3 More Crocheted Christmas Gifts

Purple Mesh Bookmark with Vintage Button

These three were all gifts for my sister that I finished late.  I'm working on more.  Will (I hope) be doling out several more over the next couple of months.  I have quite a few in progress intended for her.  Many finished all but tucking tails and blocking and adding decorative touches.  Most small like the bookmark several medium sized like the 'sponge' and wallet below and a couple large and/or complex.

She isn't the only one for whom I have collections of projects in the works.  I hope to finish several for Mom's birthday next Friday.

There are several more buttons like that in Mom's vintage collection (that I've confiscated) diamond rhinestones in a pearl white setting.  They would make great earrings if I could figure out how to mount the posts on the back.

Purple Mesh 'Sponge'

This one wasn't a WIP.  I began and finished it in about 4 hours.  I used the Sugar n Cream cotton yarn, intending to make a dishrag but got about half done when I realized it was already hard to wad up in my hand.  I noticed that folded in half it was about the size of a sponge so I topped it off with the green edge and then crocheted the three edges together.  I took out and put back in sections of the purple edging several times trying to get it to lay flat and stay square.  As you can see, I gave up.

Variegated Purple Wallet with Button Flap

This one has been kicking around in my all-but-finished WIP bag for years.  It was the first project I started that wasn't a bookmark tho I did start and finish a prayer shall before I finished crocheting the rectangle for this.

So who can guess my sister's favorite color?

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Crafty Christmas

Purple Wreath Bookmark

Here's the small gifts I put together for my mom, sister and nephew after I learned Monday evening that we were going to have gift exchanges here after all and I panicked at the thought of being the only one not giving anything.  I wasn't expecting it as our family did not celebrate growing up nor did Mom as a child.  Our church considered it pagan and nothing to do with Christ.

In the first few years they lived here Carri and her son, who was then in his pre and early teens and had celebrated all his life, kept their celebrations private and limited to their rooms downstairs.  But I guess my sister has been slowly acclimating Mom to the concept and she now joins in and seems to enjoy it.

I  had several projects in the works for each of them (for Mom it was birthday presents for her birthday January 3rd) but most were too far from finished to get them ready in time.  So I started new tiny things.

For my sister this purple wreath bookmark.  Actually it was a total accident as I was trying to whip up a quick finish to one of my projects for her and was experimenting with using the Solomon Knot aka Love Knot as the solution for making an approximately 4x4 inch square as the back side of something for which the more complex front panel was already complete.  After putting in three rows tho I realized it was massively distorted.  It was ruffled and when I tried to lay it flat it formed the wreath shape naturally.  My first thought was 'Christmas tree ornament' and that was my intent as I stitched the edges together and tucked the tails.  But then I had a idea for how to turn it into a bookmark.

Double Tasseled Blue Mesh Bookmark

This was one of the things already in the works for Mom.  The pale blue 2 chain mesh was already complete and one row of the variegated 3 chain mesh border was on.  I whipped on the second row and added the tassels.  The second long tassel with the beads on the end is an innovation I've started adding to some of my bookmarks (even the store bought ones) and its for anchoring the bookmark in place to prevent loss.

Below I demonstrate with the cover I needlepointed some years ago:

Bookmark Demo

The weighted string or braid is placed in the back of the book (or anywhere that is at least a dozen pages or so ahead or behind your place.  The bookmark itself marks your page.

I miscalculated the length for this one and it will only work for books slightly taller than paperbacks and smaller.  Ideally it should be long enough to work in a full size hardback with an inch or more to spare for crossing over several hundred pages.

'L' Key Fob

Carri had told me Tuesday afternoon of her intention to sign Levi up for driving school for his 'Big' gift.  Which gave the idea for the key fob.  This was the third version.  The second one was nearly done when I decided it was too lacy and flimsy and bright for a guy's fob and unraveled it back onto the ball.  That had been Christmas green using a patter of alternating single and double crochet with a single strand of size 10 thread.

For the final version I used double stranded size 10 in frosty green and fudge brown with the solid half-double stitch.  The border is fudge brown size 3, also half-double crochet.

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Sunday Serenity #348

Spending time with fresh library loot for the first time in months was the highlight of my weekend.  Perusing all of the non-fic and selecting just the right bookmarks for them put the glow in the highlight.

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A Fine Basket of Thread

Nearly My Entire Collection of Fine Crochet Thread
Cebelia, LizBeth Cordonet, Pearl. etc.

My collection of fine crochet thread--size 20 and smaller--is growing.  I think the only ones missing in this picture is the sizes 30, 50 and 100 whites.  The 30 because it is a four times the size of any of these and would ruin the balance in the picture and the other two because I didn't think of them while I was hunting out the others.

At least 12 of these were bought in the last year and never used yet because I would not allow myself to start anything new until I got far enough ahead on the Secret Santa project there was no risk of not finishing in time--which never happened--and after Christmas it was because that project didn't get done in time and still isn't done.

And then I made the New Year Resolve to finish more things than I start on all fronts--reading, writing, crafts.

The Quilter's Tote Secret Santa Project is getting very close with finishing the Mobius strip and then joining the two panels to it the only thing left to do.  Problem is the Mobius strip is getting big enough now at four inches wide to be too bulky to be portable and I need portable for all the doctor and social service visits.  So after finishing three smaller projects in February I gave myself permission to start new bookmarks.

I was going to get a pic of the Mobius strip tonight as well but the batteries gave out after one picture and I decided to wait on that.

That black and white bookmark hanging over the edge has actually been on the hook for over 2 years!!! Tying up my only two Cebelia.  The purple one with the variegated edge I made this week and is ready to be cut loose.  That's done in the LizBeth Cordonet Egyptian Cotton. With two of the new ones never used before this week.

One of my new rules to go with the Resolve is to not start a new bookmark before finishing one and that means cutting off the hook and tucking tails.  This is to prevent them going into the bag of over 100 'finished' bookmarks awaiting their tail tucking and blocking and wardrobe detailing with buttons, ribbons, bows, beads and braids.

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I'm So Knotty

Mom left to spend the weekend at our brother's after lunch and I set out spend the afternoon putting bookmarks in all of the NF books I checked out at the Longview library yesterday.  More than a dozen.  The idea was to have a leisurely browse through them as well.  But I found the beaded strings on my bookmarks in a serious tangle.

This had happened the weekend before Christmas when the mug holding my bookmark collection fell off my desk and spilled.  I didn't have time to fuss with it then so I just scooped them up and stuck them back in the mug willy-nilly and then last weekend I packed that mug along with the books, bookends and other desk misc I expected to need while here at Mom's.

I knew they were tangled but I didn't think it was that bad.  I've had to untangle them before.  Usually two or three at a time though.  This time there were eight tangled together and it was bad.  And it got worse before it got better.

In less than an hour I had two of them separated out and I thought I was on a roll and would have them all in less than another hour.  But Somehow in untangling those two I'd increased the snarl and snugged it tight on all of the rest.  There wasn't anymore give in the thread for creating loose loops to push the beads on the ends of the long strings through.

Three hours later I was about ready to take scissors and chop the string spaghetti into string rice.  Instead I cut the beads off the ends of one of the strings and tried to untangle that string from all the rest but after another hour I had done the same to two more of the strings and managed to get those two bookmarks off their strings. But the snarl was no smaller.

In the end it took over ten hours get those bookmarks freed of their sister's stranglehold.

Why.  Why.  Why do I do things like this?

I have miles of thread in any color I could wish for.  I could have cut the beads off the string and the strings off the bookmarks in the first fifteen minutes and had them all restrung in another two hours or less and given the snarl to the cat for a toy.

And why, why, why, if I'm able to be so persevering in something so inconsequential am I unable to apply that same perseverance to finishing one of my stories or cleaning up those 9 NaNo Novel files?

Twelve hours on the crafter's tote project, a piece of which is seen in the picture above, would have given me three more strips ready to join on the second panel.

Twelve hours is enough time to finish reading the ARC and write the review for next week's blog tour.

Twelve hours might have allowed for the fixing of metadata for several hundred ebooks.

Twelve hours equals 6 to 8 movies or half a season of a fav TV drama on NetFlix

Twelve hours could have caught me up on the sleep I've been cheating myself of because it always seems I have too much important stuff to get done.  Too important to set aside for sleep.  Yet not important enough apparently to set aside a snarl of string for.

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Literacy Mini-Challenge [Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon]

Scroll down or click here for my Read-a-Thon post, My Brain on Books, intermittently updated like a blog within a blog until the end--of the Thon or my consciousness whichever comes first.

My mother's mother Zoe Bonnette Myers reading to her two eldest grandsons circa 1946. Over ten years before my birth. My Mom was still a teenager. Grandma Zoe had been a school teacher before marriage as was her husband, his sister, my mother and my dad's mother. So reading was fundamental in my family from way back.

The challenge is to create a post celebrating the reading child

Open until 6pm Pacific Coast Time aka end of Hour 13

Suggestions for content:

• post a picture or video of a child or children reading or being read to
• post a picture or video of yourself reading as a child or reading to children
• spend 20 minutes reading to or being read to by a child age 0-15 and post about it
• interview a child about the meaning of reading to them and post the interview in text, audio or video
• relate memories about the meaning of reading in your childhood (text, audio or video)
• post a thank you message to the pro literacy organization of your choice for their efforts on behalf of child literacy (text, audio or video)
• post a thank you message to any adult(s) responsible for turning you on to reading as a child (text, audio or video)
• visit a pro literacy organization site and report on one or more of their programs or activities, linking to the page(s) discussing it.

Those are just suggestions to give you the idea. I imagine there are many creative minds among you who can come up with any number of riffs on the theme: celebrate reading and childhood

You can post your entry on a blog or facebook as long as you make the post public so I can see it or else post it directly on Joystory's facebook fanpage. Please enter direct URL of your post in comments which will alert me by email that I have an entry to visit. :)

Also leave an email with your comment so I can contact you if you win.

If you don't have a blog, or facebook page you can still enter by leaving a comment on this post that conforms to the rules: a paragraph or so on the theme. This option is limited to text only of course.

After I have visited each entry to verify it, I will choose winner(s) via random.org.

I keep saying winner(s) because I intend to add a prize when entries increase by 10 + 1 until there are a total of 5 prizes.  Thus when/if there are 11 entries there will be two prizes.  21 entries = 3.  And so forth up to 41 an up = 5 prizes.


Winner(s) will receive one of these crocheted bookmarks (they will all have tassels before mailed):

You can state a preference if you like and preferences will be assigned by rank in the randomized list of winners if there are multiple winners.

I'm sorry but I can only mail to USA or Canada addresses.

Winners: are:

Nova @ myseryniti

Charlotte @ Charlotte's Library

But every entry was terrific and worthy of a win.  Thanx to all for participating.

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Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume [Banned Books Week]

The giveaway drawing for one of my crocheted bookmarks is below the author bio.

Are You There God? It's Me Margaret.
by Judy Blume
c. 1970
p. 149

The week before starting sixth grade 11 year old Margaret moves from New York City to the suburbs of New Jersey.  Full of the angst of a tweener caught on the edge of childhood looking into the abyss of an approaching adulthood as dreaded as it is desired, Margaret finds comfort in discussing all the changes, quandaries, hopes, fears, and regrets with God, prefacing all such monologues with Are you there God? It's me Margaret.  This is itself an act of courage verging on defiance as she'd been purposely raised in no religion by her parents who'd defied their own parents by marrying outside their faiths--the mother a Christian and the Father a Jew--and had given Margret to understand she would be free to choose her own religion when she was grown.

Growing up was the primary thing on Margaret's mind and she constantly urges God to speed up the process, to please not make her be the lost one in her class to fill out her training bra, to menstruate or to be kissed by a boy.

Upon given an assignment at school for a year long project on a topic of her choice she chooses to research religion so she can be better prepared to choose when the time comes.  She attends Temple with her Jewish grandmother and several different Christian denomination's services with various friends but confesses she finds the color of the women's hats and the church architecture more interesting than the sermons.

Along the way she encounters the fallibility of her best friend, her parents and her self when they betray her expectations of them--she catches her friend in several lies and her parents renege on a promise.  As for her self, she mistreated another student and is consumed by shame over it.  These three events occur one right after the other leaving Margaret reeling with the emotional fallout.  At that point she begins to give God the silent treatment breaking it only on the very last page.

I chose a Judy Blume novel for BBW because although I was in Junior High when Are You There God? first came out, I had never read a Blume story.  This was due in part to my being raised in a strict, puritanical Christian home and the title alone of this book was considered sacrilegious.

I remember shelving this book as a library aide in High School and it was kept on a shelf in the back room with the periodicals along with several others--books that required a permission slip from a parent to check out.  I knew I needn't bother asking for permission.  I also realized I had access to it and could choose to read it right there in the library while manning the desk as I had done with several other books I'd know would not meet with my parents approval.  But I was equal parts intrigued and nervous at that prospect as the implication of the question 'Are You There?' in the title was nerve wracking to me at that time.

It would be nearly 20 years before I made my own exploration of religion and now I wish I'd had Margaret's story to help me on that path. 

Read Shelia's review and see a collection of all the covers this novel sported since 1970

Judy Blume was born in 19838 in New Jersey.  She began writing fiction for children while her own children were in preschool.  So many of her titles for children and young adults have been banned or challenged in schools and libraries over the years she has earned the distinction of being one of the most banned authors.  Like Are You There God the many other contested books have contained controversial subject matter considered not age appropriate. Among them sex, masturbation, menstruation, rape, bullying, divorce of parents, religion, racism.




Giveaway:

The winner of the drawing will have their choice between these two crocheted bookmarks.  The white and pastel is crocheted with size 10 bamboo thread.  The fudge brown and pastel is crocheted with size 10 cotton thread.  The crocheted section of the white one is six inches by 1 and 3/4.  The brown is 7 x 2 inches and sports a vintage button with a root beer sheen from the collection I inherited confiscated from my Mom which contains buttons dating from pre WWI through the 1990s.

The giveaway is open to U.S. and Canada only.

Deadline is October 7 at NOON Pacific Coast Time

Enter by leaving a comment expressing interest on this post along with your @ so I can contact you.

Extra entries can be had by:

• Following Joystory on Twitter  if you already do leave a separate comment saying so
• Like  Joystory's page on Facebook   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so
• Tweeting once per day (leave the tweet's url in a comment here)
• Add Joystory feed to your reader.   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so
• Following Joystory on Networked Blogs   if you already do leave a separate comment saying so

 Remember leave a separate comment for each task as the individual comments will be the entries that I assign numbers to in the order they are made and then use random.org to select the winner. The @ need only be in the first entry as long as the rest are easily attributed to the same entrant.

I will email the winner who must respond withing 48 hours or forfeit.

Hop on the BBW wagon at Bookjouney to see more reviews and giveaways all week:

Sheila's BBW Shindig

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20 Crocheted Bookmarks

My sister and sister-in-law both asked for ten of my crocheted bookmarks they could have on hand to give as gifts throughout the year.  I have had a stash of the original shell pattern that were tail-tucked and blocked only awaiting their ribbons.  So I got them and the ribbons out this evening and chose colors and color combos.

My stash of sans ribbon bookmarks has dropped significantly since its onetime high.  I once tried to keep three in every color and type of thread I had but after the last major addition to my thread pallet I never did get around to making up those for the stash because by then I had added new stitches and patterns to my repertoire and never looked back.

But this original pattern is simple and quick and easy to store without the ribbons in and I would like to build up that stash of all-but-ready bookmarks that I can dip into on short notice for gifts as I've been doing for over a year now. So besides replacing the ones in the colors I used as gifts or given to my sister to use as gifts and making the three in the 20 or so colors I've added to the palette since I stopped adding to the stash, I need to make close to a hundred. 

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Chocolate On My Bubblegum

Looking at these I hear a voice, an echo of that old candy commercial, saying:
You got chocolate on my bubblegum.

These three bookmarks were part of a set of four I made for my sister to give to her friend on her birthday.  The birthday was over a month ago but I just got these three dressed up last night, or rather the wee hours of this morning, so they could go with my sister today on her excursion out of town which would include a meetup with her friend.  

I'd finished the first one--a simple shell stitch with a single ribbon threaded thru the center--in time to go into the gift bag last month.  Then since I missed the deadline on these three I continued to procrastinate until I learned another visit with the friend was coming up this weekend.

And even then I waited until after midnight this morning to start working on them.  The crocheting part had been long done.  It was the dreaded tucking of the tails and the sewing on of the buttons that had me playing hide-an-go seek with the item on my todo list. 

I did enjoy the project once I got involved.  It has been quite awhile since I last did a series of fancy dress ups for the bookmarks.  In fact I think the last time was for my nieces xmas gifts and the time before that was when I was here at Mom's last summer.

That has a lot to do with how hard it was to set up a workstation that was safe from my cat Merlin who spent as much time on the bed in that room at my in-laws as I did.  He loved the ribbons and beads and buttons!

This was one of the things I was really looking forward to about having my own home.  And I actually did get to put my nieces bookmarks together at the new house on Xmas day itself--the day before we started moving in.  Which got me very excited about how it would be once we had moved in and I had a good workstation set up that I didn't have to put away when it was time for Ed to sleep and a door I could close against Merlin.

Then my long planned trip to Mom's got extended from two weeks to a month and since I got here has been extended repeatedly every time the planned day for leaving approaches.  Like happened again last week.  Now I've been here for nine weeks I think and there is at least one more but since next Saturday hasn't already been designated travel day I'm not holding much hope that it will be..  But I imagine it will be the first Saturday in April at the latest.

Meanwhile my new house seems more like a faded dream than reality.  My mental images of that room at my in-laws are ten times more vivid than those of the new place which I got to spend only ten days in all of which were devoted to packing and unpacking and packing for the trip.

I'm hoping to go to bed early tonight and by early I mean before 3am but I'm hoping even before midnight as I didn't lay down this morning until 8am and had to be up by 11:00 in order to have time to wake up and drink my coffee leisurely before it was time to fix lunch for Mom, my nephew and myself.  I also had dinner duty but my sister had made that easy by picking up TV dinners.  Thank goodness because I've been a bit out of it today.

It is my own fault.  First for procrastinating the task of dressing up the bookmarks and second for not going to bed as soonn as they were done at 4am.  Instead I returned to Mockingjay, book 3 of The Hunger Games and read until 8am.  I tried to stop at 6. But gave myself a few more minutes and within ten minutes I had passed that point in a story where stopping is nearly impossible.

This afternoon I started Jodi Picoult's House Rules.  I could easily sit up all night reading this story but I know better.  To do that twice in a row would be begging for a virus to move in on me.  Besides I'm not deep enough into the story yet to make it hard to stop so it seems wiser to get caught up on sleep tonight and save the allnighter for when I'm past the halfway to three-quarters mark.

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Buttons, Beads, Bags and Bookmarks

These are a few of the bookmarks I was dressing this past week. All but one of these are from the set I made my sister Carri for her birthday. The one in the bottom left coroner is a fob for a thumb drive which I gave to my nephew. There is another set I am making for my sister Jamie most of which are still unfinished and the ones I did finish I gave to her Thursday without taking pics first. (sis you'll have to take pics and send them to me)

On Thursday Jamie sent home with me the first bookmark I gave her in 2009 in order to fix it. It was the third one I ever made. But I'd misjudged the length of black ribbing I needed in order to attach the planed beads to the bottom. I'd cut it so short the beads would have been tripped inside even a paperback so I left them off. But that left nothing to stop the big bead at the top from pulling the bookmark out of the book when the least bit of extra gravity was in play.

I think I may have overdone the length this time. :)

So this evening I replaced the black ribbing and sewed on two black beads with tiny red buttons as stoppers to hold the thread. I like this concept so well I can't wait to try it again.

The bulk of my crafts and clothes are packed and in the car. I'm leaving Longview in the morning and will be in Phoenix OR by dinnertime.

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Dressed and Blessed

Sweet Dreams

I got two of the bookmarks I crocheted recently tucked, blocked and dressed last night. They're all dressed up because they do have somewhere to go.

The one at top is the one I experimented with the new Interweave stitch I discussed in last night's post with the bamboo thread I'm intending to use on the baby afghan for my niece. I've decided to send it to her as a congrats gift upon the birth of her son, due January 7. But I'm still debating whether to tell her that I'm making an afghan for the baby based on that thread and pattern. See she will have reason to wonder whether I'll have it finished by the time he starts school because I have yet to finish the needlepoint bible cover I started for her sixteen birthday nearly ten years ago.

Below is one I made for the daughter of a friend. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift.

One of the things I've developed a habit of doing when I know who the bookmark (or any item actually) is for, is to think loving thoughts towards that person as I work, send blessing to them. A kind of meditative prayer state as I work. Hence the 'blessed' in the post title.

And as you can see I continue to name my little darlings.

Jazzed

Well I've got a lot on my agenda tonight. I'm going to be doing laundry throughout the night while watching 11 episodes of Castle season 2 which was due back at the library today. I'll be crocheting as I watch of course. I'm hoping to start the afghan before I sleep. But I found a huge tangle in the blue bamboo thread when I woke today and I've already spent two hours working at it. One of the drawbacks of working with this lovely thread is that it won't stay on the ball. It keeps falling off in loops as in bunches of loops and if I don't discover it immediately it is liable to tie itself in knots. At least this time it was only with itself and not the five other balls in the bag.

I'm about ready to set this ball aside and break out one of the new ones for the project so I can get started. I have a plan in mind to prevent it from happening again. I am going to stick each individual ball into sandwich baggies so they aren't rubbing on each other.

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Stringing Along

I haven't got much to say tonight as I just passed 25 hours awake. So I thought I would share in pics what I've been up to with my crochet hook in the last month or so.

Above you see some of the bookmarks made since mid October. Only some as at least this many if not more have had their tails tucked and then been placed with the others awaiting adornment with ribbons and beads and fringe and tassels.

Back in September I began making sets of one each of the patterns in my repertoire with whichever two colors struck my fancy. In mid October I worked the orange and black set and began an orange and brown set. After Thanksgiving I started working the red and yellow set and then forest green and yellow and then forest green and red.



I was planning to add white into the mix with the red and green and maybe do a three color pattern--an Xmas theme--but as you can see I'm getting quite low on red. I'm hoping to replace it this weekend. That is one of the colors I can almost always find in one of the three stores locally that sell crochet thread..JoAnne's, Michael's and Wal-Mart--so I did not include it the JoAnne.com order I'm expecting to arrive any day now. But I am expecting my beloved Parakeet Blue replacement. I've been without for over two months now.



Last week I finished putting in the rows on the blue and white mat. It still needs its tails tucked and either a border crocheted on or a fringe attached on the ends. I began the project with a set of place mats in mind but decided I didn't want to commit to four identical large pieces so now I'm calling it a vase mat tho it could also be a book cover.



Last week I also completed the last of the purples coaster set. Or thought I had until i began preparing this shot. I discovered that the last one I did--upper right--is missing two rows out of the middle. I need to take out eight rows to put them in.

But not tonight. Tho it's going to bug me until I fix it, I think I'm tired enough to sleep anyway.

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Bookmark Manic

Finally some pictures to illustrate what I've been doing and posting about for most of this month. Above you can see what I call a 'set' of the patterns and their variations done in two colors, solid or two-toned. In this case in Parakeet Blue and Golden Yellow. I started working the sets so I could increase the variety available in the various patterns. But I got so carried away pairing Parakeet aka bright turquoise with other colors I didn't notice how low it was getting. Now it is all but gone and the navy/turquoise and red/turquoise sets are each missing one or two pieces. There is probably enough on the tube to do one border and/or one set of tassels for one of the mini-scarves.

Is bright turquoise my favorite color or what.

Well I moved on to pairing orange with brown and black and pairing other earth tones in honor of fall and because I have a scarcity of earth tones in my collection.




Here you see all of the bookmarks made since late July. Except those dressed and given away immediately. The top two sections show the ones whose tails I tucked Sunday and Monday the bottom section shows those still needing tucked and blocked. Pretty much all of them need blocking. Only the Lizbeth Cordonet shown at bottom right holds its shape well and that even after being wadded up in the pouch I'd been keeping them in as they came off the hook. I hadn't tucked any tails since late July or early August and then only if the bookmark was designated for someone immediately.

There are eighty some altogether. I'd been estimating 100+. Note there are two tails for a single colored one and two tails for each stripe or other color change in the others. So an eleven stripe mini-scarf has 22 tails.



These are the clear plastic storage containers I'm keeping the undressed bookmarks in. I don't dress them anymore until they are designated for someone soon as they are too hard to store without rumpling them up again so that they need re-blocking and ribbons need ironing.

When I left for Longview in early July my entire set of undressed fit in that one container shown at top right. That container now holds all of the original pattern with the shell or granny square stitch. The four stacks left to right: black, white and earth tones; pastels; brights and darks; variegated. There are two of each color in my collection and I'm working on a third but only have a half dozen or so of them.

The larger box at left has the various two-toned short ones and the middle box at right has the multicolored long ones. The small box at bottom holds the miscellaneous threads and patterns--a few experimental pattens I've not repeated yet and threads in sizes bigger and smaller than 10. Before the Longview visit I had only a handful of such threads now I have over twenty I think but haven't counted them. If I started making sets with those threads like the one featured at top, this small box would overflow before the second set was complete. In fact it may fill up once I finish tucking tails as most of what you see in that wad in the middle picture is destined for this box. The box doesn't have a lid as it was nested inside the box on the left but will no longer fit in there. I guess I need to find a larger lidded box for them soon. Probably I need to find a bigger box for the shell pattern ones and move the misc into that one for now.

I'm sending for the crochet stitch bible from the library again soon to find a few new patterns to add to my repertoire. Soon after that there will need to be yet another box. :)

Today I switched back to working on the blue shawl for several hours, using over half of one of the two skeins we picked up at Michael's yesterday. You can see what it looked like before I started working on it today here. I didn't get a new picture of it as it is getting too long to get it all into a shot which I can light adequately. Unless I took it outside in the sun.

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All Dressed Up

So here they are. The eight bookmarks that have been the focus of the past ten days. The first couple days sorting through beads, buttons, ribbons, and thread selecting adornments for each one as I envisioned them. Then gathering together needles, bodkin, needle threaders, embroidery scissors and setting up a workstation making it as portable as possible so I could move back and forth between the couch in the living and the bed in Mom's room because I couldn't work in the same room where Mom would be moving about or sleeping.

It is not as quiet dressing them up as it is to crochet them. Tho it gets quieter once I've gathered all tools and selections. Besides the noise disturbing Mom's nap in the living room there is the issue of having to have the Ott Light cord drug across the middle of thee room right across Mom's path.



These eight are for my RIF mini-challenge winners from April's 24-hour-read-a-thon and will be going in the mail as soon as possible now. I need to touch up the ribbon and rick rack with the iron on several of them first.

It's going to be hard to say good-bye to them. I got so attached I even started naming them. Top picture left to right: Apple Blossom Spring; Baby's Breath; Summer Daze; Bounteous Grace. Bottom picture left to right: Whispering Breeze; Blueberry Dreams; Flowering Snow; After the Rain



Here's close ups of two of the old buttons I used. The brass colored acorn is attached to Bounteous Grace. The translucent blue flower below is on Blueberry Dreams.

There's no telling the age of most of the buttons as very old (80+) to medium old 25-40) are all mixed in together. Mom inherited her Mom's buttons and also took buttons of the clothes of two of her aunts she was executor for. She took buttons off all the family clothes as they wore out and went into the great quilting pile that sits to this day in the tiny sewing room down in the basement.

Mom identified the acorn button as having been on the jacket she made for herself in highschool.



Well, I guess I better wrap this up and get my head swung around towards sleep as tomorrow is a big day. See tomorrow's post for details. I will publish it minutes after this one as I don't want to worry about posting tomorrow night.

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Sunday Serenity #191

Creativity is a primary source of serenity for me. This week two major creative projects are occupying my time and thoughts. One is dressing several of the bookmarks I crocheted. The other is creating a new and very challenge design for a bookmark. I'll have pictures of the dressed bookmarks sometime this coming week I hope.

The pic at top shows the new pattern in the making. I'm teaching myself two new things: starting and stopping a thread color in mid row and making shapes via contrasting colors. In this case I'm making a triangle as seen in the picture. There will also be a diamond in the center which is just two triangles placed base to base.

The colors were chosen in order to use two of the new threads (new before last night's four additions anyway), the bright yellow and orange. I added the purple because my nephew loves purple with bright colors and as he was describing combinations I thought they sounded brilliant myself. I added the Kelly Green because it was the only bright color that played well with yellow and orange. It won't come into play until I near the far end where it will be the background for another yellow triangle. the middle section will be a purple diamond on a yellow background.

I'm itching to get back to work on it but I'm only allowing myself to work on it when dressing bookmarks isn't an option. I'll probably get to work on it in the car later today on the way to see Jamie as well as in her hospital room.

Jamie is progressing well and may possibly be getting to go home later this week.

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Craft Shopping Spree

My sister took me shopping at Michael's craft store this evening. Everything I got relates to the bookmarks craft. Among them:

• 4 new crochet thread colors (navy, light peach, mint green, shades of blue)
• 19 new ribbon colors (there was a 25% discount off the entire ribbon purchase so I went a bit wild rectifying the fact that my ribbon rainbow had more holes than my thread rainbow had last February before the first Joann.com order)
• 3 small pkgs of small primary colored wooden buttons (it would seem I hardly need anymore buttons what with the thousands in Mom's collection, but those buttons have relatively few bright colors other than reds and even fewer duplicates and fewer under half an inch in diameter which make them useless for attaching to double dangling ribbon ends to weight them which prevents the large bead or button on the other end from pulling the bookmark right out of the book)
• a bag full of assorted sequins and spangles to be used the same way as beads and buttons and also to decorate a length of ribbon not just the ends
• a pack of blue and white paper flowers
• a set of 3 fine work scissors (the most expensive item but with a %50 off coupon still cost less than the single pair I ordered from Joann.com last month)
• a set of repair needles including long big-eyed dull pointed ones and curved ones among others--for tucking tails as the short needle I've been using is very frustrating and the new bodkin won't fit through the stitches themselves
• a box of mini clips that I'm hoping will work to replace the bigger clip I've been using to hold a stack of ribbons together as I'm prepping them for a tassel (these are even small enough I might be able to keep the ribbons clipped as I thread the ends through the loop)
• fray check (some of the ribbon ends need it but I don't need two that size so one is for my sister)
• a bobbin winder for cardboard floss bobbins which I need for the braiding I've been studying so I can make braided tassels and bookmarks (my sister bought that in exchange for the second bottle of fray check)
• a pack of 58 cardboard bobbins

Moving on.

I finished the dressing of four bookmarks last night, taking pictures of each step of several of them and of course the finished product. Was planning to make that tonight's post but that would have taken much longer to put together what with a dozen photos to prep and then telling the stories that go with them. My sister and I didn't get home until after nine and by the time we'd eaten the Subway sandwiches we picked up after leaving Michael's it was after 10. So I decided to make the Michael's shopping spree the topic but that meant setting up the display for a pic and by the time I had the pic off the camera and and prepped for posting it was after midnight.

This post came close to not getting done at all tonight as I almost fell down the basement stairs before I started writing it. I was going down to ask my sister something and I stepped on Bradley, my nephew's cat. I wasn't holding the rail but did have a hand on each wall which helped to steady me but wouldn't have prevented me from toppling forward if my foot had hit the edge of the stair after Bradley squirmed free or if I'd had more forward momentum. I was going slow because the light bulb on the stairwell is burnt out. We need a big tall man to change that light bulb. It's not only hard to reach it is inside a decorative castiron lantern that is hard to get open. It's especially hard to do without light.

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Adorning Bookmarks

I was hoping I would have all, or at least most, of the bookmarks I targeted for dressing this week ready for their pictures to be taken so I could post them tonight. But I got too involved in the button and bead sorting project and so totally lost track of time that I was really startled to notice the window light about 6:45. It took me another hour to get my mess put away and get ready for bed and when I woke up the focus of the day was getting ready to go to Vancouver to visit Jamie in rehab (post ICU rehab not that other) getting there and getting to visit and getting something to eat and getting home. Pretty much eight hours were ate up by that whole process.

Jamie is progressing nicely it appears. They are tentatively estimating a week or so before they release her to go home. She'll continue to have the trach for a time but hopefully not too much longer.





I could easily get caught up in the buttons and beads again tonight. There are sooo many and thus so many possibilities. But I've set my mind to focus on dressing the bookmarks tonight. I've already decided what will adorn each one for the most part. Two or three maybe are sitting in my mind with two or three options but that is way better than the dozens of options for each one that I started with in my imagination and the dozens more that occurred to me as I organized my ribbon boxes and sorted through buttons and beads and thread and ric rac and...

I put a few dozen beads and buttons of the right sizes and colors to go with the sizes and colors of the bookmarks into the blue tray (lid to a blue box full of sewing etc) along with the ric rac I selected for one.



I cut one ribbon early in the process but it got creased before the sun went down that day so I held off on cutting any more ribbon until the moment I am dealing with the bookmark it is for.

As I was getting the mess put away before I went to bed at dawn, I knocked that blue tray on the floor. All the organizing by color and by bookmark caput just like that. And I had to spend several minutes on my hands and knees crawling all over the floor petting the carpet, sweeping my palms under the couch and the stationary bike and into and out of shadows.

There were probably three to four more items in the tray by then then there were when the above pic was taken yesterday afternoon.

Today I started working on a new bookmark using a new pattern that uses two of the colors from the stash of new thread plus two more. I'm making up the pattern for this one and it is another first as it involves changing colors in mid row and attempting to create a recognizable shape. I spent the entire ride to Vancouver plus the entire visit with Jamie working and ripping out portions for one row. I'm itching to get back to it but I am requiring myself to get those bookmarks dressed first or at least a decent showing for several hours of work with them.

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Wardrobe Wrangling

The right hand two-thirds of the workstation on Mom's bed.

For the last 20 some hours all my spare waking moments have been devoted to the dual projects of getting 8-10 bookmarks dressed and sorting/organizing the wardrobe components and the tools. From after lunch until Mom's heads to bed about 9PM I'm set up on the bed in Mom's room then I move to the couch in the living room.

The right hand two-thirds of the workstation on the couch.

The left hand two-thirds of the workstation on the couch.

It takes me at least 30 minutes to make the move between stations. But I'm whittling it down for setting up the first one took over an hour.

The bookmarks to be dressed next to one of the boxes full of buttons and beads which I was sorting through for possible accessories.

On the left, the tray with selections waiting to adorn a bookmark along with a few of the most used tools and to the right, the two ribbon boxes.

The two of these represent the most productive accomplishments of the day. I have over 50% of the accessories selected. And I got my ribbon boxes sorted out again. My ribbons have been a jumbled mess with yards of ribbon falling the spools since March when I didn't put them away properly after dressing the 50 some bookmarks for the display at the library. The ribbons weren't the only thing I left in a jumble that week. This was one of the biggest hindrances to the bookmark dressing project. That along with not having a good way to store the dressed ones that protects the ribbons from getting wrinkled and creased.

It's a hassle to have to dewrinkle ribbons that are already woven through the bookmark:

My mini iron setting on my portable ironing board/cutting board. A tool designed for quilters.

But at least not as big a hassle as getting out the big iron and standing ironing board--assuming I had one which I don't. My Mom does of course but it is down in the basement where there isn't good enough light for me to use it. That is where my portable ironing station comes in handy. Here it is set up on a cutting board in the kitchen which is one of the best lit areas of Mom's whole house.

OK I'm off to get back to work on it. I'm hoping to get half or more dressed before I sleep.

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Rainbow Diving: Ready. Set. Go!

My 14 new crochet threads. Not 15 as that pastel blue in exile upper right duplicates one I already have.

I unpacked and unwrapped the new thread tonight (except for the duplicate Delft Blue for today I finally finished with all the tasks I'd set myself to complete before I could dive into my newest box of crochet thread which arrived in the mail last Tuesday. Today I finished the last two of the three bookmarks I had on hooks last Tuesday, including tucking tails and dressing two of them. This one is for my sister who runs Mom's house and cares for her and her 16 year old son:



The only task still to be tended to is the prepping of the bookmarks for mailing to my RIF mini-challenge winner's from April. I'd begun that project two weeks ago but got interrupted by the daily trips to Vancouver to visit Jamie in ICU. I could and did crochet in the car and waiting room and even ICU beside Jamie's bed but I couldn't pack around and spread out the buttons, beads, ribbons and other paraphernalia in the wardrobe. Since I already had the crocheting done for the winner's bookmarks I had to wait until I was able to spend enough time at home to spread out the bling.

I'm going to allow myself to play with the new thread anyway but only if it is to make a bookmark for one of my winner's since there are a couple of threads that match one or another's preferences better than anything already made. So I'll prioritize the dressing and prepping for mail whenever I can spread out those projects and crochet when that's not possible. Like in the car and in Jamie's room in rehab tomorrow as Mom and I get to go see her again. We went for an hour on Monday but not today as my sister's schedule wasn't flexible enough.

So tomorrow I'll get to give Jamie the bookmark I started working on soon after I heard she was in ICU:



I just devised the use of ribbons of varied color, width and texture for tassels. These are the first two made. They are both unique in pattern as well for I have taken the pattern I learned last February and changed it up by using a half double stitch in place of the double stitch and varying the width of the stripes.

The original pattern:

Actually I've been changing it up almost from the start. The second one was black with five bright inserts. The next was black with all turquoise inserts. The next several were different solid colors with inserts of compatible variegated threads. After a few of those of original length I shortened it to three inserts and made dozens of solids with variegated and/or solids with a single contrasting solid for the inserts. Then I made several long ones again, a couple longer than the original and that's also when I started varying the pattern of the stripes. I made several with white like the original and the same length but with inserts of all red, all black, all pastel blue. Then I made one with red and blue inserts. Then I made several that left out the inserts and did the cross stitch stitch all the way in a single color and full length. Then I made a couple like that but with only three cross stitch stitches per row instead of four.

What am I sitting here still yapping about it for when I could be crocheting?

I think for the first one I'm going to use the only size 20 I got. This variegated blues and lavenders called Caribbean:


This was the most expensive of the threads and the only one not discounted that day. I originally had another one in my shopping cart--called Red Burst--that was several shades of dark red. But I had to take it out when other choices overrode my desire. After all, with only 210 yards it was only half the amount on the typical size 10 thread I get and yet it was more than twice as much with the size 10 discounted 30%. There were several other colors--mostly variegated--that I drooled over. It would be nice to have a few solids too tho, so I could do versions of that pattern above in size 20.

What makes this one so pricey? Well it is 100% Egyptian Cotton. It is 6 cord Cordonnet (which I am clueless about) and hand dyed. Lizbeth is the brand name. (no I'm not getting free thread in exchange for beating a drum for it--tho come to think about it...)

This is the only size 20 I have. I have two size 30, both variegated. And a size 50 and size 100 in white. Note the size of the thread gets smaller as the number goes up. By size 50 it is similar in size to regular sewing thread tho much stronger and durable. Sizes 20 and up are also used for tatting and lace making.

Seriously! Why am I still here?

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