More Activity to Come!

I've been taking it ridiculously easy this past year.

My wrist was really giving me trouble and I wanted to be absolutely sure it had time to heal before I started moving forward with projects again. While all that happened, I've graduated with my Masters degree and started my first real full-time job, so there's been a lot of changes on this end. Further complicating things, the majority of my yarn stores are on the opposite coast from me, so it's no so simple a task these days to pop into my room and grab the skein, stuffing, or embellishment I want.

However, I think it may just have been a repetitive stress injury instead of full-blown carpal tunnel, so I've been trying to pick back up to a reasonable project pace. One of my goals for 2016 is to complete at least one project a month--and I'm on track so far! I feel guilty for having neglected this log of mine, so I'm adding onto that goal that I'll have to update within a week of completing the project AND clear out this backlog of completed projects I've got. From 2 years ago. I'm awful.

But that'll change.

2016-02: Unkillable Cacti Project

Since my roommates and I moved into our apartment in September 2014, we've tried to keep plants.

We inherited Frank the aloe vera from previous roommates. He lived in the kitchen window for maybe four or five months. I noticed one night the plastic bag we had him on was moving and promptly discovered our kitchen windows had no seals. Of course, by then it was too late.

I bought Hilda the bromeliad to try and replace him. She did pretty well, even after being mailed from Home Depot. She had a gorgeous red bloom and everything. And then one day she just fell over. Root rot.

We planted some columbines. They never sprouted.

Going into the 2015 holiday season, we stopped in Home Depot on a whim to escape the cold while walking around the shopping center and came out with Doug the Irish redhead cactus and Opal the little lady orchid. The radiators in our apartment are too high, and when we're not home to open the windows, it's often 90 degrees inside. Opal bud-blasted while we were gone over Thanksgiving, then dropped three of her six leaves. I took her to work for a stable environment. When I got back from my brief trip home for the holidays, one of Doug's three heads was covered in white and starting to deflate. I dug it and its rotted root out, treated what was left with cinnamon, and carefully observed and dosed the two remaining heads with soapy water spritz from a spray bottle to fight the mealy bug. The rest was gone within two weeks.

Long intro aside, I decided it was time to give my roommates plants our apartment couldn't kill. I was stumbling around the Internet and came across a bunch of crochet catci patterns and knew I'd be making those immediately. I cranked them out in less than a week to have them as Valentine's Day gifts, stretching my available yarn and stuffing to their limits.

Most of our guests don't even realize they're fake until the cacti come up in conversation. One of our neighbors recommended we put googly eyes on them. I'd do it in the future.

I followed the patterns, but I adjusted for smaller yarn weight and hook size, and often went by what the product looked like than what was prescribed. I find these are very freeform and very easy to make granted you have a little bit of yarn, a little bit of stuffing, crochet hooks, and a yarn needle. I did have to run to the craft store for the tiny clay pots, but they're cheap. I opted to super glue them on because that was what I had, but hot glue probably would work better, especially for ones that aren't spherical--I had to stuff the pot for the three-prong cactus because it didn't sit on the rim of the pot like the others did, and that pressure kept overcoming the bond between yarn and pot.

2016-01: Sharks Bowties

When I went to Strand in New York city, I picked up a book full of crochet patterns. Over the summer of 2014, I asked my mother to pick a pattern she liked and for her friend to pick a pattern she liked so that I could make the both scarves. I started on my mother's then, got about six inches into it, and just didn't pick it up again. It wasn't a hard pattern, but it was a time-consuming one, and it wasn't great for my wrist.

I didn't touch them again until August of 2015, when I brought the yarn back with me. My mother's is still sitting on my dresser, but when I couldn't figure out a holiday gift for my mother's friend that year, I decided it was finally time to crank out her scarf. I started it around Thanksgiving and had two false starts before I really got going, but again, it got pushed aside and pushed aside.

I finally picked it back up on my 6 hour flight home for the holidays and got about half of it done. I did not finish it in time to give it to her (and was really lame about giving her the false start as a teaser). I finished all but the final touches, of course, on the plane back across the country. It took me another two weeks to finally put the finishing touches on it, which my mother later helped me decided were misguided. She took it back home with her to give to her friend after a visit in February, promising to cut off my misguided decorations before doing so.

Anyway, this scarf was done with sparkly teal yarn and a bowtie pattern. It's simple single crochet the whole way through, but most doesn't build off the previous row, instead leaving chains that get gathered to form a window with a bowtie in it. I added thick black, teal, and orange tassels to seal the deal.

The original iteration used black yarn on the bowtie gathering portion, but that just looked like margarita glasses. My solution was to tie black thread around the "knot" of the bowties, but that just looked awful, and my mother promised to remove them with a seam ripper before gifting the scarf (I tied one on each side of the bottom five bowties, double-knotted, so there was no way I was getting them off any other way).

Bottom line, I got my first monthly project of 2016 done.

Pictures to come!