How Many Hours in a Day Do I Think There Are?

Yarn: Red Heart Super Saver in Neon Stripes - Hook: 6mm

  I asked Janelle how many kids there are in Wise and Hazard.

  In Wise there are usually about 300 on the Angel Tree (that is the approximate # of foster children in Wise County).

  In Hazard, the Viper Elementary School that we deliver to has approximately 250 students (they all live below the poverty level).

 

  There are a lot more than I had assumed.  One Christmas I was able to send about 300 worms with her.  I was thinking it would be fun to make enough octopi for most of the kids.  I also added T.A.P.S. back into the mix.  That's a lot of small things to make.

  It would take me about 367 hours to finish all the octopi for Christmas in Wise and Hazard.  I think I could do it, if I was able to buckle down and focus on it.  However, I seem to forget that I have one cat and one baby who all love to get attention and help me play with my yarn.  They make it a lot harder to get them done.  Since I did finally realize this, I enlisted Mickey to help me out.  I sent him the pattern and the modifications I've made to it to account for the pony bead eyes and how I do the tentacles.

  Something interesting happened with this skein.  I ran into a factory knot, which is annoying but not the worst.  While working on the octopus after the knot I noticed that the color order was reversed.  So where I was working in the ROYGBIV direction, now I will have VIBGYOR.  If it bothers me too much, I could start pulling from the inside of the skein.

  If you wonder how I manage to get the eye placement so perfectly on the octopi, it's half luck and half working it again.  For the Neon Stripes and Bitty Stripes yarn I find that if I put the eyes two or three stitches away from the end of the row then I have a good chance of it working out.  If it doesn't, I mark where I want the center of the eyes with a stitch marker and pull it out.  I know that means that I could make two in that same time, but I want them to look their best.

  I'm worried that all this amigurumi repetition will also make the blog a bit slower paced.  I won't have the ease of being able to talk about a new pattern if I'm just making 550 octopi and some unknown number of Worry Worms.  If I combined the Miss Spud update posts it would guarantee more interesting posts, but I don't like that idea for a few reasons.  It would mean that posts would only happen about once a month and I feel like it would make the posts too distracted.  It would take away from Miss Spud and also take away from looking at the fun octopi.  If we are going out and doing something, then I don't have as much time to crochet or to play with the babies.  Also, if I do this every year, this blog would pretty much just because a log of all the octopi I've made.

  I guess the long story short is to expect a lot of the same on here for a bit, not forever, but a bit.  I know I also don't need to make one for every child every year, they could possibly make it so that some that didn't get one the previous year get one the next.  There is also a chance that not every child will want one.  I'm not going to stress myself too much and just make as many as I can.

Yearly Yarn Tracker:

Yarn In: 13 (6)
Yarn Out: 17 (2)

Total: -4