Shawls, Shawls, Shawls!!!

  Back before Social Distancing I adopted two shawls that someone had started.  They looked easy enough to continue, a three segment shawl with a moss stitch edging.

  The way the yarn over increases were done was in a different way than I would have, but that's fine.  I figured out that the person who started these picked up the yarn between stitches on the knit row instead of yarning over.

  I've been trying to figure out how they started it and have some of it figured out, but not all of it.  I'm also curious if there was supposed to be anything interesting along the bottom, since you can see increase counters on the light pink one.

  So far I've not been able to find the pattern online, so I'm wondering if the person was making it up as they went along.  I also found these notes in the bag with the shawls.  There was also a little stitch sampler, but that doesn't match the notes.  I'm wondering if these were notes about what to do at the bottom or if they were for something unrelated.

  Because of how loose of a gauge the pink shawl is currently knit at, I'm thinking of ripping it back and starting it again.  This will also let me get the pattern a lot easier because I can see what is done on each row instead of trying to pick it apart.  I can then reknit it at a slightly tighter gauge, which I think the person who started them was testing since one was done one US 5s and the other on US 6s.

  I'm happy with how this turned out.  It is based on the Textured Shawl Recipe.  Since it's mostly just a general How-To it is designed to be pretty free form.  Though she did it all in one color, so I discovered something interesting along the way.  She has the texture stitch being worked on the right side and that looks fine and all, but I liked it better when I worked it on the wrong side.  I changed colors on a wrong side, then worked two plain rows.  When I got back to a wrong side row I was able to work the increases from the right side into the pattern and just did a slip, purl, yo, slide slipped stitch over both, which follows the pattern expect that I purled instead of knitted the stitch.  I felt it also moved smoother since you slip stitches purl-wise anyway.

  I've been really getting into shawls with fairly simple patterns which helps me to be able to think about other things while working on them, but doesn't lead to very many updates.  I do have a fun hat pattern floating around in my head and I got the extra bit I needed for it.  Stay tuned for that!  My car is also home safe and sound!

What a Week.

  Two weeks my battery died.  I was going to try and take some stuff to The Closet and my car didn't want to start.  Bill gave me a jump but I was too late to make the donation so I then drove to Target to get more wiggly eye rings for the Googly Sploots.  My battery was still dead when I went to leave.  I had to wait 1.5 hours to get a jump from someone from roadside assistance who used to own a VW Rabbit.  I drove around for a while, but it didn't help the battery.  Bill was nice enough to get me a new one.

  On the way home from work last week I got rear-ended on Rt 28.  It was super scary and the guy was a jerk, but I was okay.  He even managed to lock himself out of his car and insisted that he had to sit in mine because it had started raining.  I lent him one of my other umbrellas instead, because I didn't want this strange person in my car.

  I saw on Target's website that they have wiggly eye rings all year in their party favors section.  It took a few tries, but I was finally able to find a pack.  The smaller ones are about 1⅝" x 1¼" x ⅝".  The Target website said the ones they have all year around are 2" by 1.5".  I'm not sure how they are getting that because when I measure them I get 2¼" x 1¾" x 1".  This makes me wonder if the ones I saw online might be the right size.  I just really wish I could order one to be sure.  I went to Party City and Wal*Mart but those were a tiny bit smaller and I didn't like them as much.

  Luckily I have been able to get a bunch from the Target Halloween grab section, so those should last me a while.  It would just be nice to get a pink or a red that would work as well.

  This is what I got for a rental car.  Because of the holiday weekend they were running low on selections.  On my way over there I was bragging that I got picked up by a Jaguar.  After we went through the paperwork they brought me out to make sure the car was acceptable and lead me right back to this one.

  My first question was if they had anything smaller.  This thing feels crazy big compared to my little car.  She said I could call the next day if I wanted to see what they had or if I started to like it I could just hold on to this one.  I'm starting to get used to it, but it has startled me a few times.  It stops the engine when you are at a light, and I think I've taken my foot slightly off the break a few times because it has restarted while we are still stopped.  It might also just turn it back on after a certain amount of time.

  I also found out that my dad is considering one of these, a Jaguar F-Pace, as his next car.  This is handy because he can take a good look at it when we have an event going on on Saturday.  No sales people stopping by to check on you or anything.  So I guess it's a good thing I got this one, even if I'm still not sure they should trust me with such a fancy car.

The New Googly Sploot

  You probably would have thought that I would have gotten tired of this pattern because of how many I had to make while testing the pattern.  I was just so curious how the pattern would work with a more variated yarn.  I actually really like it.  I saw the apology letter on Ravelry, so for now the pattern is still only on Ravelry.  I like how they are working with people to try and make is accessible to everyone again.  I do wish they had just gone back to the old one with the new one being the option, especially since they are working on the newer one and will (hopefully) make some changes.

  I finished the first blanket for the new couches for the basement.  Right now we have them ordered, but they have not shown up yet.  The blanket is about 71" square.  It was supposed to just be the spiral in the inside, but since it wasn't as big as I was hoping, I added the boarder.  I actually really like it and I'm glad I had to add more.  The pattern is Solid Spiral Granny Square, though I'm still me, so I didn't totally follow the pattern.  I did a smaller center area and only put one treble-crochet in the corner in the 3-cluster.

  I have started making something new for my Etsy Shop.  I was watching a video of someone showing off their cute accessories and he had on a set of the googly eyeball rings.

  I have loved those things since I was little, but I never kept one around to wear regularly.  Since I've been trying to mix up my wardrobe I figured I could get some for me to wear with my lolita dresses, or maybe some of the circle skirts I plan to sew.  I showed my friend them and she asked if I got them to wear as is, or to make something out of them.

  I've been following FloppyCatCreations on both Instagram and Etsy.  I have been really loving his Stitch Punks and have been wanting to make something similar of my own.  Right now my sewing machines are still pretty buried, so I haven't been able to make anything.  I also haven't been able to find the time to sketch what I would want mine to be.

  While I was falling asleep the night that I got the rings, the idea for these popped into my head.  I had to pull my phone out and start typing up the pattern before I fell asleep and might have forgotten it.  I've gone through a few different prototypes, but I think I have it down now.  I've mostly been working on Halloween themed ones, but I have some Christmas ones too.

  They are called Googly Sploots.  I'm not the best at thinking of names for things, so I put it out to the internet.  First I asked Krissy and got some ideas, but my other friend, Bri wasn't a big fan of what I came up with from there.  We worked off of my idea for the Googly part and one of Krissy's other ideas and came up with Sploot to show how they look a bit like they are melting or got dropped and splatted a little.

  Now the hard part about them.  I have mostly Halloween colors, but I need more for other holidays.  I was hoping to find some red because that would cover Christmas, Valentine's Day, and the 4th of July.  We have a lot of red holidays.  I found some at both Party City and Wal*Mart.  However, they are a slightly smaller size and while they look fine, I like the slightly larger ones better.  I think it's because the eyes are wider apart.  I can try to see if I could heat and bend the plastic of the band, but I'd also rather not put that much work into that part of them.

  I have a bunch of red, white, and blue yarn set aside to make hats for TAPS, but I'm thinking that I should make a bunch of these as well.  I bet the kids would love them, I know I do.

Flood

  We had had a bit of water coming in from the recent rain storms, but nothing too bad.  Today however, it got bad.  Zoom in on the window if you dare.

  This is the after.  The rain even lightened up for this picture, how nice of it.

  Let me tell you about the middle part now.  I saw the water coming in the window, snapped a picture, threw a bunch of towels on the floor, and ran out with no idea what to do.  That small piece of wood wasn't long enough to fit on the metal semi-circle, so with all the heavy rain, it fell in and brought the tarp in with it.  This caused the tarp to funnel water in.  I got it mostly covered and ran inside for a bucket.  By the time I was back out it had caved in again, so I got to bailing.  I got about 12 or so bucket's full out of it and started trying to cover it again.

  I tried to put the tarp over the top and the wood to hold it down, but since the tarp doesn't have any structure, it kept caving in.  I got it to mostly stay with the two longer skinny pieces of wood under and the shorter one on top, but since part of the tarp wasn't bein supported it partially caved in again before too long.

  This time I grabbed one of Bill's extra pieces of wood that was already warped and slapped that down.  I then put one of the skinnier pieces down to help cover more of the opening.  I scrunched the tarp against the house and put the second skinny piece on top.  Since there was a tiny bit of tarp without wood under it I put the smaller piece on to help defect the rain.  After I went in and changed my cloths again (I changed before I got the bucket so I wouldn't drip all over the house) I used the towels to get more water up and set up our box fan.

  By the time I went out to get a picture the rain had let up and the pooling waters had started to recede.  The section of ground had about seven inches of water before this that I had to stand in.  While I do admit that there was a lot of whining involved, I think I did pretty well at handling everything.  I did call Bill about it at one point and told him what was going on with the water in a way that probably made it sound like there were no spaces in-between my words, but it was okay in the end.

  In much softer and nicer news, I started the second blanket for the basement!  It is a crochet corner to corner and I'm going to follow the Three Mandala Thrill pattern to make it a rectangle.  Hopefully I will have enough yarn, and if I don't then I'll figure it out.  I'm not used to making things that I know I'll keep and want to have be certain dimensions.  Usually I just wing it with what I have and call that good enough.

The Door to Another Hat

  My Woven Lattice Hat pattern is available in my Ravelry store right now!  Some people have been reporting issues using the new website layout because of the change in the colors.  It has been giving some people migraines and a few people have even had seizures.  I'm wondering if I should start listing my patterns on my Etsy shop along with my Ravelry shop.  I'm not sure yet, but I'm thinking it over.
 The reason why it took so long to get this out was that I was having the pattern tested soon before states started to close down and people were told to shelter in place.  This threw a lot of chaos into people's lives and one of my testers wasn't able to test it after all.  This actually worked in our favor because I slightly changed the decreases for the XS hat.  It was a bit too pointy for me and since I gave each size it's own page, I figured why not change it a bit.  It's still a tiny bit pointy, but a lot less than before.

  I think I have all the crafting materials out of the storage unit.  Does this mean I'm done putting my craft room together and can have a grand reveal?  It does not.  I still have things in there that need to be figured out and there is also all the things that got left around the house while everything was going on.  I did manage to empty out a few project bags, so I've started to chip away at the things in the house.

  We thought that we hadn't gotten the door delivered to us, but it turns out that they just leaned it up against the side of the house and threw a tarp on it.  We're hoping that it won't rust from all the rain and humidity in the air since we still haven't scheduled an install date, not that the delivery people would have known that.

  This is Carrot Cake.  He/she got a name other than Teeny because I'm pretty sure that I caught him/her about 3 times.  I thought it was far enough away to take them to the forest near my house, but I think he came back.  Bill wanted to know how he/she was so dumb to get caught so many times.  Well, this trap was in a drawer, so no need to tangle with the kitties, I never acted threateningly, and there was always a bit of Carrot Cake Oreo in there.  That's where the name came from.

  Here you can see Carrot Cake and I going to the park.  It was only about a mile away and the internet said I should have aimed for 3-5.  That was on Saturday, and no far he/she hasn't come back, so I think we are good.  I was in a competition with the kitties on who could catch more mice.  I also didn't want to have to find more smelly mouse bodies in Fiona's room.  Two was enough for me.  I got one away from Tank and set it free.  They came in because Bill threw out the grain in the garage that they had been feasting on.  I'm hoping we got them all out now.

Hats, Hats, Hats!

  Bill's door was supposed to arrive back on the seventh, but we haven't heard when they will install it and they haven't come by yet.  Here is the picture I promised with all three crown styles.  I didn't group them by style or anything, I just laid them out so they would fit into the picture.
  It's been so strange to me to return to going into work after working from home for the past few months.  I still need to find a face mask design that I can easily wear for a few hours without the elastic giving me a headache or sliding down my head.  I would rather be able to stay home more and then be able to move more things into my craft room, but not much I can do about that.  I also have a mask or two I need to try out that my friends have made for me.  I would like to start making some of my own to donate, but I need to get to my sewing machines and oil at least one of them.
  I'm looking forward to the day when the K&CC can meet again and I can pass on the many bags of yarn I have been putting aside for them.  I've already made one drop off, but the storage until they have is pretty full.
  Don't worry, I'm not getting rid of all of it.  I want to down size so when I see other people knitting with new yarn, I might be able to get some and not feel bad.  Bill has also said that I have been cleared to keep some yarn in the attic, so I don't need to make it all fit, but I would like to be able to get as much as I can within easy reach.

  Bill has his work benches in and some of the metal peg board up.  He needs to order more or they would be up already.  We also got one of the silver shelving units in that we had been using down there before we started the remodel.
  We had some movers help with the last big thing we need to move down there.  They made it look so easy but disagreed on how to proceed when they reached the base of the stairs.  The one wanted to rotate it and keep the dolly on the side they used to go downstairs, but the more experienced guy kept trying to tell him that it wouldn't work and that they were hitting the banister.  When the lead guy went to get a moving blanket the second guy kept trying his idea and ended up scuffing the wall a bit.  When the lead guy saw that he asked for something to wipe the wall down with and it came off well enough.

  I think I'm going at a pretty good pace to have the craft bins out of the storage unit by the end of the month.  It was requested that I post a picture of my craft room mid-organizing.  I have many projects that will have to happen once I get most of the rest of the house and storage unit cleared out.  One of with is the many sewing patterns that I will never use that I need to list online.  Part of my brain is worried that I have already put too much into the room, but then I remember that once I sell an extra pattern, it will be gone and won't be returning.  I don't know if they will sell well or not, but I can try.  I still have quite a way to go before I can do that, but I will let everyone here know when I do.

Our Hard Work Starts Now.

  The table looks really good right there in the center as you open the double doors, but that isn't where it is going to stay once the last wall is done in that room.  Everyone will just have to remember as it is now, open and impressive looking.  I want to wait until they get the last wall done before I move too much into the room.  That way they can access everything.
  I'm glad to be able to use this table because it comes with a pretty fun story.  My dad actually dragged this drafting table out of a dumpster at Mugu in California.  They had probably used it for about 20 years and had fixed it up until the front brackets snapped off.  My dad got them welded back on and he decided to use it.  He found the one person in LA who could add some special drafting table linoleum to the top.  He fit it into his tiny Fiot Spider and drove it to the person and back again in about a week when he was done.  This all happened before I was born, so this table is quiet old.  As of a few days ago, you can find ones very similar to this, but missing the drawers for $500.  Here's to hoping I can take as good of care of it so I can use it many more years.

  Almost everything is on.  Bill isn't sure where one of his books are and there are a few more games that he has KickStarted that still need to come in at some point.  He keeps saying that he might have a problem, but I just look at how cool everything is and how much easier it will be when we want to have a game night to find everything.

  Our Roomba, Garmelie, is a very sassy robot.  He has run a few learning sessions and was having a hard time finding his dock last night.  He has gotten stuck in a few corners in the past and was trying to get onto his docking station for over 10 minutes before Bill just put him back on it last night.  Bill left him training today and I came home to him in his docking station just fine and the Goggle Home unplugged.  Bill and I didn't do it, so it only left Garmelie.  I hope these two can get along in the future.