Less worry about grammar, more posts about shtuff.

Maybe a need to be less picky about how witty or helpful or crafty a post is, because if I keep saying that I will edit a post later then I will probably never actually post.

However, life is awesomely full and exciting right now. I am still crafting like crazy, but I keep forgetting to post about it. :(

Crocheting is my drug of choice.

Crocheting is my Prozac, my pain killer, my ultimate distractor, my friend. I have made a lot of changes in my life recently, but one of the key ones is crocheting.

I sometimes worry about what people think of me, but not when I am crocheting (especially not when I am crocheting in public).

The other night I had an allergic reaction to coconut oil and itched all over my body, my mouth and my throat. I crocheted until my husband came home with the benadryl and until it kicked in and I could sleep.

I was feeling lonely and fretting over a lot of things, but crocheting distracted me enough that I was able to get out of my head and get everything I needed to get done completed.

I was pmsing, cramping, and feeling rather blah about myself, but a night of crocheting (and watching Dr. Who) left me feeling like I had complicated something and distracted me from my blah feeling.

I think life is crazy, complicated, and hard to process, but crocheting is something that keeps your hands busy, requires some focus, but still allows your mind to flow. All the while crocheting often has a pattern and an end that usually has possible results.

Crocheting is awesome. I heart it.

Failing is all about perspective.

There is so much pressure to live every day to the fullest, to experience the world, to be all that you can be, that sometimes we forget to enjoy the here and now, to be thankful for the quiet moments and to realize the little things are what make this life amazing and worth living.

I have lived in Japan (twice! For three months each time!).  I have run a marathon, in Hawaii.  As a teenage, my whole family and I backpacked for four day in the Appalachian Mountains in Maine.   But because I haven't done the traditional things, like visit Europe, gone on a cruise or been somewhere "crazy" like Thailand, I feel as though I haven't lived.  Now, I completely admit that I am being ridiculous, but the pressure to live life to its max can really suck the joy out of the little moments.  Instead of being thankful when I get to spend a quiet day with my husband, I worry that we should be out doing something athletic (It's okay, you can laugh at that thought,  I did.) or volunteering or reading in the park (It's March, in Chicago, but because I don't need a hat today I feel that I SHOULD be outside enjoying the weather, when in fact I love being inside on days like today.).

All this pressure to be perfect makes being perfect impossible.  I am not rich, nor am I stupid enough to travel on credit.  I want kids more than I want Europe.  So guess what? I can be happy in these moments or I can make everyone around me miserable.  I think I will be happy, because I've tried the misery route and my husband didn't care for it. ;)

On that note: 

Today I am thankful...

...for almost the whole day to myself.

...for the energy to clean my apartment.

..for the sunny day inspiring me to get stuff done.

..for the guys night that my husband planned tonight 

(forcing me to clean the house).

..for the little moments I get to crochet today.

...for brightly colored yarn.

...for the crazy, weird smelling, Chinese supermarket down the street

 that had the mesh strainers that I was looking for.

...for helpful people in stores.  

..for tilted floors that keep water from ruining my computer.

and last, but not least.

 

...for my husband who works hard every weekend,

 in addition to the full time job of starting our business,

so that we can someday afford for me to quit my job. 

Happy Saturday!

Less is more, but sometimes more is needed.

I usually try to make do with what I have, often beyond reason.  If I have crochet hooks already, I will use those, even if they are not at all suited for my project.  Well, today, I went out and bought crochet hooks that I needed!!  This is an exciting day for me.  Little lacy doilies and big cushy rugs are in my near future!!

I am so excited about this that I am having trouble focusing on my current project of making more mop flip flops, or as my Facebook friends have renamed them, Mop Flops.  And what is crazy about me being distracted is that I am still so excited about being able to dance and clean!  Those will still happen, because I can't crochet for hours without my hands hurting.

Sometimes when I am excited about too many things, nothing gets done.  Like tonight, I got nothing done.  Oh wait, I updated my blog.  That's a start.  :)

Mopping is fun!

So, I took these...

 

 (micro fiber on your left - on sale! and terry cloth - dollar store find!)

and made these!

 

Mop flip flops!!

I just spent five minutes

 with a spray bottle of vinegar/water cleaner

 and dancing/scrubbing out spots!

Never had so much fun cleaning! 

Doodle Doily

Yesterday I found this pattern for a doily.  I have since become obsessed with having this be my next rug design.  I decided last night to make a practice doily, so that I would know better what I was getting into for the rug.  This is how my adventure went, starting last night and finally finishing this evening.

Doing Doodle Doily

I started it, 
                 restarted it, 
                           worked on it, 
missed a stitch, 
missed that I had missed the stitch, 
                           crocheted several rows, 
                                   realized I had missed the stitch, 
went all the back to the missed stitch, 
                      redid all those rows again, 
           watched a few youtube videos to make sure I was doing it correctly, 
                                                                                             crocheted for a while,
                                                                                                                      finished doily. 

                                                                                                                                   Doodle doily done.

Yes, I really my "poem" is ridiculous.  

No need to inform me.

A glitch in the matrix.

When my life is pretty chaotic I tend to focus on the one little glitch that is bothering me.  This doesn't usually help the situation because then amidst the chaos I am also embarking a project to improve the chaos, thus creating more chaos.  Did I use the word chaos enough times there?

My crafting life is like that right now.  I have a lot of projects that I have either in the works or on a shelf awaiting their turn.  My sewing room is slowly becoming more organized, although at the moment I am working on my sewing room curtains, so that project is a little bit of here, there, and everywhere.  That I can deal with.  I know that project will be finished and will add to the look of the room in the end.  However, the drawers and shelves in sewing room my house are driving me nuts.  

So, what little bit do I decide to focus on?  

Well, that would be this

 shoe box of embroidery floss

 that my sister-in-law gave me. 

 If I had thought ahead I would have taken a before picture, but this box was overflowing and really nagging me.  I tried ignoring it for several weeks.  I mean, it was in the drawer out of sight, but those colors are really bright and who can turn their backs on a box full of color things?  But the chaos was too much to deal with, so I shut out all the other mess and focused on something that I could deal with, this box. 

I took all the embroidery floss

 that still had its labels and

 separated it out by color, 

but that wasn't enough.  

 I found this fun way of storing

 embroidery floss on Pinterest, 

I had clothes pins already,

 and the rest is history in the works.

I still have a few nights of winding floss on clothes pins left ahead and from there I plan on organizing them by color themes.  It will look lovely when it's finished.  But until the glitch in the matrix is fixed my crafting is halted.  How can I focus on curtains when my embroidery floss is a disaster?  I mean, could you?