Create 365, second set

Things are crawling along. The first thing which has become evident (and should be a no-brainer) is that to be productive, I need to be more organised. It's one thing to sit down for 10 minutes to knock out a pair of earrings, but if I can't quickly find the beads I have in mind for them, I can spend 30 minutes or more looking. Which is exactly what I ended up doing for the pair I made. The idea was to make earrings to sell but I love these too much.

The second thing is a question of when, exactly, I have created, made, recycled, upcycled, whatever. So I'm making that up as I go along.

What do you do when you have old jersey, not right to make a t shirt bag, no more space for dusters, not right for flowery things? Make jersey yarn, to be crocheted into some sort of basket, bowl, bag or mat or something. The thing is, does each recycled item count? Perhaps the yarn, as a craft supply material, doesn't count until it's been made into something? I decided against these two and am counting a 'session', so one jersey long-sleeved top session, and another two sessions making yarn from seven pairs of old knickers and a pair of socks.

Talking of socks, a replacement pair of socks in what has become my 'standard' pattern, utterly in my comfort zone.

I also made the Virus shawl, for more details see this blog post.

My ridiculously long Ravelry queue contains lots of crochet block patterns, which I added for no other reason than they were pretty. I picked one and did a set of four blocks. Even though these are also an intermediate stage on their way to being something else, if I can count a jersey recycling session then I can count a crochet session.

Crochet blocks, socks, earrings and jersey yarn. The Virus shawl has already been given to a friend.

Other WIPs are trickling along. I'm going to have to pick up the pace a bit to meet my target at the end of the year!

Set 2 total: 7

Cumulative total: 14

Virus Shawl

I'd had the free pattern for this shawl queued in Ravelry for a while. It was such a popular pattern and everyone seemed to find it easy, so I thought it might be a good bet for increasing my crochet confidence.
Stylecraft's 'Cabaret' yarn, an acrylic DK plied with a polyester tinsel thread was a popular choice, so I bought three 100 g balls (a quantity recommended by others making the same shawl with the same yarn - ah, how wonderful is the Ravelry community for sharing details like this!) in the 'Rainbow' colourway, deciding this would be a Christmas-New Year 'hibernation' project. In the event, I didn't start it until early January, still intending this to be a shawl for myself.

Before Christmas, my friend Chrissie came round for a cuppa. She's had a pretty miserable year, losing her mother and learning that one of her siblings has been diagnosed with cancer. I showed her the yarn and she smiled and squooshed the ball, admiring the softness and the colours. Seriously, the photos don't do this yarn justice. It is wonderfully soft and squooshy, the colours are lovely and the tinsel thread twinkles.

As someone else commented, this yarn isn't great. I had a knot in one ball, a weird thick bit in another, and found that the rainbow inexplicably contained shades of russet and khaki green in with shades of blue, green, purple and pink, (rather than any red, orange and yellow) which didn't seem to follow a pattern. The yarn itself is a bit like a single with a loosely plied tinsel thread. The tinsel thread would break if it were tightly plied, but it sometimes snagged and pulled and I managed to break it in a couple of places. The ball band suggested working from the centre, but I couldn't find a centre-pull end easily and when I did find one, it just pulled a snarl of yarn from the centre of the ball. As others found, the balls are soft and loose, so great loops of yarn fall away from the ball until you're about half-way in. I found them quite easy to manage; even when the loops started to tangle, gently lifting and separating the yarn loops was enough to avoid knots. I doubt I would use this yarn for a cardigan, because matching stripes would be impossible, but I'm going to buy more (perhaps in another colourway) to make a shawl for myself.

Just after I started the shawl, I saw a Facebook post from Chrissie that she had lost her mother-in-law. I'd only just seen a Christmas photo, with Chrissie resplendent in a red dress, her MIL smiling at the head of the table. As I crocheted, I kept seeing Chrissie in my mind's eye, smiling as she caressed the yarn, and decided that this shawl had to be for her, with love.

It really is an easier pattern than it looks and I started to appreciate crochet in a way I hadn't before. The rhythms can be more complex than that of a row of knit or purl. Gone wrong? Just pull the stitches back to where it was right, pick up your loop and carry on. My 'Longshore' throw has been hibernating for a few years now, as I fell out of love with it, unsure of what I was doing and becoming increasingly inconsistent. I now feel I can pick it up again, even if I frog it back and redo it.

The pattern repeats over 4 main rows: create a foundation row of loops creating chain spaces, (UK) trebles in clusters in the larger chain spaces, with loops in between. The third row is trebles onto trebles and the last row is treble+chain 1, before it repeats, As I was getting to the end of the third ball, I finished up on a row 4 and went back over the edge with double crochet into each chain space, with a picot in the centre of each arc.

What do you mean, I can't sit on it?

I took a couple of photos of the finished shawl and marvelled at how light and drapey it was, working just as well as a scarf. I hadn't washed and blocked it (or taken any measurements, but it's about 1.5 metres/5 feet wide) by the time Chrissie came round in mid-January, but she was thrilled with it and immediately put it on. Smiles all round, (except for Xena with the ridiculously long whiskers, who was a bit put out that I wouldn't let her snuggle into the shawl!), job done!

Create 365: The First Set of FOs

It's been something of a slow start, despite my various WIPs and UFOs. And yet, this is a learning journey as well as creative exploration.

The first FO (finished object) was to create space, have a bit of a clean and tidy, and decorate for Christmas. Even though this is only a temporary thing, it counts as a creation for me; with no friends or family visiting, it would be so easy not to decorate. Putting up the tree and some decorations, if only for myself and for a couple of weeks, gets me out of my rut a little and creates some seasonal cosiness. There is a nostalgic sweetness in unpacking the decorations; some of the baubles are at least 45 years old! It also meant that I took the time to swap around a cupboard and a bookcase, which I've been meaning to do for months, and which makes the living room look a little larger. The decorations are now down and put away again, except for the cards, which I shall come to soon.

The first set of Create 365 FOs

In mid-December I started a pair of plain socks in Stylecraft Head Over Heels 'Etna', because I'd made a pair to sell and loved the yarn colours, so wanted a pair for myself. Having finished them and unable to resist, I made another pair (King Cole Zig Zag 3158 Pinecone, a blue/brown print). The burgundy print socks are the 'desk drawer socks' I made a back in 2014 (blog post here)  which needed some mending at the angle of the heel and instep.

The next item on the bottom row is the 'Wellen Baktus' (Wavy Baktus) scarf, which was technically finished before the start of Create 365 (so it doesn't really count). I had intended to use the faulty dyed, white bits of yarn I'd cut out as I was knitting to create a couple of tiny snowflakes, one for each end, but there wasn't enough yarn even for a couple of tiny pom-pom snowballs. So it's finished except for a hand-wash to test for fastness.

The silvery blob in the lower right corner is a little cork/bottle topper tree. I made a few of these in King Cole Tinsel Chunky for the craft market in mid December, but forgot to write down what I did, so I made another and wrote it down before I forgot! I'll write up the pattern and find out how to list it on Ravelry as a separate 'creation'.

Top right is a mended scarf. There is a Japanese tradition and art called Kintsugi or Kintsukoroi, of mending broken pottery with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The mend shows and is beautiful in itself, reflecting change and imperfection. Having attempted to darn the holes in this scarf (and wondering why I was even bothering, considering it's just a cheap, viscose scarf which crocks dye even after several washes) and found the loose weave just pulls apart, I decided to use a coppery metallic embroidery thread and cover the holey areas with chain stitch. I could never darn this to disguise the holes and make it look perfect again, so the embroidery both mends and embraces the imperfection.

Centre back, an attempt at a crochet motif. The brushed acrylic yarn was donated, and I thought I might use it to make some sort of crochet, snowflakey baby blanket, but I lost patience with the catchy yarn (and I needed to use a larger hook, but that's already in use for something else). So the motif, and the yarn, can be donated to the Yarn Bombers. No doubt they will be able to create something wonderful. #alwayslearning #lifestooshort.

Back left, a 200g ball of super-chunky acrylic, which is also destined for the Yarn Bombers, as it will make a nice something-or-other, like a tree trunk out of a lamp-post. I experimented with seed stitch and linen stitch and different needle sizes and stitch numbers to make a rufty-tufty, manly cowl, but found the yarn colours too drab and the yarn made my eyes itch!

I need to pick up the pace, but can't spend all day crafting!

Total so far: 7

Happy New Year 2019

Here we go again!

Looking back over 2018, it wasn't as great a year as I'd hoped. It was supposed to be a year of changes, but it doesn't seem like much has changed. Even the fireworks picture feels a bit 'same old ...'. Will I ever feel as though I've got my life together?

The United Nations have declared 2019 to be the Year of Indigenous Languages, so I'm quite surprised not to have heard or seen a peep out of the Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society).
2019 is also due to be the international year of the periodic table of chemical elements, and from Chinese New Year on 5 February, the Year of the Earth Pig/Boar. I wonder what it will have in store for this metal ox?

I didn't manage to put my Christmas decorations up any earlier than Christmas Eve.
I got closer to side-sit/jazz fourth but haven't managed to do it properly (yet!).
I had to get a new computer when my old one went phut and am still getting used to it. So much new stuff to learn!
The house and garden seems as chaotic as ever, possibly even more so.
I'm still scarcely earning anything.

Looking forward, this is going to be the year of changing my beloved old TARDIS of a Fiat Panda 4x4 for something else. I realised last year that I had absolutely no idea of what makes and models were out there, and the jargon that goes with them. I had people saying 'oh, you'll be looking for a city car, perhaps a CX1'. What's a city car? What's a CX1? I've done a lot of reading around and now know the answers to these questions. I also did a lot of soul searching, because running a car is expensive, both financially and ecologically. People who live and work in cities might decide that they could live without one, and hire one occasionally. In Wales, that's only about 25% of the population. The rest of us rely on personal transport so that we can live efficiently. The amount I would spend on buses doesn't bear thinking about, because I know I would not be able to walk into Haverfordwest or Milford, much less carry the shopping back.  Could I manage with only a bicycle? I wouldn't be able to teach without a car, or do WI talks, Not that I can find enough interest for classes, and this is the first year in several which I've started without any WI talks booked.
I've already been car-shopping locally and there isn't a lot to choose from in my price range which isn't a little gutless city-car runabout.

It's also going to be the year the UK leaves the EU. I'll be dressing in black on 29th March, our planned leaving date. It will contrast nicely with my flaming cheeks. I'm so embarrassed to be British.

What else? My 'Create 365' project. Finishing the JWAAD 'understanding music used in belly dance' course. Getting an editing qualification, perhaps, at last? Doing some belly dance workshops, if I can find anyone who wants to and is available?

Trying to keep calm and carry on. We'll see how this year unfolds!