Rayen

Sometimes my curiosity about artists gets the better of me, and I go in search of information on them. In this case my search was spurred by the second panel of the tote that I was making from a vintage curtain for the March edition of my calendar project. While I was embroidering the panel I saw a copyright stamp on the fabric, and later decided to do a Goodle search on Cheri Blum, the artist. Sadly she passed away in 2003 at the heart-breaking young age of 34. This is part of the reason I've always devoted my free time to my own creativity. You never know how much time you'll have in life for your art. Cheri's work lives on in the home decor industry; her art has a timeless, effortless style that I think will continue to appeal for a long time. I was certainly swayed by it to thrift the curtain I'm using for this project; it was her painting on the edges (of narcissus, as it happens, not paperwhites) that caught my eye. I decided to get my butt in g...

I'm not sure if I will finish making the March tote for my calendar project, but here's an update on my progress. I finished embroidering and hand stitching one panel. I was going to embroider all the flowers, but since I was running out of month I went with mostly lace flower appliques with some French knots. I also ditched my original idea to have lots of word appliques and instead did one big patch with spring elements, which turned out well, I think. I'm going to spend the rest of March on the tote and see if I can get it completed. Then next month I will definitely simplify my idea for the April tote.

I've set aside all my crocheting to finish my March tote for the calendar project, but it's been slow going from the start. It took about 18 days just to finish one panel. I'm starting to resent how long it takes me to feather stitch, something I've never before experienced. I think that's why I've avoided the tote making for a couple days this month. Crochet is easier so it makes me feel better about myself. I need to work on that bad attitude. Probably the first step is to curb my ambitions. I set aside this vintage crazy quilted piece for next month's tote, but because of all the embroidery I wanted to do on it that might not be the wisest choice. I need to do something fun like crochet to get my heart back into the project. This video shows how to fuse quilting with crochet, and tempts me to try that next month. I could also do a spin on this crochet and fabric pattern from Yarnspirations to make my April tote half crochet and half qui...

A dear friend gifted me this yarn bowl, which she said she thought looks like me. Since I'm like an albino without the pink eyes I get the resemblance. :) I've named it Happy Cat, and it will remind me to be grateful that I am blessed with a craft I can still do, along with such generous people in my life. Refusing to be depressed about what I can't do means focusing on what I can, which is crochet now. There are so many things I want to make it's like stepping into a new world. I won't give up quilting, but since I'm losing the ability to hand stitch I know it won't be my primary focus anymore. I haven't really planned anything in crochet for 2026, and for many reasons I think I'd like to keep it that way. The joy of being spontaneous and discovering new things is too delightful. I just taught myself last night how to crochet bookmarks, and now I want to learn all the free patterns there are for them online. This also keeps m...

Lately my insomnia is raging again, so I'm making an extra effort to take refuge in things that make me calm and happy. At the moment I'm working through the leftover yarn in my scrap basket and making a wrap with a very interesting repeated stitch that is turning out kind of fabulous. I'm still embroidering the March tote for my calendar project, although that's still slow going. I might embroider just one panel so I don't run out of month before I finish it. My guy planted our spring garden and things are beginning to sprout. This weekend I'll harvest the first of our scallions and use them in a stir fry.

I watch a lot of quilting and crochet content online, and I'm a big supporter of the crafting community at large. My patience is usually better than most, too. That said, even I have limits, and a few of them are zero tolerance. So here are: Ten Things That Turn Me Away from Your Content Anger Issues: I watched one maker on Youtube who had what seemed like interesting pro-craft content, but they presented everything with so much annoyance and even rage over their craft, their supplies, where they sell, the competition, and basically everything involved in their business that after a couple videos the content proved too toxic for me to keep watching. People who are that upset are not entertaining to me; they remind me of things from my past that scarred me. If you're so enraged about what you do for a living that you can't present your content with zero anger, you should really try to do something else with your time and your life. Assumptions: Making stat...

My gears are definitely whirling this week. If I don't make an effort to quilt something (other than my calendar project) I'll probably stop altogether and get completely caught up in crochet, so it's time to plan some quilting projects. At the quilt show last year I bought some fabrics that I haven't yet used, like this bundle of dragon/castle/treasure themed novelty prints that I'd like to turn into a tote (maybe for the calendar project.) I planned to start quilting by machine this year, but I haven't yet worked up the nerve to try a fully machine-quilted project. Same with this arty motivational novelty print bundle. Actually this one I might save for the calendar project, too. Then there is this panel yardage scrap with flamingos. I have to do something fun with this. I'm still struggling with the necessary step of giving up hand-quilting. My arthritis is flaring up so constantly it's always uncomfortable for me to hand stitch, an...

After rehabbing basket #2 from the pair I thrifted, I really didn't have a lot to do to it. The sides are nice and I like the airiness of the woven material, as I plan to use it as another project basket. The bottom was the problem, as it was not entirely solid but woven loosely with big gaps. I took a ball of sage green yarn from my scrap bin and crocheted a flat circle in single stitches to serve as a bottom liner. I didn't use a pattern, but just increased in the round for fifteen rows until it was the right size. As with the first basket I then sewed the bottom liner to the basket with big stitches so I can remove and launder it in the future if it gets soiled. Now I can put small items like stitch markers in the basket and not worry about them slipping through the gaps in the slats.

I don't know if it's the general happiness of 2026 (compared to last year, anyway), spring about to arrive or just pure intellectual restlessness, but lately I've been missing writing for pleasure. Everything I do in that department is for income, and there's nothing wrong with that, either. One must pay the bills. It's just that I've always enjoyed writing stories for the sake of just writing stories. I have an archive of close to a thousand of them that I've never published. When I get like this I think about a guy I knew back in the day when I was writing for NY. We met online and I enjoyed talking shop with him so much we were becoming friends. He had a novel planned and it sounded really good, and I intended to help him on his way to publication once he did write it because he was very talented. Then suddenly, just after Hurricane Katrina, he drowned in a boating accident. I have not written anything outside what I do for the day job in a...

Last week my guy and I spent my Friday off going out and about; our first stop was to walk one of our favorite parks. Squirrels were everwyhere, and it was wonderfully cool. It also gave me time to think about some things. I'm so busy at home I hardly ever have the chance to do that anymore. We then walked across the street to check out this thrift store, also one of our favorites. I did not buy anything! Ha. I would like to donate some clothes to a local thift, however, and the church store we usually go to is overflowing with donations at the moment. These folks have more room, and support a regional hospital, so I'll make the trip. We stopped for some coffee, and sat outside to enjoy the weather. It was very busy in the Villages that day, so we got to people watch. Our last visit was to the Russell Stover outlet store (and yes, I did fall off the wagon and bought a little sugarfree candy. I'm only human!)

Last week I suddenly got very tired and dispirited. The weather turned rainy and cold. I've been working a lot, and my days are much busier now that I have another 200 lbs. man to care for and feed. I've had to overhaul the first part of my first big work project because my first go was tired and dispirited (I wonder why?) My guy wanted to go out on Friday with me, which meant swapping my work days and working on Sunday. Since I've started taking weekends off I really like that two-day break from the day job. I decided to double up on Thursday and do all my work to free me up for Friday. It took most of the day, and all of the last dregs of my creativity, but then suddenly I realized I'd earned myself a three-day weekend. Then my guy called me out to look at the sky. Rainbows have different meanings to different people, whether they're religious or political or what have you. I just like them because they're rare and lovely. This one appearing ove...

I like exercise and adjusting my diet to control my diabetes. It's brought my A1C down over four points, and it's improved my mood and helped me sleep better. That said, I still have very bad food cravings at night. I don't know why, it's just the worst time of day for me, especially with junk foods. This is the reason why I prefer to stay busy after dinner. I also drink sparkling mineral water with no carbs or calories or stress relief lavender tea with a little stevia to keep me from snacking. I've never found anything that eliminates those cravings, however, until I watched this video. I already eat oatmeal three or four times a week to help with my high cholesterol, and it does fill me up. The high fiber drink Mei recommends with rolled oats and flaxseed (about 5:11 into the video) is one I thought wouldn't work for me at night. I tried it anyway, and to my shock after drinking it my cravings went away entirely, and didn't come back. If...

I'm keeping my threat to watch more documentaries, and started with Egypt's Lost Pyramid on Tubi. I love archaeology, and while I'm more interested in Celtic finds I do think ancient Egyptians were pretty interesting, especially in regard to their outstanding feats of tomb building and engineering. This documentary is less than an hour long, and has a pretty decent locked room-style mystery involved with the discovery of a supposedly untouched 4,000 year-old tomb in a pyramid that someone got into without leaving any trace of how they broke in and looted it. I figured out the mystery fairly quickly, but I still enjoyed seeing the site team work together to solve it. Free to watch on Tubi .

I'm not sure why I decided to watch the Tawainese criminal thriller movie The Abandoned on Netflix. I've been so into avoiding darkness of any variety that these sort of movies no longer have any appeal for me. Life is scary enough, you know? But I think I was looking for something different because boredom got the better of me. Moving forward, I think I'll go watch a documentary instead. The film opens with a woman about to commit suicide in her car. Some frightened kids interrupt her, and she goes to see a corpse that has washed up on shore. Police later arrive, and we learn the woman is a troubled police officer. Gradually as she investigates the death of the woman she found we learn that she's deeply depressed over the suicide by gun of her husband, to the point of where she sleeps in the car where he killed himself (also explaining the beginning) and frequently touches the bloodied bullet hole in the ceiling liner. Finally she becomes drawn into the murd...

I want to use the rectangular blue basket I thrifted as a project bin, but the interior is a bit rough and would likely snag things. I went digging in my quilted pieces stash and found this vintage pillow sham that I've always wanted to use for something, and decided to make that the liner. I folded the sham first and pinned it in place to see if it would work with some tailoring. It's a bit thick, but I like the combination. I cut and sewed the sham into a basket liner. It's not perfect, but it was hard just getting through my heavy-duty sewing machine. Using a very long upholstery needle, I sewed the liner to the basket. I could have hot-glued it, but I prefer to be able to remove and launder the liner (so I used big, loose stitches that I can cut when I do that.) The finished basket. This is perfect as a bin for small crochet projects. Very happy with how it turned out.

As Fred Rogers is one of my personal heroes, I was interested in seeing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood when it first came out in 2019, but by then my hearing made any movie viewing without captioning impossible. When I saw Tubi had added it to their collection of free movies I was really pleased. Tom Hanks plays Mr. Rogers with eerie precision, and an obvious respect for the man who influenced generations of young children. The relationship he develops with an angry, damaged journalist who comes to interview him is heart-warming but seems unlikely (if you've been around as many damaged people as I have, you know they usually don't respond well to kindness and understanding) but I was willing to go along with it. I just disagree with the message of bringing harmful people back into your life for the sake of forgiveness, especially when they have not changed or stopped causing harm. Everyone has their own opinion of Mr. Rogers, but he once said something that...

I like to regularly look back at what I was doing last year by going through my photo archive. In March 2025 I was pretty busy trying to keep my balance and calm through some tough times. This quilt made from thrifted fabric really helped. I was also working on the first granny square project I'd done in decades. I thrifted and refinished this table to serve as a stand for my sewing machines. I also thrifted the curtain that I'm currently making into a quilted tote for my calendar project this year. Seeing these photos is mildly distressing, actually. I was constantly bombarded by family drama in 2025, and tolerated a lot of inconsiderate behavior from others, which I am not doing this year. It's not that the situation has changed, it's that I finally put my foot down and started saying no to requests and activities that will result in my unhappiness. Just last night I was asked again to do something that in the past I've done out of polite...

It seems that the younger generations have just discovered that you can prepare and store meals by freezing prepped and/or cooked food in silicon molds that create bricks you can nuke and eat. They're calling it the " Lego Brick trend" and marveling over how wonderful, convenient and time-saving it is. My generation is just watching this and chuckling fondly. I have always frozen foods that are prepped or cooked for later use. My mother did and my grandmother did. Now granted, mine are in reusable containers and not silicon molds, but that's the only difference. My small freezer is full of them. Here I pulled four at random to show you. I use masking tape and a Sharpie to label the contents and the date I froze them (or the date to use them by, depending on the contents.) I usually label soup or stock with the use-by date because that I keep for a while. The rest I use the date I froze it. The lemon juice on the left is 4 tablespoons (I will ...