A Rainbow in the Mailbox

My Rainbow in the Mailbox

My order from Joann.com came in the mail this afternoon. I allowed myself to open it and oogle for a short while and then later fiddle around setting up and taking these pics. But I'm not allowing myself to start crocheting with them until two requirements I am making of myself are met.

First I must finish The Hour I First Believed (40 pages) and reach at least page 100 in The Book Thief. Which is due Thursday but the Longview library has a 5 day grace period so I have until Tuesday but I don't want to take complete advantage since I know someone is waiting. So I will continue to require of myself 100+ pages per day before allowing myself to pick up the crochet hook.

The second requirement is to finish the two bookmarks on the hook already. They are both half done. They are two of the three I was working on in the car and waiting room and Jamie's ICU room all last week. *

Until then all I can to is look and dream. But not too much. :)

My sister picked up several more books for me today at both the Woodland branch of the Vancouver library and the Longview library. Now I have way more than I can possibly finish in the two weeks or so remaining of my visit. But then I never expected to finish more than a few just advance my bookmarks a few more chapters each.


The bodkin didn't show up well in the photo at top and my battery went low after taking it so later after removing them from their packages I took a picture of the bodkin and the detail sewing scissors with a crochet hook between them to indicate size.

The bodkin is a metal rod about 7 inches long with a large eye at one end and a tiny ball at the other. It is slightly curved as well. It is about the same thickness as the steel crochet hooks but about an inch longer. It's purpose is for threading items through things. There are a lot of uses in a range of crafts but I sent for it in hopes it would make tucking the tails of the bookmarks fresh off the hook easier and also the threading through the finished bookmark of ribbons and tassels. Instead of poking the ribbon through one hole at at time I can thread the bodkin through all of the holes and the ribbon through its eye and pull.

I'd been using a tapestry needle like that for tucking tails but the eye was too small to do it without a needle threader and it was quite awkward and challenging to hold the bookmark with the needle threaded through the weave while trying to insert a needle threader into its eye and then the tail into the threader and then pull the thread through the weave without dropping something or allowing the needle to slip free of half or more of the loops it was woven through. Very frustrating. Especially when I started making patterns that required ending and starting threads several times.

A single colored bookmark will have only two tails--the beginning and ending one. The patterns I've made so far range in tail count from 2 to 22. I'd developed a habit of leaving the tail tucking until I'd accumulated a bunch of the fresh off the hook bookmarks. And by a bunch I mean a dozen or two. Once I spent five hours doing nothing but tucking tails. After that I've been fairly disciplined to let no more than 20-30 tails accumulate before stopping to tuck them.

_________________
* For Jamie's story read the week worth of posts beginning with Breathe Sister-Friend.

The latest: We were told this morning that Jamie was being moved out of ICU but they didn't know her new room number yet. My sister had to take the respit care child to meet up with her Mom for a doctor appointment in Portland and was going to drop Mom and I off at the Vancouver hospital to visit Jamie but not having the room number by the time she had to leave made it hard to justify dropping off two visually impaired women to navigate an unfamiliar route through the maze inside that building.