Rayen

Back in April I had a lot of fun working on my fourth crocheted throw of the year, but I ran into a snag: I didn't have enough of the Lion Brand Mandala orange/white/teal yarn to make a complete throw. I decided at first to use a one-pound Caron skein in a pretty light orange color to fill in the center of the quilt. Although the Caron and the Lion Brand yarns were the same weight, they were very different. The Caron was noticeably thicker, and had an unpleasant stiffness to it that might or might not be chemicals, which often don't wash out. I ended up yanking out a row of the Caron yarn I'd added and went hunting in my stash. This time I found some other Lion Brand Mandala yarn in an orange/white/pink ombre that could work, along with scrap balls of the same. The orange and white scraps worked much better than the Caron, as they matched the orange/white/teal yarn I'd been using in thickness and softness. I weeded out the pink sections and just us...

A bunch of lovely quilts showed up on the online thrift auction at the end of April, and I decided to bid on three lots (although I was pretty sure I'd be outbid on all of them.) The first one was this velvet crazy quilt -- in need of some repairs, but the colors are gorgeous, and I don't have a velvet crazy quilt in my collection. So I bid. The second lot offered these two quilts. Both look more modern, and the green and brown quilt has what looks like a Minky backing. I like them both, so I bid. The third lot was for this vintage blue and white quilt with what looks like hand quilting. There wasn't a full pic of the quilt, so it could be a disaster, but I had a good feeling about it, so I bid. I didn't win any of them, because I wasn't willing to get in a bidding war. The final winning bids were: Velvet crazy quilt: $47.99, two quilt lot: $31.00, vintage blue and white: $97.03. Oh, well, better luck next time.

On my art quilter's bingo card I have pink only . Pink is my second least favorite color for reasons I won't get into because I'm done with all that. As I did last year with yellow I want to do something positive to help me get over my color angst, so I decided to make an all-pink art quilt this year. My idea was inspired by the École des Nouvelles Images' short film Code Rose , which really spoke to me as a Floridian, an artist and a veteran. Based on the video I came up with the above mockup. Basically I want to write a poem about my sentiments and shape it via embroidery it into the aircraft carrier, and then cover it with flamingos. It's pretty ambitious for me, but I also love the idea, so why not? I have ordered some new flamingo fabric from Spoonflower, and I'll update you all on the project when it arrives and I have a poem to share.

Back at the end of April I decided to rewatch Love Me Love My Voice , a super squeaky clean romance drama series that featured a lot of great singing and very little romance to speak of. I thought I might have been a little too harsh in my original review , but all the points I made are still true. I was quite tired of super angsty conflict-filled dramas at that time, so it was like taking a nice little vacation. I think with second rewatches of dramas I'm always more forgiving, especially with those I had problems with the first time. I know what to expect, maybe, and can focus on the better details. This drama has a super sweet, very slow burn romance between the leads that is draggy and uber Edwardian, but it's restful to watch the characters fall in love by tiny degrees. They both did a great job with their parts, too. I'm still more inclined to say the secondary romance is better than the leads, but that's because of Hou Wen Yuan, who steals every scene h...

I was looking for a pic to kick off the start of the new season today when I came across this pic of our pups during their first month with us. It's hard to believe that these little guys joined our family four years ago now. They've brought us so much happiness -- just like this season. There is no better time of the year than this one, and I hope you enjoy it, too. Happy Summer!

Back in April we discovered a fox den on one side of our property had at least one baby kit inside. This is the second time foxes have dug a den near our house; the best thing to do is just leave them alone and not let the dogs off their leashes. I was able to get a few shots of this kit by using my zoom on the camera while standing on the front porch. Baby is very cute. :)

My current day job is one that I've loved and deeply appreciated over the last seven years. I have so much creative control, I earn half of the profits my work generates and all I do is what I do best: write. Did I mention that I work with a brilliant editor who gets me, and a gifted cover artist and copy writer who always makes my books look fantastic? But like all good things, my job can't last forever. We're all seniors, you see, and someday me and my crew will wrap up the business and go off to retire, which will probably be about the time I won't have any reason to work for money any more. I should stop writing professionally then, of course. The question is, after 27 years of doing something pretty much daily, including weekends and holidays, can I do that? I think about the time to come when I don't have to get up and start my writing day with a four-hour work session, and end my day with another after dinner. I do have enough to do around the ho...

Back on March I posted about a problem I'm having with this man and his giant dog chasing after me and my pups on our morning walks. It happened again today, and to get away from him I had to go into the neighborhood next to ours, walk through two back yards and climb through a broken fence with Beau, who was terrified and resisting me almost the entire way. So now I'm going to document it every time it happens and send a letter to the HOA because at this point it's harrassment.

We went on another road trip to Brooksville to do the second half of the walking tour. If you'd like to see what we did, check out my pics here.

We spent Easter walking on Daytona Beach and hiking at Tomoka State Park. To see what we did, check out my album of pics here .

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.

I finally got a chance to measure all the fabric in the mystery patchwork lot, and it turned out to be more than I imagined. Altogether I got three yards of this gorgeous mint condtion vintage gold metallic lightning/rainbow batik fabric, which I discovered now sells for $14.99 a yard. That's $44.97 retail for just those two pieces of fabric. The fleece and flannels here totalled 5-1/4 yards. The cheapest retail price I could find for the fleece was $10.77. Flannels run about $5.99 a yard, so those two would have cost me $19.47. Much of the fabric is quilt shop quality, like this lovely yard of Robert Kaufman Fusions #7, which presently retails for $12.99. I can't put a price on the patchwork. I'm just honored that it came my way, and I'll be happy to finish it. Adding up all the measurements, the total for the lot was 28.5 yards. I'm comfortable pricing all the fabric I received at $5.00 per yard resale (as indicated above, some are worth a lot ...

Yesterday's post made me think about the other side of ageing, which is really nice for me. While it comes with lots of aches, pains, limitations and worries, I like this part of my life better than any other that came before it. It's just me and my guy now, which means I don't have to take care of any other people anymore, a daily obligation I've had since I was eight years old that only ended a few years ago. Imagine spending most of your life as a caregiver without actually choosing to do so. I still work at the best job I've ever had, and this particular job is the very best of all of those. I've ended my relationships with all the people who were toxic to me. I've come to terms with most of my own personal issues, and I'm still working on improving myself. I'm having a lot of fun with my textile art and just being myself. I even have friends who aren't using me for my connections (because I don't have any connections anymore!...

One day back in April I had a memory blip that left me a little upset; I thought I'd accidentally thrown away my medic alert cuff and a vintage bracelet I thrifted and really like. I made myself dig through the garbage can, all the while kicking myself for being so careless. I actually didn't throw them away; I finally discovered the missing items next to my laptop in the sewing room. I had absolutely no idea when I put them there, and still don't. That upset me even more. To just heap more depression atop my worries, this was also the same day I had to say goodbye to our last living cat Jericho some years ago after losing his brother Jak a few months before then. It's part of ageing, and being a pet owner, but I got very depressed, so I decided I needed some junk therapy. I asked my guy to take me to The Old Packing House in Umatilla, my favorite place to find vintage fabrics, household items, and art pieces like these two painted wooden cats ($5.00 each) tha...

Back in March my diabetes doctor changed my medication and encouraged me to alter my diet and exercise more in order to bring down my A1C, which at the time tested out at a dismal 8.3 (normal is 5.8.) So for the next two months I dealt with the increased meds, stuck to my decidedly grim diet and added a lot more walking to my exercise regime. P.S., it's never fun to be a diabetic, but over the last couple of months I've really tried to keep a good attitude about it. Attitude isn't everything, but it helps a lot when you have to make significant changes while battling a disease like this. Yesterday I performed a home A1C test, and I'm currently at 6.5. That's pretty amazing results, even for me. If I can get it down another half point before I see the doctor in July I'd be over the moon, but I feel like I've already done great. Image credit: Image by Daniele Liberatori from Pixabay

Back in April my guy and I paid a visit to Brooksville, a historic town with gorgeous houses and amazing art. To see my photos of our day there, check out my album here .

Making three different throws from thrifted yarn taught me a lot this year. While I followed a free pattern for this Ocean Tranquility throw, I used my own color scheme. so that it resembles the beach and the edge of the ocean. That was fun and gave me confidence to try more/different palettes. I'd like to make another, this time in rows of garden and sky colors. Learning new stitches has also been fun. This shell stitch variation pattern, also known as drunken granny stitch, helped me expand the range of the one-row stitch patterns I know. I'll definitely be using it again for another crochet throw project. Revisiting my crochet past has also been good for me. It was a little difficult and time-consuming, sewing together all these squares (I much prefer row patterns for this reason) and I made some mistakes with the finishing that I had to correct. Yet this brought back some good memories, too. I might make a rectangular gigantic granny square out of scrap ya...

Ski into Love appealed to me as a drama because of the snowboarding aspect; the male lead is an Olympic-level athlete who chose to retire from the sport after a serious injury. I have never been an athletic person but I do appreciate athletes and the amazing things they do. Snowboarding is also a very exciting sport to watch; much like skiing was when I was a kid. This Chinese drama is typical in some ways but unusual in others. Wei Zhi (Esther Yu) is a gifted manga artist who is forced out of her job and loses her pen name due to an enscrupulous publisher (ah, some echoes of my first career in writing! ha.) She goes to Beishan Ski Resort for reasons I'm not too clear on, where she meets coach Shan Chong (Lin Yi, who has been steadily gaining popularity as a series actor). He's the retired athlete who gave up on the sport. As he teaches her how to snowboard, she reignites his passion for the sport. Of course they fall in love. I took my time watching the 23 episodes...

I always talk about the cheapness of thrifted yarn, but I don't often mention condition as a factor. After all, most yarn that is donated is more of the old stash that was never used variety. Sometimes it does have a storage smell, or some soiling. But most of the time the yarn is in like-new beautiful condition. This is because most knitters and crocheters do store their supplies properly. Every now and then I find a few skeins at my local thrifts that are in mint condition. But this bargain lot that arrived in April was in exceptionally nice condition. In fact, it looked like it came directly from store shelves. Here are the fifteen skeins in the bargain lot that I bid on and won. All of them are worth five to fifteen times the price I paid (which is why it's a bargain.) The two skeins of cotton yarn. I've never won a lot in such great shape. I also received a lot of yarns I've never tried to use, so having that variety of fibers will let me try ne...

The k-drama Undercover High School is a series that brings a handsome spy to play a student at an elite private school where a legend about billions of gold hidden there persists. It's more silly slapstick comedy than anything, but has some surprising romantic and dramatic moments, too. Seo Kang-joon is one of my favorite Korean actors, and this is the first series he's made since finishing up his mandatory military service. He plays Jeong Hae-seong/ Jeong Si-hyun, an NIS agent who infiltrates a snobby elitist school to hunt down the gold. There are four urban legends connected to the treasure that he has to figure out, all under the too-watchful eye of his homeroom teacher, Oh Su-Ah (Jin Ki-joo) whom he eventually discovers was his elementary school love Oh Bong-ja (there's a lot of name changing in this series.) The hunt for the treasure is the highlight of this series, but the romance between the leads is cute, too (and not as taboo as you might think, given that...

When I decided to do a crocheted throw by asking AI to suggest a pattern I pulled about twenty different skeins of thrifted yarn in colors I like from my stash, and ended up using fourteen or fifteen of them (some came to me in balls, so I have to estimate here.) Again I was able to save these prefectly good skeins from ending up in a landfill, which always delights me. It's excellent physical therapy for my hands and fingers. Making the granny squares also allowed me to revisit the first crochet pattern I ever tried on my own (my grandmother taught me to use single stitch to make hats when I was very little.) It was a bit like going back to high school; I crocheted a lot in those days. I also didn't know I'd be diagnosed with arthritis in my twenties, so I had no fear or worry. I thought I could do anything if I just kept trying (which turned out to be basically true of everything I wanted to do as a youngster -- except be a ballerina, ha.) I know AI is ge...

My mystery patchwork lot kept surprising me as I sorted through the contents of the package. The original owner really loved violets and dark blues. Bright pink fleece and two flannel prints, at least a yard or two each -- I'll have to measure everything and report the numbers in another post. I got two huge pieces of a radiant rainbow batik with gold metallic lightning overprint on one side. The other piece. Absolutely gorgeous. More yardage in three types of white muslin, which I can certainly use. More scrap fabric, precut squares, vintage yardage and some flannel-backed vinyl. Everything does have a bit of storage smell, but that's easily washed away. The fabrics mostly date back to 2000, and it feels like a stash of UFOs and saved scraps. I'm honored that it found its way to me.