On the Move

Crocheted Headband and Hairbow Set

 This headband and hairbow set is two of the thirteen fiber art WIP I've finished in the last two weeks.  See my albums on fb (WWF and Crafty WIP)  I'll probably bring most of those photos into upcoming posts but by then the fb albums will have new stuff as I've taken to posting my current craft endeavors to share with my crafty cousins.

Today we had a family gathering at my brother's house in Portland OR to celebrate our Mom's 84th birthday.  Tomorrow is her actual birthday so I'll save pics of her and the gifts for tomorrow's Sunday Serenity post.

Tonight I'll share the three fiber art WIP I worked on today.

Crocheted Belt to  Go with Headband and Hairbow

This is the belt made with the same yarn and same stitch pattern as the headband and hairbow I finished the other day.  it is now 30 inches long.  it will need at least another ten for a buckle belt and another twenty for a tie belt.  Which one it becomes may depend on how the yarn holds out.  The ball is shrinking fast..

I worked on this for the hour or so we waited for dinner to be served.  I worked on it a bit turning the game of Telephone Pictionary we played but put it away when I realized I would need to start measuring it frequently from that point on.

A Crocheted Granny Octogon Slouch Hat (maybe)

I ws working on this one in the car on the way to Portland. About an hour's ride door to door.  I'd put half a row of white in before realizing that I'd left off last week at the spot wher I change color.  So I took out the white and started working with the pink.  I didn't wind the white back onto it cake, thinking that since I was sitting in one place in the car I should be able to put in the row of pink and then switch back to the white and use up all the loose white well before we arrived.  But I was having issues with sun glare.  I kept making mistakes and having to take out an average of half of all the stitches I put in.

Then less than a third of a row around I discovered that the pink thread had been dragging up globs of the loose white loops and there was a snarl forming.  I spent the rest of the drive and about twenty more minutes sitting in the car in their driveway before I was able to get the yarn gathered up in such a way it wouldn't get worse if handled carefully.  Needless to say I left that project in the car.

I'm not sure what it is.  I started out with the concept of making a granny square slouch hat.  But when I put in the second row I put the six stitch set in all of the chain spaces of row one.  Instead of taking it out I decided to see what a granny octagon would look like.

Well after row five it already had a significant ripple so I started decreacing by skipping the chain space in the middle of each side.  After three rows of this it was starting to lay flatter again but it was also pulling the middles into Vs making the octagon into an eight-pointed star.  I kinda liked that look

On the pink row I'm now working I have stopped decreasing and in fact increasing by the granny square rules.  I'm sure it will start rippling again in two or three rows.  I'm thinking the ripples will look fine on a sluch hat tho so I'm strongly leaning that way.

It took me an hour to get the snarl out after I got home last night.

Crocheted Infinity Scarf

This was the one I worked on the longest from the lateafternoon through the late evening when we left my brother's home in Portland where we'd been celebrating Mom's 84th birthday.

This is an infinity scarf I'm crocheting for myself from a lace weight merrino wool and silk blend with a metalic thread.  Handpainted in shades of teal.  The pattern is puff stitches joined with chain loops.  I started out following a stitch pattern called ZigZag Puffs but I tweaked it and ended up with something that looks like eyes with the puffs as pupils inside a chain frame.  I call it Puffy Eyes. :)

This was one of the yarns I bought on my birthday excursion to a boutique yarnshop in November 2014.  See my November 13th post for pics of the haul of unique yarns I made that day.  Most of them lace or fingerling weight.

This was the skein I tangled the day I first tried to start this scarf late last sinter.  The entire skein.  All 400 odd yards was one big snarl.  It took me months to untangle.  I blogged about it at the time it happened last winter and again when I finished winding the ball.  I suppose this is where I should go find those links.  But I'm too wiped.  Just put 'snarl' in the search box if you want to see pics.

The ball looks to be a little more than half gone and I intend to put the whole thing into the scarf.  I had been thinkinh a hat also but I don't think that tinsil thread would wear well in a hat that would need to be washed more often and encounter more friction and rough handling.

I'm determined to have this finished in time to wear it before it's too warm.

One Word:

All in all it was a good start to my 2016 One Word.  (see yesterday's post) I was on the move all day from getting ready to go to traveling and socializing.  All removed from my comfort zone.  I caught myself in several acts of spontaneity. Even surprising myself by interjecting comments into the conversation multiple times.  The work I did on the three WIP gives me a nice feeling of accomplishment and sense of having moved forward toward my goals.

Today was my second day on Zoloft and I'm wondering how much of a role that played.  They say you aren't supposed to notice anything for several weeks but the last time I was on it in the late 90s I swore I could tell immediately.  At least for the anxiety.  Maybe it took much longer for it to affect my depression that time but it was like an off switch for the anxiety.  And my behavior in a crowd of a dozen noisy people and a dog today is hard to explain otherwise.

One of the reasons I settled on 'Move' as my One Word is that my last time on Zoloft turned me into a couch potato.  I need to fight that this time by consciously putting myself in motion.  I mean exercise but I mean much more.  My med nurse thinks that the Adderall  will counteract that lethargy and feels it is important to address the anxiety and OCD which is not being touched much by the Welbutrin.

The anxiety and OCD are both rooted in the autism spectrum sensory processing issues.  They are both exacerbated by sleep deprivation and yet also cause sleeplessness.  It's an infinity loop.

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Putting the 'MOVE' in 2016

Peacock--the symbol of 'joy' in India.

This is my third year participating in One Word, an alternative to New Year's resolutions.  I kept 2014's word thru 2015 mostly because 2013 was more than half gone when I signed up but also because I felt I still needed so much work on that issue.  The same is true now so I was tempted to stick with 'joy' for another year.  But I decided instead to find a word to focus on that contributes to or is a component of 'joy' for me.  As of late last this week I'd narrowed it down to a handful of possibilities: accomplish, spontaneity, passion, breathe, belong and home.

While talking via vid chat with my husand the other day he asked if he could make a suggestion.  There was a word, he said that fit the criteria of being a component/contributer to 'joy' in his opinion and it was something he wants to encourage me to include in my life plus it could be said to subsume all six of my possible words:

One Word 365

MOVE

accomplish = move toward my goals
spontaneity = move on a whim
breathe = moving air in and out of my lungs via exercise or meditation
passion = the energizing emotion that 'moves' one to act on desires
belong = to acquire my longed for sense of 'belonging' requires me to move out of my comfort zone
home = to move back 'home' which is not a building but wherever my husband is and to live with him and be homemakers together again that is my top priority for the year as it has been for two years running.

I will be doing a followup post or posts to explain the meaninfulness of each of those six words.  But one more thing I can say that is true of each of them (besides contribuing to 'joy' and involving some kind of movement) is that they each represent a particular challenge related to how the autism spectrum manifests in me.

My diagnosis in September has been both disconcerting and a relief.  Why it was disconcerting is probably obvious--it would throw any fifty-something for a loop.  But a relief?  well after several months of reading, research and processing of information and emotions I realized that so many of my shortcomings are not character flaws, were never about will power.  Many otheres were imaginary based on unrealistic images of unattainable perfection.  And yet others were never shortcomings in the first place.

Now that I've had time to process the diagnosis I'm starting to sense a direction in which to move in order to accommodate this reality.  I'm hoping that means I will be ready to blog more regulary again.  And not just about autism/Aspberger's but about all the things I used to blog about: reading, writing, research, videos, music, fiber art, crafts, LOLs, ideas, spiritual path and Joy's story.  And let's not forget words!

Best Boy
by Eli Gottlieb

My first book of the year i Best Boy by Eli Gottlieb.  it was one of the titles that came up when I put autism in a search box.  It was one of the few novels I found that way and I'm very interested in seeing how autism is represented in fiction.

I've not finished it yet so this is not a review and I'm adding this commentary as a post script to this post because of the 'First Book of the Year' meme at Sheila's Book Journey.  A bit of a last minute thing as it isn't even still January 1st where Shelia lives.

I also added it to this post instead of in a separate post because images from the story kept intruding as I was writing about 'move' above.  I realized that the narrator/protagonist in Best Boy, a man in his fifties who'd been committed to an institution at age 11 after his autism diagnosis, had been on the move from page one.  He was moving both physically and emotionally, including in both cases outside his comfort zones.  He was moving into new social circles and he even moved off the compound property (ran away) and walked the highways toward 'home' his single minded goal.  The courage he exhibits through all this is amazing and something I aspire to.

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