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? 

Sleep now, craft later.

I have been so tired these past few days that I haven't done much more than stare are crafting projects on Pinterest.  As a result my list of projects has double while the progress on current projects has been non-existent.  Oh well.  At least when I feel more rested and have more time I will at least have a clear idea of what I want to accomplish.

Not every step is fun...

The bottom half of tshirts are my friend. They are super fast to make into tshirt yarn and I like crafts that are fast and still turn out nicely. The top half of the tshirt is annoying. I have to cut around the seams and cut out all the strips and then cut them into four inch lengths. I leave my cutting system tucked away in the living room so that if I feel motivated I can tackle a tshirt top or two while watching tv. I do like my growing box of cut strips though. And my next rug idea is going to be awesome if it turns out right, so that is added motivation.

Saying and doing are two different things.

Said to myself an hour ago, "I should go to bed." as I pulled out my iron and a bit of cloth... At least now I have a wall organizer for the little things I need near my sewing machine.

(As I was sewing I realized there might be some merit to using a pattern... Will probably need to better remake this.)

Pain, preparations and putting things in order.

I like it when something I don't like causes something I do like to happen.

Example: Crocheting has caused the occurrence of a shoulder/back pain that first flared up when I painted a lot more often. This makes me sad, I want to crochet, but it seriously hurts when I do. Though for some reason the pain did not bother me as much when organizing, so I did just that. My sewing room now looks more awesome.

++++++

I have so many projects planned in my head and now that I am a little less cluttered I think I can kick off a few of them. I really need to continue with the cutting of many strips for my shag rugs, but unsurprising it is kind of tedious work and I finished the available seasons of How I Met Your Mother, so... oh wait, my next awesome projects need those strips? Dang.

Balance

In the same way that you can't work on a bazillion craft projects at once, you also can't care about every cause out there before you stretch yourself so thin that you start to not care about anything about keeping your own life from crashing down.

Don't be insulted if I never want to knit. If I start knitting I am afraid that I'll never have time to sew or crochet or paint.

Am I really talking about knitting?

Only kinda-sorta.

Perfect Timing

A box of tshirts, with three of them matching the color of my crochet rug, arrived from my mom and my husband picked me up a pack up new rotary blades, that I very badly needed - now I know what project I am going to bring to the crafters' gathering on Saturday!!

Failed projects and Slippers

Saturday I had a brilliant idea:

I was going to make a skirt.
I had a whole outfit planned out,
but none of my current skirts fit the image I wanted.

I had not actually made a skirt in a very long time, and I had not made a skirt with any sort of design ever. But I had luck recently winging it when crafting, so I thought it would be a great idea to spend an hour or two of my Saturday cutting up perfectly good material for my soon to favorite skirt.

It was not my favorite skirt.
Not even close.
It sucked.
I wore jeans out instead.

So, Saturday's failure, combined with Sunday's failure (Super Bowl. Patriots lost. Don't want to talk about it.), I really needed to have something go well today. So I thought I would take up my crochet hook and just start making slippers. And what do you know? I made slippers! There are not perfect, not as warm as I had hoped, and not as cute as I had desired, but they do not suck completely and they are finished!! :)

I love this yarn. It's so soft and cozy.

Can you tell I just took my socks off? Not to self for future slipper crochet planning: when using your own foot as a measure, take your socks off first so that the slipper isn't super baggy on your bare feet. That's all. And patterns can be all that bad, right?

Side view. Yes, I am standing on my awesome finished tshirt shag rug. I love it.



I also made this amazing banana "ice cream" tonight.
I added cocoa powder and it tasted scrumptious.
New favorite use for my food processor.
:)

New Yarn - New Idea

Today I did something new for me... I bought yarn.

While my main focus, as of late, has been to cover my cold tile floors with rugs, another thought has crept into my thinkings - that I should make soft warm slippers. So, I bought this lovely soft yarn. Now I just need to find a pattern that I like well enough that is also easy enough for me to crochet.

First T-shirt Shag Rug!

DONE!!!

Imperfect scraps make great rugs.

I like the idea of starting with a clean slate. However, real life isn't like that. You meet someone amazing and start your life with them, but you still bring alone all the old baggage with you. Taking those scraps of your old life and making them into something beautiful is difficult, but can become something beautiful.

I like the idea of doing that with craft projects too. Having all the perfect supplies and having the finished project look just like the picture I saw online. That never happens. First of all I am way too impatient to wait for all the supplies. I also like to think that the mistakes I make along the way give my project a uniqueness that can only be found in things handmade.

My current projects, greatly motivated by our icy cold tile floors and lack of funds for fancy brand new rugs, have revolved around the idea of taking old tshirts and making them into rugs. Granted, making rugs by hand still takes time, so I am still very mid-project, but it's a start. The fun thing about acknowledging that life is a progressive journey with a beginning, middle and end is that evening beginnings of projects can be kind of awesome.




Both of these rugs are being made using tshirt yarn. I have made as much yarn as possible using that technique, now I have to go through the rest of my tshirt scraps and make them into yarn or strips. I think I am also going to take all the rough scraps that have seams and such to make a shag rug for putting our mucky shoes on and such when we first walk in. But that is a ways down my list of things to get done.