A Month at the Beach

2025 did not get off to a great start for us; I had to right away contend with some family drama in my own home, and then our brother-in-law fell gravely ill, was moved to hospice and passed away in Tampa. Other issues I'd rather avoid talking about did not contribute anything positive.

Stress causes my arthritis to flare up, as does having to travel long distances, and my hands quickly bore the brunt of that. Since crochet is the one fiber art I can do even when my hands hurt, I looked for and found a free pattern online and decided to make a throw for myself.

I have tons of thrifted yarn, of course, so I didn't buy any new for the project, but instead shopped my stash for the colors I wanted. I imagined a throw like sitting on beach sand and watching the tide come in.

The pattern seems challenging but is actually pretty simple, and soon I was able to work on the throw without having to think about it.

Every night I spent a couple of hours working on it, which helped me deal with the stress and find my calm again.

The colorblock palette may seem a bit weird, but it is how I see the beach when I'm sitting on the sand. I loved every minute I spent on this project.

The end result. Couldn't be happier with it, and by making it I saved fourteen skeins of thrifted yarn from the landfills.

Comments

Stuff

After finding this Caron one pound skein of lovely peach yarn in my thrifted lot I raided my stash for two cakes of Mandala in Pegasus, which matches it perfectly. For practice and hand therapy I'm going to make another Worth Street Afghan with this free pattern , but this time I'll use the yarn that was recommended for it plus the one pound skein. I'm not quite ready to do the vintage/recycled linen quilt I had planned (still a bit too nervous about the idea), so I'm going to use some color therapy and make a quilt from these thrifted green fat quarters. I considered doing another Yellow Brick road patchwork pattern, but I might go with a split rail fence like this one.

Better than Fried

I cut some chives from the kitchen garden to make garlic-chive baked fries for dinner. This is a great side dish for veggie burgers. Click here for the recipe from Taste of Home.com.

The Mercantile

If you don't mind walking 33K square feet in retail space, The Mercantile may be the vintage/arts store you'd enjoy visiting if you're ever in Orlando. I certainly did. Because it was busy I didn't take any photos in the store, but it's absolutely amazing and chock full of antiques and artisan creations, most of which were pretty reasonably priced. For $21.00 I invested in a picture of sailboats for the guest bathroom I'm redoing, and a fairy mystery jar of cool stuff. The jaw was hand-painted and decorated, and utterly charming. I think I wanted the jar more than the contents. As you can see the contents were both generous and pretty cool, too. I finally have some vintage gloves to use for my art quilter bingo challenge!

Rayen

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