Success @ Work!

YAY! I’ve been feeling pretty bad about work lately, for months if I’m honest, and last week it all started to turn around. I ran a successful program for eight participants, EIGHT! That is the biggest turnout since before Covid19 and I am just absolutely delighted. The presenter who was supposed to run it had to bail on me because she got Covid and has to quarantine and recover. I said “no worries, I got it, I hope you get well very soon.” and then quietly panicked for a bit. We made gnomes and gingerbread men and it went well. ^_^

That was all Friday last week. Saturday I put in my December book order, planned 3 continuing programs for January and beyond, created flyers for the programs and a calendar of events for January, and basically just set myself up for success in the new year as much as I could before taking my upcoming vacation. Well, vacation time, we’re not going anywhere, I’m just going to freaking relax. Anyway, at this point I am feeling pretty good about being able to take the time off and just chill and not worry too much about work.

My son and I are planning the menu for Yule/Christmas and getting ready for some pre-holiday baking. My grown kids and husband put up the tree last night and we’ll be decorating/lighting it soon. I’m planning on games, movies, and other little activities to make the season bright. Here’s hoping we all have a happy holiday season and good health and happiness in the coming year!

Winter Crafts & Update

I am still alive. Suffering near constant headaches and dealing with digestive issues often is not a lot of fun but I am doing the best I can, trying to stay positive, and keep on keeping on. I’m behind on holiday baking, haven’t started, and struggling with certain chores. My crafting is almost on track though, so let’s celebrate that. Here are a few of my projects:

My first few gnomes, some felt xmas trees, and my first attempts at Scandi-inspired ornaments.

This Friday I will be making gnomes and gingerbread men with the teens & tweens at the library. My instructor had to cancel as she has come down with Covid. Yikes, she was fairly careful and still got it. Scary as I am fairly careful and do not want to get it. Anyway, she is a great instructor as was bringing all the felt and scissors, needles, thread, threaders etc. So now I am raiding my stash and what the library has and we will have to make-do. The worst part will be the kids having to make-do with ME as an instructor, I am not good at it. So, I have simplified the projects and will be providing some already cut pieces for them to work with in case I can’t explain anything… which it pretty likely. On the plus side I supposedly have 6 kids showing up to this so, wow. That hasn’t happened since before the plague!

Anyway, my head is pounding and everything hurts so I’ll leave it at that. I hope you are all well and staying healthy.

Zombies!

Hello to any who might still check this blog. I am still alive, though suffering a flare up of an existing, exhausting condition. It’s been over a week of not being able to work and getting very little done. It’s demoralizing. Anyway, I am looking ahead and hoping next weekend will see enough of an improvement that I can run my zombie workshop at the library. I don’t think I’ve shared many of my zombies, probably should have checked before posting but this headache means I am not going to so, here are some of the little blighters.

I like the green ones best and I like the little guy in overalls w/ the yellow shirt the very best. His name is Slurpie and I love him. I’m realizing that I need to pay more attention to the goofy gore and make sure all my zombies actually have some zombie features beyond just the eyes. Some of them don’t obviously look like zombies and that is a shame.

I’ve also made, using the basic zombie template, Drizzt for my husband’s birthday.

Abandonment & Update

Yep, I have practically abandoned this poor little blog. At first I was too busy posting on on my Pathfinder Pictograph blog but lately we haven’t been gaming much and I haven’t been posting there as a direct result.

So, for the past several months I’ve been working, gaming in other games somewhat, and mostly creating art. My scribbles during the Age of Ashes run are fun and all but that has become so infrequent that it just doesn’t bleed off any of my mad urge to create anymore. In my work as a teen librarian I do a fair bit of creating as I try out potential crafts to see if they are something I can run as an outdoor workshop or a take-home craft for the teens. I have so many ideas right now and I doubt many of them will see the light of day as Covid 19 the Delta variant seems to be gaining momentum. *sigh* Take home crafts will likely be the order of the day again before long.

We did get to hold one craft outdoors in person so far, we made little fish out of felt and stuffing and such. It was fun so I got out a zombie kit someone gave me a long time ago. The zombie design was terrible just… awful. So I used the materials from the kit to make something more appealing. A cuter zombie.

The one in the middle is the first felt zombie I designed using the materials from a kit. I then made the one on the right with my own supplies and a little from the kit. Zombie # 3 on the left is a little construction worker zombie I designed and created and from that point on I went hog-wild and created 12 more zombies over the past week or 2. I’ve just been designing and sewing up a storm. I’m having an absolute blast! Each zombie is unique and as I go I have greatly expanded the kinds of feature I can add. I love this so much. I’ve also been keeping a sketchbook, current pages include a fair number of zombie or zombie-related sketches, but I’m having a lot of fun. I store my horde in a little Estee Lauder … bag/case-thing which I think is hilarious. Super fashionable zombie horde transport for the modern necromancer on the go!

Future plans obviously involve a zombie workshop or take-home craft. Yeah. It’s hot and muggy here, well, the temp has dropped to reasonable but the humidity is still murderous. Anyway, I am still alive and keeping busy. Be safe.

i am a gemini=full of contradiction

note; please excuse lack of capitals and a partial lack of proper punctuation. my laptop is being a beast.

i aspire to live in a tiny home. it’s insane how drawn i have been to this idea since the very first time i came across it and yet it may not be something i could actually live with. on the one hand, i can see paring down on many, many possessions. i can see getting by with minimal kitchen gear that all nests together as much as possible, minimal dishes and cutlery/utensils, no problem. minimal wardrobe wouldn’t be an issue for me, i could digitize the movies and shows i ‘need,’ i already use a little laptop not a big desktop, i can totally see minimizing down to essential towels, bedding etc, i can see one day living with just a single cat or smallish dog instead of constantly cohabitating with a minimum of 3 furry fellow-travellers. shoes are not an issue. i can get by with a single pair for each function; snow boots, hiking boots, sandals, work shoes, and one dressy pair. i don’t even need a bunch of make-up i wear it maybe a few times a year. i’m sure there are other areas i could easily pare down as well, but…

it all falls down when i consider;

books. i have lots and i am forever acquiring more despite my best intentions. i have a nook, and there are many books i could handle having only digitally… but i ‘need’ a shocking number of books as physical objects. i love them so completely. books.
art supplies. paints, canvases, sketch books, colored pencils, bags crammed with odds and end i intend to use in some nebulous future project, adhesives, brushes, etc etc etc. it is hard to imagine paring it all down enough to keep in a tiny home.
crochet and knitting gear. holy crap. i have lots. lots. i can honestly see paring this particular hobby down a fair bit, getting rid of items i don’t really need, of which there are many. this one might be doable; a single bin of yarn, a basket for scraps and all the hooks and needles.
also sewing stuff. i have a sewing machine, a serger, and tons of fabric and hand sewing items too. just the basics of this one is fairly bulky.
games and gaming books, minis etc. we have a lot. we have several game platforms and tvs for video games, multiple bookshelves of rpg books, endless, boundless bins and bins of minis, etc. plus board games, card games and on and on. we could probably halve the amount without pain but it would be awfully difficult to divest ourselves of much more than that.
fandom stuff. yeah….. i do not, we do not, have a vast epic collection of museum worthy, collectable amazing fandom stuff, but we do have more than it seems at first glance. i have made tons of cool harry potter/hogwarts stuff for wearing, decoration etc. i have tardis string lights and a dalek pepper pot. in brief we have; marvel stuff, star wars stuff, doctor who stuff, game of thrones stuff, star trek stuff, fruits basket stuff, ruroni kenshin stuff… and many, many more. how would i even begin to pare that stuff down…

plus, i keep a lot of food on hand in case of emergency/illness/etc. i am not sure how low i could manage and not induce anxiety in myself. i tend to have at least a few months worth of food on hand. they wouldn’t be the best months we ever got through but we damn sure wouldn’t starve.

oh, and stuffed animals, using the term very loosely, i have more than would likely be great in a tiny house. henry, rocket, cap, and yix all live in the bedroom and i have a doll crib overflowing in the hall with more. i have pared down in that area, wildly. my remaining collection is ‘bare-bones’… for me.

so i want to live a minimalist lifestyle in a tiny house …but… i will also need another tiny house for my books, another for arts and crafts, and we’ll need a dedicated gaming tiny house as well.

yeah.

sigh.

i think that many tiny houses probably equals pretty much a regular house.

disappointing.

Snag

My idea of reopening my shop in March has hit a snag. Well, snagS, to be honest. A lot has been going on in my world.

Ramping up crafty productiveness made me suddenly decide to make my first sweater… I think. I have vague memories of maybe trying before? Eh, likely not terribly successful, or why isn’t my wardrobe chock-a-block with cute sweaters I made? So, I found a tutorial for a super cute sweater I totally want to wear ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYHF8e8q1hY&list=LL&index=4&t=14s ) and bookmarked it. Then I searched for “super easy beginner sweater tutorial” and landed on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xl-O8RC_g8. So, I made a sweater. Not just any sweater, MEGA SWEATER. It is huge! I didn’t actually watch much of the tutorial, I used the linked text pattern, if there was a swatch/scale I missed it completely. My sweater is unstoppable.

It’s so huge I couldn’t get it all in one shot.

That ate up basically all my free time for a week. On the plus side it could be layered over the most massive of other sweaters. (Mega Sweater has no equals.) Yeah, so I’m calling it a modest success and a great learning experience. Meanwhile I have moved on to making the next sweater and I did do a swatch and it worked out fine. I’ve finished the front piece and started the back.

Despite my efforts with the swatch it is clearly wider than intended…

There will be some scalloping added in the neckline and I hope to use it to make the sweater more reasonable. If it comes out really wonky I am considering trying again with different yarn and hopefully whatever lessons I learn/knowledge I get from this first try. Crochet is tricky! But I’ve had it with being afraid to try things. Fuck it! Life is not a dress rehearsal.

I also got side tracked making a baby present for my beloved boss. She’s having her first baby like any minute now and I wanted to make something nice as I know she appreciates heartfelt handmade items. I made these adorable stars that were going to be a mobile but ended up being a wall hanging. and it looks like “insert pic into text” is just a well-oiled machine! Anyway, she loves it and already hung it near the crib. I’m glad I went with ‘wall hanging’ because she is making a mobile. Here’s a bigger pic:

These little things are fun and easy to make. Fast too!

So, I still have a couple of weeks, or more if I open later in March, to get things done. I have several pairs of mittens that need liners, (that I still need to make) a basket full of cloth waiting to be made into cloth napkins, a couple of boxes filled with handmade envelopes, and lots of plans to make more mittens in new and exciting colors. I’m just not sure I will get enough done to be ready to actually open. The liners are a big project as are the napkins and our place is currently cluttered all to heck since I haven’t been able to purge things we don’t need for almost a year. I really need to box up major amounts of clothes, books, etc and get them to the thrift shops to find new homes. It’s getting ridiculous. No, I won’t soon be seen in an episode of “Hoarders” but clutter is basically everywhere at this point and no room really looks nice anymore. Yeah. I need to get to work on the clutter even if it has nowhere to go. I need to figure out something to do with it all!

quiet

I went quiet for a while.

Life was so stressful after the attempted overthrow of our Democracy, I was so worried all the time, then things moved ahead mostly as they should and I was weird and jittery for a bit. But I am still here. I couldn’t write, I wasn’t feeling it, I read instead but also did a lot of other things.

I am upping my Game Master game, trying to get better at running combats, better at Roll20.
I’ve been gaming a lot. I average about 3 or 4 RPGs per week including the one I am currently running.
I learned how to crochet a Magic Circle so now I can crochet amigurumi better, and mittens, etc.
Mastered the “half double crochet” stitch. You’d think that would be a single stitch but no… anyway, I finally got that one!
I have been making amigurumi stars, bees, etc
I am attempting my first sweater, I think it’s my first sweater, I forget a lot of stuff these days. LOL
I’ve been doing my usual stuff too and working.

So yeah, still trying to level up and become a more competent human!

New Year 2021

My Goals for the new year are simple, straightforward, and poorly defined.

Become more physically active
Successfully garden
Eat more fresh veggies
Gain more competence at my job

I could add a million more. After the disaster that was 2020 there is virtually no area of my life that couldn’t stand to see some improvement. I think I might try to get my feet under me on 3 of the goals I’ve listed (gardening needing to wait for spring and all) and then add other goals like my perpetual decluttering, reading more, reinstituting date night, etc. Seriously, there are so many, there is no end to things I need to be doing.

With my goals in mind I have naturally been focusing on watching videos on Youtube and crocheting mittens. I just gotta be me… I guess. The more mittens I make the more I consider reopening my Etsy shop. I started out this kick just making a couple of pairs for my daughters and kept going with the idea of just busting my yarn stash. (using up fairly small amounts of random colors and such) I’ve made 6+ pairs since Xmas and now I’m looking at the possibility that, if I can keep crafting at some sort of steady pace, it might be worth it to open my little shop again. I don’t know, maybe.

2020 winding down

hi there, my computer has decided that the function of shift keys is entirely optional so there will be no capital letters and some of the punctuation i want to use will be unavailable. yeah, so 2020 comes to an end taking my ability to capitalize with it. lol.

what i’ve been doing lately. since xmas i’ve been crocheting mittens/making super mittens. i’ve got two pairs crocheted and another almost half done. i still need to make liners and stitch them in. i’m sort of toying with the idea of turning on the lights at my etsy shop again. i’ve been gone a while. i’m also reading, of course, two excellent so far books; the angel of crows; by katherine addison, and the beast of the stapletons; by james lovegrove. i am loving them. i’ve also been watching and rewatching a ton of liziqi videos and a little series on youtube called that chapter.

tonight i worked for the last time in 2020 and heard the sad news that a patron’s father has just died of covid 19. awful. My brother in law has it now and so far he’s ok… oh look, it capitalized something! Oooo and exclamation points are back. Excellent. I refuse to retype this whole entry.

I’m thinking about my resolutions for the new year and trying to remain hopeful that 2021 will be a much better year than 2020. I don’t know about doing an end of the year recap, I kind of just want to move forward without looking back at this point. Maybe I will recap the good, try and glean something positive from 2020, and build upon whatever I can salvage from this garbage fire in 2021. I’ll post some pics and do a real entry sometime soon. Be well.

Busy and Grateful

I have to say one thing for the pandemic. Between my caution that severely limits the buildings and stores I will enter and the scalper’s prices a lot of craft items go for online, not to mention shipping charges and the potential for delay, I find myself giving very serious consideration for the supplies I already have. I’ve been making Super Mittens for my girls the past few days and I had to go to my yarn stash to do so. Limited amounts of various colors in the worsted weight category made me decide to use 2 colors per mitten/pair creating the body of each mitten in one color and the cuff in another. The lack of access to all my usual choices forces me to be creative and it is a great stash buster assisting me in using up stray balls of yarn and other supplies that have been hanging around. I’m also getting to projects I’ve been procrastinating on. I finally made the napkins for Harry Potter Xmas.

I also find myself appreciating what we already have more than I used to. I misplaced a pair of mittens in the grocery store on a rare in-person run for a few items, and I felt just awful about it. They are not the best pair of mittens or anything, I made them from a felted wool sweater and lined them with fleece cut from old PJ pants all acquired through thrift shops (over a year ago at least). They hit the magic sweet spot of being cheap, homemade, and recycled all at once. And they’re cute. I left a note with customer service and they called after a few hours. The mittens are safe at home again and I promise you, I will be much more careful with them in the future. Our dog also did some damage to the quilt I had on the bed and I thought the only replacement I had was languishing in the laundry room but I found a third bedspread I had completely forgotten about in the hall closet! And again it is cute. Why do I have so many bedspreads? Oh yeah, in the before time I used to thrift a lot and having pets means needing back ups of such things.

We are so, so lucky. We have so far gotten through this pandemic pretty ok. I mean, there’s definitely increased anxiety and stress, we feel uncertain about the future, worried about getting Covid 19, nervous about what may happen to our jobs, and the kids… All adults now, one in his senior year of HS, not able/willing to work because of scarce jobs & jobs they could get would be risky Covid-wise. Their lives are on hold. The girls are waiting for it to be safe to go job hunting again, for it to be safe to work again. We are a million times lucky that we’ve hung onto our house where there’s room for everyone and that we are still paying our bills, getting food on the table. So far we are still employed as long as that holds true we should be ok. My middlest child hasn’t had any min-painting commissions in a long while, not surprising, but she found a little place for herself online where she can use her creativity to make at least a small amount of money. I’m very proud of her for that and I hope that it boosts her self-esteem.

The bare fact that I can find any positives this year is amazing and speaks to how very fortunate we’ve been. I know people who are doing better than we are and some who are doing worse. It’s a mess out there and we are all hoping big for a much, much, much better year in 2021. I have never wished away a year so hard as this one. But, I have much to do before the new year and only scant few days to do it in. Be well. Stay safe.