puts them on the table.

But the mail, that's a different story.  He'll scan each envelope or card or advertising piece and then sort them.  Yours, mine, yours, yours. MOST of what we get is junk.

I get the ones that say Occupant along with the ones that say Susan and the ones that say Arthur and Susan, so I don't know why they need inspecting.  He gets like one item per month.  Just sayin'...

He goes to the grocery store with lists I make.  I go about once every six or eight weeks, just to see if I can still find things.

And we go to church.  It's very socially distanced, almost everyone wears masks, it's good.  Sometimes I run the slides so we sit in the AV booth.

People I know have been exposed to Covid and not gotten it, but a few have gotten it.  My cousin (in her 80s) got it and passed away due to the complications she also had.  A friend of mine went to the hospital for completely unrelated things and while she was there her son brought Covid home to her husband who had dementia and her husband died of it.  Imagine the grief.  You can't.  She's in rehab now and hasn't been home since he passed away.

Several people I know have gotten it from their grandchildren.  Kids are exposed the most, I think.  Both sides of my family have had kids sent home to quarantine because someone at school tested positive.

Every disaster movie ever filmed started with the government ignoring some science.  Ah well, soon we'll be able to get a vaccine.  Am I the only person who shudders every time they show needles going into arms on TV??  UGH!!

Decoration is happening today.  The Inspector General brought all the boxes in from the garage, and set up the tree.  He stopped for a break.  I wonder if he thinks he's done??  LOL!

Happy holidays, and only two more weeks to Christmas!

Rock on...

Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

I have a pretty good life.  I am thankful for many, many things in my life.  God, my country, my family, my fabric and yarn stashes, my health.  I have many things for which to be thankful.

A good education.  Grammar that is for the most part good.  Friends.  

Many, many things.

2020 has thrown a monkey wrench into the lives of everyone on the planet.

I believe that every day brings you a choice.  Many choices, actually.  You can get out of bed with a good attitude, or with a bad one.  It's your choice.  So your 2020 monkey wrench can either be a plumbers' tool or a quilt block.  One takes things apart, the other is put together with other blocks to make something.

So how is your Thanksgiving celebration coming along?  Are you making a big dinner and having family over, or will you be by yourself, or with just your household this year?

Hubby and I have seen our families during this 'Safe at Home' time less frequently than we normally would have, but that's OK.  DD and her hubby work in the healthcare system, and all of my grands are actually attending school most of the time, so that puts extra risk to all of our gatherings.

But as things are going along, normal is decidedly not always normal.  One grand got quarantined at home last Monday through the 30th of November.  We decided that dinner together, even Thanksgiving dinner (and football) isn't worth the danger so we decided to postpone it.  Almost at that very hour, the granddaughter in the other family also got quarantined through the beginning of December!

I guess the fact that I had yet to buy a turkey was perhaps a Freudian Slip.  Or my sixth sense was working in the grocery store.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to use my time to finish projects.  And start others.  And hopefully finish the ones I've started!

Here are a few things I'm working on...

This sweater is called Wave of Change.  You can find it on Ravelry.  It's knit in bulky yarn

I found a kit for an embroidered  wool table runner that I bought at the last live Wisconsin Quilt Expo in 2019.  I decided to do the embroidery in the evenings.  The light in the living room is dreadful in the fall and winter but I have a small LED lamp.  But I need the reading glasses to do this, especially threading needles!

The embroidery on the green circle with the plaid topper is seriously off center.  After I finished, I debated pulling it out and redoing it.  But the impulse faded so off-center it stays!

My Woven Ribbons quilt is back from the long-armer, so I need to get going on the binding...if I can locate it in the mess that is my sewing room. 😟

All I need to do is get myself on a regular schedule, instead of staying up until midnight and sleeping
until noon... anyone would think I was taking a page from my oldest granddaughter's book. Hey! I'm
a teenager again! Or I'm reliving my teenaged years. No, not that, I've always been an early to bed,
early to rise person, even when I was an actual teen!

Well, best to get to some of those projects!


Sew or knit on...

Fall, and the "S" Word

No, not THAT s-word, but one that can be said with the same sneering tone --  snow!

Yes, it snowed on Monday.  Not a lot, and it was melted by 11 a.m.  But it was a shock to wake up to white stuff on the grass and on my patio!

Ugh.  You know what that means -- more is coming!  Time to break out the heavier coat and maybe
some mittens or a scarf.

But then again, it's SWEATER WEATHER!!  I love sweater weather.  It means we're past the heat of summer, those 80 to 90 degree days that make everyone sweaty and sometimes cranky.  Well, in my house they do.  They prompt the debate of 'should we open windows or turn on the air conditioner?'

When we were young we didn't live in air conditioned circumstances.  I remember lying in bed waiting to melt while my body finally decided to drop off to sleep.   I never enjoyed that.  We never had enough fans for everyone's rooms.  Sweat tasted salty and the sheets were sticky.  Ugh.

I didn't live in a place with air conditioning until I got married and our apartment had central air.  What a luxury!  Until someone decided that 72 was a good temperature at which to set it!  After working outdoors all day long, it must have seemed comfortable to DH.  Meanwhile I froze, my fingers and feet were always cold.   I wore a sweater and socks, and he always asked "why are you so cold?"

Dude.  72?

Now 72 is touted as the perfect room temperature.  Who decided that?  I have no idea.

When I worked downtown the engineers loved to discuss the temperature in the office.  Our last office had a high ceilinged area, and a low ceilinged area, and the temp would vary by as much as 10 degrees.  When my boss was in the same office I was in the middle of the low ceilinged area, the warmest part.  Sometimes it was warm enough to make people a little drowsy, especially after lunch!

Once he retired and my new boss was in another state, it didn't matter at all where I sat, so I moved to what was called the High Bay Area.  The ceiling was two stories up.  There were no ceiling fans and no electric fans (or heaters) were allowed in the cubicles.  True to science, warm air rises, and the HBA was generally the cooler spot.  It was good most of the time.

The environmental engineers tried to balance out the heat and humidity.  Their theory is that 72 degrees and low humidity is cooler than 72 and high humidity.  And the 72 degree temp is OK if you're moving around, working near machinery or electronics that give off heat, or are dressed in layers, BUT if you're sitting at a desk in an open area, not moving around, it might be perceived as too cool.

Also, one guy's favorite theory was that women felt the cold less than men.  Men liked the warmer area according to his ideas.  However, I noticed that a lot of the men wore suits, the jacket of which they removed when they went into their offices.

DH and I have decided that when the heat is on, 71 or 72 is good if we're working.  73 is better for evenings when we're sitting around in our condo, with the ceiling fan reversed in the winter to direct the warm air down.  At night it goes down to 64 so I can sleep, and he turns on the heated mattress pad on his side of the bed.  In summer when the air is on, it's set at 75 during the day while we're working, then it goes down to 72 at night for sleeping.  And whenever possible we turn it off and open windows.  However I cannot sleep if it's going to be warmer than 75 overnight! (I told you about the cranky part, right??)

Even with the heat up to 73, he's colder in the winter than I am, because most of the time I wear a sweater.  And socks inside my slippers.  He goes around in a tee shirt with an open flannel shirt on top.  Not buttoned... and he will NOT wear a sweater.

Men.

So the best way to keep warm at my house on a fall evening is to knit or have a cat in your lap.

Works for me...

Blank Slate, Blank Brain

Some days that is the state of my mind.  Blank.  I get up in the morning and my only purpose is to get some breakfast and find the book I'm currently reading.

I know I'm not the only one!  We recently had a very small church quilt guild meeting, and the other ladies seem to have the same feelings.  Some of course have jobs and they have a predetermined list of things to do every day during the work week, but those of us who are retired have endless (or seemingly endless) days with which to do nothing very important.

On one hand it's a blank slate.  Write anything you like!  On the other hand there is no clue or direction, and if you're not energized it can be daunting.

I do have some volunteer jobs that are continuing even though my real part-time job is on hiatus at this time.  However most if it is done at home and on no particular weekly schedule.  And some days I find it hard to remember what day of the week it is.  Good thing my vitamin box has the days of the week on the compartments!  

What with the election going on, and TV not being on its regular schedule due to Covid and all that, I've tended to ignore the outside world a LOT.  (It used to be we watched a regular schedule of programs, so we knew it was Tuesday or whatever.)  I watch very little, and mostly record the occasional thing to watch later.  My hubby watches the news daily, several times in fact.  Mornings he says he's watching the weather, and evenings he's watching for the weather for tomorrow.

Sure.

Our church has been holding in person worship for a while now, social distanced and wearing masks to keep everyone safe as much as possible.  Recently we went back to in person Bible study.  This month's topic was what the Bible says about voting.

No candidates are being discussed, and both sides of the aisle are represented in the congregation.  The Pastor has done a magnificent job of keeping political arguments to a minimum and making discussions center around what the Bible teaches about government, leaders and the roles of Church and State.

The goal is to help people remember where they should be going for 'direction', and it's not necessarily where the world goes.  What does the Bible say about making choices.  Luckily we have good direction there.

I won't bore you with four weeks worth of theology, but what it comes down to is that we're forced to vote for sinners because what other types of people ARE there?  So we have to review ALL the information we can find on candidates, parties and issues.  Read the fine print, and learn to be discerning.  Just because you see it on TV in a 30 second commercial doesn't mean it's true.  Right?

So you go back to what you learned in school.  Listen to your conscience.  Hopefully you can discover whether the candidates are doing the same.  Weigh the

See what's true and what isn't, what meets with God's meaning for humanity and what doesn't... a hard thing.  A person can be for many of the things in which you believe and yet have a couple of opinions that just go against what you hold most dear.

If you're a one-issue voter, maybe it's easier.

Of course all politicians lie at some point or another.  They're just humans after all.

Therefore, here we are on the horns of a dilemma.  As someone in the group said, we're forced to choose between an assortment of not very good choices!  Well, how true is that?

I grew up in the 60's where the saying was 'if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem'.  Ugh, we thought we were so smart.  The older I get the harder it gets to know.  The Statler Brothers sang this line in one of their songs:

Things get complicated when you get past 18.

 

I think I'll go down to the sewing studio and do some fabric therapy.  Yeah, it must be the day I scheduled for project finishing.  I can't see anything else on the calendar!

Sew on...

A Day In The Life...

 What to do, what to do?  The whole day in front of me and nothing scheduled!!

Not today, that was yesterday, and that will be tomorrow.  And Saturday.

Today I got a haircut, and I have a meeting this evening at church.  The excitement of the day? I stopped at Starbucks on the way home from my hair appointment!

I need to make myself a work schedule.  I really do need to schedule some things.  One thing I need to find time for is some exercise... 

I'm afraid of gaining the "Covid 19".  You know, like the freshman 15 but more... like from sitting on the couch watching TV and eating snacks until midnight while watching YouTube videos about things.

Not good.

I should just make a schedule and publish it somewhere so someone holds me accountable.  

Ha!

Tomorrow I need to go down to the sewing studio and put some time on sewing labels on a fireman's jackets.  There's no real deadline, but if I don't make one up, it won't happen until I feel some pressure.

And I need to figure out how to get three or four sweaters knit by Christmas. 

Whew!  That's some pressure!!

Cook on!

Rain Again

It's raining again.  I was thinking that where the world is burning, like the West Coast, they'd probably like to have some of this rain.

I wish I could send it their way.

Miss Kitty and I are just looking out at the weather and thinking gray thoughts.  She IS gray, and I'm knitting on a gray sweater.  We need to have the indoor lights on so I can see what I'm doing.  I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere today because it's in the mid-50s F for temperature.  

It's a good day to sit and knit.

I tossed the stash today looking for some more bulky yarn in a quantity large enough to knit another sweater.  If I do that and find more bulky weight yarn, I might be able to knit the grands some sweaters for Christmas.  That's always a risky proposition because you know how kids are about clothes.  You want to dress them one way and they want to run in the opposite direction!  But I have two approved sweater patterns from the middle girls, and I'm willing to go there.

The one I'm doing is almost done.  One sleeve is nearly finished, and that leaves one more sleeve and a button band to go.  On bulky yarn at three stitches per inch gauge, that could happen this weekend.

I did find a few more yarn choices in bulky.  One is dark chocolate brown, one is deep purple.  I also found another batch of the silver gray that I'm currently using.  I would NOT knit the same sweater in that yarn unless that got the thumbs up from the girls, so I'm looking for another pattern to use.

If I could spin this, I could have some fantastic yarn!

Miss Kitty said "That's not funny!"

LOL!

Knit on...

Yesterday's Squirrel Has a Beaded Cousin

It's going to rain off and on all day today, according to the hubster/weather authority.  That's nice in a way, because it lessens the threat of guilt for doing what I really wanted to do today, which is going into the sewing room.

But then package delivery happened, and here I am at the computer talking about the day's haul. But not of sewing items, those are still on the way.  I did get beads.  I ordered some seed beads from a couple of places because I'm knitting some beaded bracelets, and they're like potato chips -- you can't do just one.  

In September when I signed up for Vogue Knitting Live and a class with Laura Nelkin on beaded knitting I just pulled some random beads out of my little stash along with some random sock yarn scraps.  Nothing really matched or had any relationship to each other.  The resulting swatch turned out to look halfway decent though -- anything blinged up looks nice I guess!

I stopped when I ran out of beads.  I guess it's sort of a pattern... I get a little 'regular' on the randomness sometimes.  That must come from living for 49 years with Mr. OCD.

So next step was ordering a bracelet kit from Laura Nelkin's website, since that's how you get the patterns, and the one I got came with leather ends with snaps inserted so it was a win-win.  I was also digging in the knitting stash and found a couple of additional LN kits that I'd purchased back in the dark ages from a local yarn shop, but was not in love with the color combos.  I don't know what I was matching when I bought those but my taste has changed. So off I went to the world wide web and bead shops on line.

I've purchased beads on line before, so I knew a couple of sources, Auntie's Beads, Shipwreck Beads, Fire Mountain Gems... Laura had warned us about shopping on line at some places, where they keep telling you "only 275 more items to get to the next discount level".  LOL!  Not really 275, but it keeps you shopping to see what happens!

The problem was that the quantities made price comparisons difficult.  Just how many #6 beads make up 25 grams?  8.9 grams?  40 grams?  Does it make them less expensive when you buy the larger package even without a discount? 

Some patterns say you need 250 beads, some say 250 grams.  If the description doesn't give a count of beads per gram, what to do, what to do?  Like the teeshirt says, you said there'd be no math!!😖

So I ordered several packages of different sizes from three sources in order to do the eyeball test, and then did the math on price per gram.  If your eyes glaze over at the mention of unit pricing, skip down to the pictures.  Laura recommended Japanese beads, so I stuck with those brands.

Auntie's Beads: I bought four different packs.  I didn't buy the same beads in each place so this is not an apples to apples comparison.  These were 25 gram packets, which was a lot of beads, and the price ended up being 11 to 13 cents per gram before shipping.  Beads alone were $12.39.  No discount was received and shipping was $3.95.  So after shipping charges were applied that made the average price 16.3 cents per gram for Miyuki seed beads, two kinds of size 6 beads and two of size 8.

Lima Beads, somewhere I'd never tried, had TOHO beads, sizes 6 and 8, and a few colors in size 3.  Size 3 is larger than size 6, and 6 is larger than 8.  I got a little wild on this order because the packages were small, so I got more colors.  (Made sense to me at the time.)  Beads added up to $22.70 for 17 vials of 8.9 grams each. That was 14.59 cents per gram, but I got a 15% discount off my first order and that brought it down to 12.75 cents.  Shipping was free on this order, I must have reached a threshold.  They also sent me a stick of red licorice.

I still have a package coming from Fire Mountain.  You have to order 14 items before any discount kicks in, and I stopped short of that.  The unit prices on what I did order went from 14.5 cents per gram for some #6 beads to 7.9 cents for some tiny #11s.  Total for beads was 31.22 or 13 cents per gram and that increased to 16.35 cents per gram after tax and shipping.  They were the only ones who charged sales tax.

The Lima Beads haul.

The Auntie's package.

So what have I learned?  Nothing too profound.  

• I like getting things in the mail.  
• You don't need to be a math genius to spend a lot of money on craft supplies.
• Beads come in dozens of different packet sizes.  
• Not every website carries every size.  I only found big #3 beads in one place.
• Discounts are enticing but can lead you to overspend.
• There are a LOT of beads in even an 8.9 gram tube!
• I'm not counting individual beads.  It's like guessing how many jelly beans are in a mason jar.

Craft on...

Squirrel!! Squirrel!!

It seems like every day I wake up with a plan.  I know exactly what I want to do today.

And then... 

Yesterday was laundry day.  On Mondays I generally do the laundry and while it's running I stay upstairs in the area of the laundry room and do some computer work or clean and when that's done I can read or knit until the laundry is done.  We generally have only three or four loads, depending upon if it's the week to wash the bedding.  But with each load taking an hour, that shoots the day.

This past week, I started the laundry, but the computer was down in the kitchen, so after I cleaned upstairs, I went into the second bedroom to look for some yarn for a project I had in mind for a Christmas gift.  

Two hours later, after the washer had chimed twice and then given up, I had three bins of yarn on the floor and was deep into pulling three OTHER projects and reorganizing the bulky yarn.

THEN I had to put it all back.  LOL!

The good news is that I DID find a project I could start and that will knit up quickly, since it's bulky and I'm knitting a size small.  However... 

Well I did manage to finish the laundry except for the towels which are sitting in the dryer one day later, just waiting for me to come back to fold them.

Then I pulled out a bunch of yarn that was gifted to me two houses ago, when I was still working so at LEAST two years ago.  It's 100% acrylic, from a chain store, and was part of a haul from a co-worker whose mother had it for a number of years before she developed dementia and could no longer knit.  It's smelling a bit oily and it feels like it's coated.  I think old acrylic yarn sometimes starts to deteriorate when it's binned in plastic, and it develops a funky feel.  When that happens, it just needs to get tossed.

Which breaks my heart, but it's too icky to use, and why inflict it upon someone else who might buy it at the Goodwill??  Just grit your teeth and toss!  In my defense I didn't spend any money on it.  Does that help?

After a trip to the freezer to pull out something for dinner, I remembered to bring up the pile of pillow cases I sewed last week.  (I forgot to bring up the box of staples I pulled out of the downstairs desk though.)  DH claimed the Badgers one for his pillow.  The others are now in the closet.  Some could end up being gifted, since they're kind of juvenile, IMHO.  :-)

In case you thought I forgot about the title of this post, I came upstairs with nothing from the freezer.

We ordered a pizza delivery.

BTW did you know there is a shortage of pepperoni due to covid?  I did not know that before yesterday... but my cousin posted to FB that she could not find something in the store and that sparked a discussion of random shortages.

   

Evidently it's aged sausage like pepperoni and salami, artificial sweeteners that go into diet soda, and canned pumpkin in my area.  Thanksgiving is going to be a bummer if the pumpkin thing is true.

This weekend had me thinking about the pumpkin cranberry muffins that I used to buy from the coffee shop where I worked, back when I actually went to an office.  They were over a dollar each back then and probably had a calorie count that was triple digits, but they were so delicious.  I would drive downtown for one of them right now, if I knew I could get one.

Let's research recipes for cranberry pumpkin muffins...

It's after twelve, what was I going to do today??

Bake on...