Half past September....

and I'm still struggling with projects that should have been done awhile ago. I did finish the train sweater and now I'm working on another one to refine the design. Too many little color bits to make it an efficient pattern design. 'Course I could complete the sweater using intarsia and fair isle methods and then complete the details with duplicate stitch but I've not been satisfied with the way my duplicate stitches look. Prolly pulling the yarn too tightly, that's my usual issue with fiber arts I want to pull that yarn to get a good tension and then the whole thing buckles on me cause it's been pulled too tightly. Another reminder to relax and let things happen.

So I've started on the Spiderman afghan for my friend, Laura. Her nephew will just think she's the bestest auntie in the world when this is delivered for Christmas (as if she isn't already the bestest auntie in the world in his eyes). This has reached the perseverance stage of construction. I'm up to 24 dc on each facet, I usually have to stop and go do something else after two rounds just to let my hand relax a bit. And a couple of rounds can take an hour at this stage of the project. Another swatch of blue, another line of the web and then a couple of rows of blue to finish it off the color work. I still have to fill in the support lines on the web through the body of the afghan and that will take time. It's kinda hard to work with the needle on one side of the project and the yarn on the other while you chain stitch your way across it. Still going to take awhile but will be done in plenty of time for Christmas.

Christmas! September and I'm already planning for Christmas....might as well give in and just think about it all year round like some people do. Does that make your Christmas list longer or shorter when you devote that much time to it?

Waiting mode

I'm waiting on the next batch of Workbasket magazines to come in from eBay. Should be here any day. I'm excited about this shipment (well, I'm excited about all of them) because there are several magazines from the 30s in with this batch. Haven't seen a Workbasket from the 30s except in illustrations.

I found it interesting that the early 40s Workbasket magazines were printed on one sheet of paper to be mailed out and then the customer was expected to cut the pages to they could use it as a magazine format. The batch that I got had never been cut so I still have one long piece of paper strategically folded to conform to the magazine pages. Since these haven't been cut it didn't really make sense to me when I first saw them. The odd little things you pick up from your various hobbies.

The index is coming along nicely. You can see it here. Let me know what you think of it.

I'm also at the point where I'm going to start listing my duplicate Workbasket Magazines for sale. I have a listing on Etsy.com but I'm trying to conform to rule that you can't change a listing after it's been posted to try and save the 20 cents that a new listing would cost you. I like having all the magazines available for the customer to make their choice but I keep getting additional purchases and so maybe I'll just list them on my website for sale and avoid the 20 cents issue altogether.

Such hard decisions life is made of. Some days it's tough. Other days much easier.

Getting over the wall....

which I hit earlier this year, an emotional one, not a physical one. A word of advice, when you get hit, and you will get hit, financially (as I did), mentally, emotionally, (hopefully not) physically, just keep going. You hear the words that life is not what happens to you but what you do with it but they don't really sink in until something big happens. Now looking back at my response, I'm not real proud. I was withdrawn, I ran away from my responsibilities and things that used to give me pleasure seemed to be the hardest tasks in the world to pick up again.

So don't run away, face whatever it is that's chasing you and it'll suddenly diminish to much less than you're making it out to be. I've just started on another baby afghan for Project Linus. I dropped off a bag of 3 blankets to the drop off site a couple of weeks ago. I just finished a crocheted baby blanket for the next niece expected in September. It's a filet crochet pattern and I'm disappointed in the way the stitches pulled on me. The blanket is still totally usable but it's got dips in the openwork area. May have to do another one just to see where I pulled the yarn too tight. The creative juices are flowing again, time to gear up and take off.

I've even got a lot more done on the Workbasket Index that I'm putting together. Check it out here. If you have suggestions on how to improve the index please let me know your thoughts.

Back again

And working on more projects and a project that involved Workbasket magazines. Like a lot of people I'd collected batches of them from yard sales and auctions over the years and kept them sitting in boxes. Every once in awhile I'd pull them out to look for a pattern I'd remembered seeing and then get totally distracted by all the old ads and neat items that I'd run across in all the other magazines I'd have to look through before (if ever) finding the pattern I wanted.

So I'm putting a Workbasket Index out on my web site, yep, sitting down at the computer means I have to enter another magazine into the index and copy it out to the web site. I've gotten pretty far already. Check out the index here. It still needs some work and I still need to fill in some gaps in the magazines that I have but it's coming along. I hope it's helpful to people like me that remember seeing a pattern when they were browsing through the magazines but can't remember just which one it was in.

Gonna miss getting distracted and creatively engaged by just looking though. Of course, I can always do that but sometimes efficiency isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Gotta remember to record stuff

I've been working on projects and getting them done but haven't gotten into the habit of recording everything on the blog as yet. How is the world supposed to know how prolific I am if'n I don't tell them. ;>) I just finished two hats for Laura and Hal (matching, of course) and shipped them off and didn't even think about taking a picture until I was back from the Post Office. Doh! I can always ask Laura to take a picture for me but she's a busy woman being president of the company that she and Hal run, Deer Run Associates and a published poetess. I can always ask though. Just have to remember to take the pictures myself in the future before the item leaves my hands.