Of Kork

On the second day of March I overslept. I spent ten hours sleeping, which is very unusual for me. This is because I've suffered from insomnia most of my life, but since making significant changes (like acquiring my current day job, which allowed me to escape all the toxic people I had to deal with in my old job) I sleep much better. These days I usual manage six or seven hours sleep, and if I'm very lucky eight. But ten? I sleep that much only a couple times a year, and generally only when I'm sick.

Dreams might be to blame. I remember the night was filled with them, all lovely. I traveled across Europe, I walked the streets of old cities and met lots of interesting people. In one city I stopped by an engagement party where a very attractive couple were exchanging signed contracts. The groom showed me his, and I read these words: "Course shall become Kork." I understood then that they meant to be together forever, and that it was a reincarnation contract they were exchanging, so they could find each other in the next life. There's a story to write right there.

I've been told you can't read words in dreams, but I can in mine. Maybe a lifetime of reading and writing huge amounts every day make it possible for me.

I have a lot of wonderful dreams at this point in my life, and I really loved this night's dreams, but I'm also wary of trying to spend more time sleeping. The danger with loving your dreams so much is that you can end up living in them instead of the real world, where you are wanted and needed by the people you love, and who love you.

Garden Update

It's been a while since I did a garden update, so here's what's happening: my guy is rebuilding the fence after discovering a nasty infestation of carpenter ants in the old timbers.

Thanks to a dear friend who sent me the seeds I'm growing fennel for the first time, and it's gigantic.

I'm harvesting carrots almost every day from this patch; they're small but very sweet and tasty, and go well in salads and winter dishes.

A few of our older green onion plants have bolted, and as you see here have sprouted seed heads. I'm going to try to grow some from seed.

Expectations Exceeded

The small yarn lots I won for a minimal bid last month arrived, and all of the skeins proved to be in immaculate new condition with no smell, which I always appreciate.

Here's the entire lot.

The two big skeins of chunky striped yarn are clearly marked $11.99, so there's $23.98 right there. Most of the others are acrylic or wool/acrylic blends, with a few oddballs thrown in to keep things interesting.

This skein here was marked as roving (and was purchased on sale.) The final tally was 23 skeins, and they're definitely worth at least $100.00. Since I paid only $9.99 for the lot, I'm quite happy.

Incoming

I've been pretty lucky lately at winning thrift auctions for a minimal bid, or without going over my max bid, so I have a lot to look forward to next month. This yarn lot of approximately thirty skeins was $9.99, and I'm going to share it with a friend who wants to learn how to crochet amigurumi.

I've been patiently bidding on used or open package king sheet sets (and losing) for our home. My goal was to thrift sheets in new or good condition. I spotted these brand new bamboo sheets with a $25.00 buy it now option. That's twenty dollars cheaper than I could buy them retail, so I bought them. They're cooling, so they'll be perfect for summer.

I wanted some very specific fabrics for an upcoming project that I don't have presently, so I bid $9.99 on this lot of that I estimate to be about 21 yards, and won it.

A last minute sniper almost pushed me to my max bid of $25.00 for this 15 lb. lot of quilting cottons, but I ended up the winner at $24.93. There should be 45 yards of fabric in this one.

All of the images in this post came from the original auction listings on ShopGoodwill.com.

Weekend Fair

Last month my guy and I drove to a nearby city to check out their weekend farmer's market. It was more of a food fest and craft fair, but we still had fun walking around and seeing what everyone was selling.

Prices were a bit higher than our famer's markets in the country.

I saw this bench and immediately wanted to steal it. :) To see more pics, go to my album here.

Experimenting Again

I've had this oddly colored skein of very chunky chenille thrifted yarn for a while now, and I just didn't know what to make with it. It's super bulky, which is a type of yarn I never use. Honestly, it's not that attractive, either, or I would have worked it into that Valentine's Day wrap I made. So I tossed it in my test yarn box and took it out again last month to see if I could make a medium version of the handled basket I learned to crochet from that video tutorial.

It worked up much nicer-looking in the basket form. It was also easier to crochet the basket using one strand of yarn versus three. I just left off making the handles because I want the basket to be more like a bowl, and used up every inch of the skein, so there was nothing leftover.

I do save all the little bits of scrap yarn leftover from my projects, so the basket works nicely for that.

Story's End

Bianca, my rescued moth, died three days after I found her. Seems she was at the end of her life cycle. She didn't lay any eggs in the little habitat I made for her, so I put the few on the leaf I found with her in a safe spot in the yard.

As far as we know insects don't have feelings, but I think if she did Bianca would be glad I picked her up and brought her home. No living creature wants to die alone in the cold and wet on the side of the road, crushed by a passing car or a careless foot. Actually most of the ways insects die are pretty horrible, so maybe it's best she couldn't be afraid.

Anyway. I am glad I got a chance to help her, not only because she got more time, but because it served as Zen revenge for what was done to me. One more wrong in my life set right.

Bundle Savings

I mostly live in leggings, and I've lost so much weight over the years that none of my old dress pants fit anymore. For a few reasons soon I will need some nice clothes to wear out, so I decided to thrift some pants in my current size. There wasn't anything at our local Goodwill stores, but I found a bundle online that looked in good shape, and decided to take a chance on them with a very minimal bid.

No one challenged me, so I won the bundle, which arrived a few days later.

I was really happy that my gamble paid off. All of the pants fit me, and are in like new condition. They have lables like Shein, Karen Scott and JL, and none need to be dry cleaned (always a plus in my book.) I like the colors and prints, too. The floral capris are a bit flimsy to wear out of the house, and I'm not fond of capris, so I might alter those into pajama shorts. I'd put a resale price of $35.00 on everything. I paid $6.99 for the lot. Savings: $28.01.

Image credit: the first pic in this post came from the original auction listing at ShopGoodwill.com.

Neighbors

The other day I went over to give a plant to one of my neighbors and ended up in a long conversation about our mutual worries. We're both busy and don't often get to talk, and when we do it's usually about gardening or cooking. I am not the easiest person to talk to, either, because of my hearing impairment. But thanks to the pitch of her voice I can hear her just fine.

We spent about a half-hour discussing our worries, and in that time managed to reassure each other about a lot of things. I've always known that my guy and I can look after ourselves under most circumstances, but it's good to know the neighbors can, too.

My guy and I live a very quiet life, and mostly keep to ourselves because that's how we are. We hope to move our disabled nephew in with us this year, and our niece just bought a house very close to us. As we've aged our family circle has grown very small. Our parents are gone, and so are most of my guy's siblings. I've ended my relationships with all the toxic people in my life. We would do just about anything for our neighbors, however, as they are very good friends of ours for going on twenty years now.

Times are changing. Most people no longer have friendships with their neighbors -- many never even bother to get to know them -- and that's a shame. If everyone could pull together in our communities during tough times (such as in the aftermath of a hurricane, as we've often done here) I think we wouldn't have as many worries as we do.

Image credit: Image by Luky Mahameru from Pixabay

Small but Perfect

Rather than big on gigantic lots of yarn, I'm now strategically thrifting smaller lots that contain very specific yarns I want, like this one.

Price was a factor for me; two of the Yarn Bee skeins are clearly marked $11.99, and I know Big Twist yarn runs about $4.49 a skein. Even the Jamie yarn has a price tag of $1.23. Yet I was also looking for colors and types of yarn. I want the Yarn Bee and Big Twist yarns because they work for specific projects I have planned. Finally quality, which is always a factor, also matters to me. The yarn all looks clean and most of it looks new.

The Aunt Lydia rug yarn runs about $3.00 a skein. I need these two skeins here for a fall project.

If I could get everything on sale, the yarn in this lot would cost me about a hundred dollars to buy new. I paid $9.99 for the lot with the buy it now option, so I didn't have to fight for it, which works out to about forty-three cents a skein. Savings: $90.01

All the images in this post came from the original auction listing at ShopGoodwill.com.

Basket 2.0

I made a smaller, tweaked version of this basket last month while watching a tutorial video by Jayda InStitches, and then thought "Why not follow along with the video and make her version?" I certainly have enough variegated yarn, and I've never crocheted something to a spoken/demonstrated pattern. So I made it.

It's all single crochet, and I can work pretty fast with even a big N hook, so it only took me three nights of work to complete. The only time I had trouble was ending the bottom and starting the sides, which I didn't understand at first, but I just watched her demo a few times on rewind and then I got it.

Using three skeins of variegated yarns in different colorways produced the interesting tweed-like effect.

Safe

My rescued moth did not pass away overnight last month, although I knew she didn't have long to live.

Healthy Virginian tiger moths only live for a week or two.

To put that into comparitive terms, one day of a moth's life is equal to about five to ten years of life for the average human being.

She's spending the end of her life resting and sunning herself in peace, protected on the back porch.

Because it was getting cold at night I made a little habitat for her so I could bring her inside.

All this for a moth I found on the road. That's crazy, right? Only something very similar happened to me some years ago. I was rendered helpless by a vertigo attack while alone on the side of a road; I literally couldn't stand up or speak coherently. A young couple pretending to help stayed with me until I passed out, at which point they robbed me of $26.00 and left me there. It was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, but people always tell me "it could have been worse." I survived, so I suppose it could have been.

Anyway. I did not leave this helpless creature to die alone on the side of the road. I gave her a safe place and hopefully more time to live, which is all any of us can hope for at the end.

Inadvertent Rescue

Last month I was walking the dogs on a chilly morning and noticed a small white moth on the road. It wasn't moving, and we'd just had two days of rain storms, so I figured it was deceased. A passing car would probably crush it where it was, and I'd never seen a moth like it. So I picked up the leaf it was clinging to and carried it home with me so I could take pics and see if I could identify it. Yes, I am weird.

Only right before I reached home the moth started moving.

The moth was still alive, and it had been laying eggs on that leaf before it fell to the ground. That amazed me, and made me feel very good for rescuing it (even though I thought it was dead.)

I carried the moth and the eggs to a warm spot on my back porch, and left them there in the sun. When I looked up white moths with those markings, I determined that it's a Spilosoma Virginica, or a Virginian Tiger moth.

Waste Not

Shifting from a buy-it-cheap attitude to thrift-everything-possible has taken me a couple of years, but in that time I've been discovering just how much we waste, especially when it comes to textiles and yarns. I've been able to thrift things that are new with tags that tell me I would have paid ten or twenty times what I did if I bought it retail, and that's always a thrill -- until I think about what a drop in the recycling bucket my own thrifted purchases are.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate being able to obtain yarn, fabric and other materials for my projects at super low prices. I'm also glad I can thrift clothes and shoes in new condition for far less than I'd pay at stores. Helping the cause by using them instead of having them end up in a landfill makes me happy, too. But there is just so much out there that gets wasted that I feel sick sometimes.

Last month I considered going to JoAnn to get a dozen green fabric fat quarters for a quilting project I want to do this summer, but instead I thrifted 15 lbs. of fabric that had a lot of green pieces in it. I paid less for that 45 yards of fabric than I would have for the fat quarters I needed, but that's not the point. Reusing, recycling, thifting and doing what I can to stop textile and yarn waste means the world to me. I want to live in a no-waste world, even if it's just my own.

Journal Lot

I finally managed to win a lot of journals from ShopGoodwill.com, and they arrived the other day.

All eight are unused and in new condition. The black one at the upper left corner here has graph paper pages, which are great for figuring out quilt patchwork designs and layouts.

One of the journals is religious-themed, and another has a cute mermaid saying in it. The rest are blank.

A big black journal that came in a box with a vinyl portfolio embossed with the name of a bank, and a nice twist ballpoint pen. I checked the manufacturer and that one retails for about twenty bucks.

I'd put resale value of the rest of the journals at $5.00 each, so the lot is worth about $55.00. I paid $14.21 for everything. Savings: $40.79

Buyer Beware

Hey, how about I start selling my own unique crochet blanket patterns? Isn't this one pretty?

How about this one? I love combining blue, green and violet.

I could make a lot of money, too. Until my customers figure out that these are AI-generated images that I made on Hotpot.ai's art-generator, and whatever pattern I include with them probably will only be a copy of someone else's pattern, or complete nonsense.

Welcome to the new age of online AI scamming.

Reputable, authentic knit and crochet pattern designers are being squeezed out by fake pattern sellers who use AI images to sell patterns that are either dupes or AI generated, too. It's utterly atrocious.

So how can you avoid this kind of thing? An experienced knitter or crocheter can usually spot faked images of finished products, as the stitches are too large and the design is unlikely or impossible. Anything that looks too good to be true generally is. Until we find some way to expose the scammers, my advice is only to buy from established designers you trust, or to use patterns that are free or published in print books.

Project Basket

I have a lot of leftover skeins of yarn from my thrifted lots. Most are not enough to make something large, and variegated yarns don't usually work for amigurumi.

If you use three different yarns together, and crochet them with an N hook, you can make a pretty basket. Mine is a smaller/modified version of this video tutorial basket designed by Jayda InStitches.

Now my leftover variegated scraps basket keeps together the bits and pieces of my amigurumi projects as I'm making them. It's also good for holding small balls or bon bons, crochet tools or anything you need to keep tidy.