A Death in the Family

 Recently we had a loss in our family.  I have discovered something.  Well many things. 

1. The time spent waiting to talk to a wide variety of people to close accounts and utilities is good knitting and crocheting time.  Speaker function eliminates the crick in the neck.  

2.  People are very nice when dealing with this situation.

3.  Covid 19 has emotional effects on many people, including people with dementia.

4, The time spent reminiscing while looking through old photos is valuable healing time.  Don't squander it.

My project during this time has been hats.  I have a favorite based on Red Heart's Gotcha Covered #1.  I work the hat in the round using the numbers this designer came up with, minus the extra stitch.  The yarn is the generic Joann's fuzzy yarn in aran weight.  I use the size 8 needles Boye interchangeable needle in 16 inch length.  These are the only ones I can find.  I also made a 1/3 size calorimetry.  Both of these are for my granddaughter.

32 tips for stretching your yarn budget

Hi all, 

Here it is October. We are four months past my area's quarantine time. In that time we've seen people lose their jobs or have hours cut to below living wage. I understand that means your yarn crafting will be tight as far as budget goes, if not nonexistent. For this reason I have compiled a list of ways to knit or crochet for small money or in some cases no money. 

1. If you are lucky enough to have a local yarn shop, make friends with the staff and owners.  They will sometimes hold yarn in the dye lot needed for faithful friends of the shop.
2. Finer yarns have more knit and crochet hours than thick yarns.
3. Use pattern rather than color for your wow factor.  colorwork can come later to use up leftovers
4. use basic yarn, ie, worsted weight wool yarn  or worsted weight acrylic yarns.  Worsted Weight is the workhorse yarn.
5. If doing clothing for yourself, be sure the colors work with your wardrobe.
6. Finish your projects.  You get a finshed object and can justify new yarn and pattern
7. Use your stash.  Don't use retail therapy to solve problems or to feel better.
8. Use scraps for colorwork techniques
9. Make scrappy accessories with one coordinating color.
10. Stripes can be odd weights if being used as an accent.
11. Over dye natural fibers to change it up if you have done more than enough in that color. ie, wipe out a hideous color on clearance at your local yarn shop.  Hand paint or kettle dye the skeins.
12. Repurpose yarn -- pull out a finished object that doesn't meet your expectations.
1. you need to look for sewn seams rather than serged seams
2. thicker yarn
3. newer item from thrift store
13. Work complicated projects
1. they take longer
2. you learn new things
3. you could be creating an heirloom
4. you could be creating a stunning attention getter
14. Social knitters need an easy portable project
1. Washcloth shawls are very simple
2. A sweater can form it's own project bag, eliminating the need to purchase a project bag.
15. Lace shawls can be many hours of knitting.
16. Money for yarn can come from your entertainment budget or your clothing budget
17. By using the same weight fabric, your range of needle purchases shrinks.  An interchangeable set can be the most economical purchase you make rather than multiple sets of straights in various lengths.
18. Purchase the best materials you can.  Your finished object will last longer and look new longer
19. Learn how to properly care for your finished thing.  This will aid your finished object in looking new longer and last longer.
20. Thrift shops can have fresh in the ball yarn in addition to repurposing a sweater.
21. Inexpensive tools for knitting:
1. stitch markers can be almost anything you have handy.
2. cable needles don't have to be bought, use a pencil or pen, chopstick or toothpick.
22. Your local church or other religious center might have bins of yarns for various reasons or more likely an aging congregation.These older people, once they learn you knit or crochet, will probably offer you long stored treasures of yarn.  Or their heirs will.
23. Garage sales, storage unit sales, estate sales can have yarns for sale or auction.
24. Tell your friends.
25. Online freebie groups, freecycle, craigslist, local facebook marketplace and free groups.  Remember to use safe practices.
26. Join Ravelry.
1. You get thousands of free patterns
2. There are freebie groups on there.  Random Acts of Kindness is one.
27. Big box craft store loyalty cards offer percentages off items and once in a while, the whole order.
28. Google mill end yarns.  They are sold by the pound for small money.
29. Check out the catalog yarn distributors like Mary Maxim, Herrschners, and Webs for sales
30. Tell your loved ones you want yarn for gifts.
31. If someone is travelling, ask for a souvenir skein.
32. Join monthly yarn giveaways
33. Big Box craft store coupons?  Use them to get the yarn cheaper.  Most stores don't want you to save much so the coupons won't work for sale items but check out the regular price + coupon vs. sale price.
34. Stores like dollar tree and aldis have yarn for sale sometimes.

Where do you find inexpensive yarns?

Summer Knitting and Crocheting

Do you have time to knit in the summer? How about time to crochet? Two summers ago, I'd have said yes I do.  Fast forward to today, I don't have any time.  What happened? 

If you will remember, November I moved houses with my family. Corona virus impacted the world.  This caused me to have more time caring for my granddaughter, more time with my mother in law, more time cooking, continue to unpack and travel for laundry and showering due to plumbing issues.  I do now have a washline up.  So even though I have to take the washing out, I can hang it up in the sun to dry. 

 I have also gotten back into canning.  I'm putting up a lot of meats and fruit.  I'd love to be able to do vegetables too but I don't have a garden, only 4 large tubs for raised beds.  Two of them are holding tomatoes, one has been taken over by cukes and the last one has peppers of all kinds.  The one tomato tub is being systemically chewed up by some animal or other.

My plans for my knitting are a blanket in bernat blanket stripes for the granddaughter who lives with us. I also plan to make three comodo sweaters, one size 4 for our granddaughter who lives here and two size 10 for the California granddaughters.  

The blanket is campfire knitting.  The way hubby works there's not much of that time.  The comodo sweaters are being worked in mandala by lion brand yarn on size 8 or 9.

The sweaters are earmarked for Christmas.  We will see.  The blanket is for her big girl bed when she gets one.

Update::::  Here it is the day after Labor Day in the US.  I have been slowly working on the blanket.  I have been turned onto the local produce auction.  I won 3 cases of tomatoes, 2 1/2 bushel boxes of yukon gold potatoes, 2 1/2 bushel boxes of red skin potatoes, 2 bushel boxes of acorn squash and patty pan squash, 2 1/2 bushel boxes of green beans. I have been working on these the last 2 weeks.  I want carrots soon and sweet potatoes. I'm not doing corn.  That is too time consuming for the end result. I have been working on things for my knitting guild to plan for the next year.  Have I done anything for me?  Not in a thousand years.  Some days I feel happy to get the floor washed.  My peaches from my tree have gotten mold from the weather or squirrels have taken bites out.

Quarantined

This corona virus has really taken off, sadly.  We have self quarantined due to the age of some family members.  This doesn't really change our day to day living like it has  most people.  Two of the four adults are essential people.

I have said if we get quarantined I'd spend my time putting together my new attic studio.  Uh huh.  That has not happened in the least.  At most I bought shelving to help with organization.  My son put it together for me.  Some boxes are off the floor.  A few shelves have books on them.  I'd like more time to be able to devote to it.

I have been doing a lot more cooking from scratch.  I found myself doing the same old same old.  So i devised a calendar for myself.  1 for breakfasts.  1 for lunches.  Supper is left overs or a quickie something.  Lunch is our big meal of the day.  I made a list of all the breakfast items we like and rotate them in sequence  Lunches are beef, pork, chicken, turkey, sausage, fish, meatless and the various meats get rotated  with starches potatoes, rice and pasta.  This forces me to look beyond the quick and easy for a meal.

This made me wonder if I could do the same with knit and crochet.  I have not yet considered the possibilities.  And I don't think I will.  More thought about this made me realize that this followed the same format as an Advent scarf or my Year in Stitches.  Too many things pull me that are required for day to day living and I can't make the time for that which I need to do.

I hope this finds everyone well.

Mini Update

Hi all,

This is the day before Valentine's Day.  The last post I wrote was October?  The cookies for Christmas was a pre-written post.  Here is the mini update

We settled on the house we bought thanksgiving week.  We moved thanksgiving weekend.  My sister and a sister in law did the cooking for the holiday.  We spent 2 weeks waist deep in boxes in just the kitchen.  As soon as boxes were emptied, they were replaced with fresh ones waiting.  My mother in law moved home from the care facility she was recuperating in in early December.  She was a great help in thinking of the details that escaped me.  Hubby and son moved stuff and moved stuff and moved stuff until we wondered if things were being brought in from the streets.  But no, it was all ours.

Christmas was only because of our son.  He was the only one who was able to find the time to decorate and shop.  The only person we bought for was granddaughter and I got 1 thing for mother in law.  Hubby started the renovations we needed to make for a handicapped bathroom the day before Christmas.  My sister did the cooking for Christmas.

We had a lot of help with moving and unpacking from hubby's family.  I give thanks for them every day. 

Many boxes still wait to be unpacked.  They are not the ones of daily living though, more like once a month or so.  The clothes that were used to cushion the breakables are slowly being found.  

I have done next to no knitting or crocheting or designing.  I get up early to do the things to get the day rolling and keep going until after hubby gets home from work around midnight.  I set a few goals for each day and usually get sidetracked.  

This weekend is a knitting retreat.  I'm teaching there.  I'm only getting swatches done.  

I have vowed that no one is leaving this house to move to another.  I don't want to ever move again.  For those of you who do it every year or two, I don't envy you.  

And now I have a meal to prepare, a son to wake for work after not getting enough sleep, a mother in law to check on, a toddle to check on...….

Christmas cookie day

What is Christmas cookie day, you might ask. You might surmise it's a day to eat cookies. As fabulous as that might be, no.  Very few people can handle the sugar rush.   If you guessed that it's the day of cookie baking, you would be right.

I started this when my kids started elementary school.   Before that time, I did the cookies the way my mom had done it, a batch every few days.   As I got everything more organized over the years,  there was a weekend to decorate (thanksgiving weekend), a day to bake, days to go shopping,  days to go to see the elementary school programs for Christmas.

Christmas cookie baking started taking on a life of its own.   My husband wanted his family favorites. I still wanted mine.  I wanted to add a few new ideas that my kid's wanted.  We made chocolate chip cookies,  peanut butter cookies, peanut blossom cookies, oatmeal cookies,  soft sugar cookies.  I added gingerbread men,  cutout sugar cookies,  rum balls,  candy and still more cookies over the next couple years. 

As I pulled out each recipe,  I recalled the giver of and the making of each recipe.  Kass gave mom the soft sugar cookies when I was 8 or 9.  I remembered the year Mom forgot to add one of the ingredients.  She knew that she missed something minor by the flavor.  She finally worked it down to the salt.  Yes even a small thing like that can change the flavor.  We got double the yummy cookies that year.  Kass also gave my Mom the frosting recipe that we adapted to different flavors to frost these cookies.  So much better than store bought canned frosting.

Mom taught me to roll the peanut butter cookies when I was 6.  We didn't agree on what the directions said about size.  I lost that argument since I didn't really understand the size of a walnut and the fact that we needed to get 60 cookies from the recipe.   The peanut blossom cookies were given by a family friend named Bobbie.   She had a cookie day too.  She baked a lot of fancier cookies than we chose to do.  Bobbie also worked with a friend who had experience with some of the techniques my family didn't have.

My mother in law gave the oatmeal cookies.  She spent time telling me about each of her kids favorite ways to make them. Surprisingly a number of them liked them slightly burnt on the bottom.  Raisins and chocolate chips or peanut butter chips were top favorites.  She liked that she got an extra dose of something healthy into her kids.  I like them in spite of hating cooked oatmeal and I add an extra cup of oats.. She really liked adding raisins to the cookie dough.  A sister in law added chocolate chips and raisins.  I'm divided on this.  The raisins seem too sweet for the chocolate chips.  However, the kids liked them and to a point that is who they were made for.

The chocolate chip cookies were courtesy of the nestle company recipe.  The basic cookie recipe is one that I have seen in many cookbooks and on many different candy bags.  My kids broke the rules one year by determining that chocolate chips, nuts and several small candies should be added to the same batch of cookies.  It was interesting and less than successful.  There wasn't enough dough to hold all the candy together and they ran into each other and burned fast to the pans.  Lessons learned.

I added things over the years.  I deleted a few that were not popular.  I added sand tarts early on. Mom loved sand tarts and would buy them at the local bakery.  She couldn't make them or didn't want to.  I think it was equal parts.  We learned a few things with these like don't use the fill with cold water type of rolling pin to roll any cookies out.  The idea is good but fails in execution.  The problem?  The cold rolling pin sweats in the warm to hot kitchen turning the cookie dough/flour into glue and causing sticking.  That was my addition to the failures, among others.  We could counter it by using a stockinette cover on the pin but that negates the cold.  The part that messed my mom up was that she didn't use enough flour to prevent sticking.  But they were fun as long as I did the rolling.  We made them with walnut halves decorating, a dash of cinnamon to decorate, colored sugar, colored jimmies.

I added gingerbread men but not gingerbread houses.  They are beautiful but the building was too much for kids.  They really liked the royal icing we used to decorate them.  The decorating them with raisins and fruits and fun stuff was a fail for us.  We tried adding before baking.  Stuff fell off.  We tried adding after baking.  Stuff really fell off.  We tried using the royal icing to glue stuff on.  It got knocked off in storage.  One good thing about my recipe for the ginger bread men was that there was a lot of ginger in there.  They were a good antidote to the too much celebrating nausea that seemed to happen when there were back to back holiday parties.

We tried stained glass sugar cookies one year.  They are beautiful in the picture.  For us they were a big fail.  Using a large cookie cutter, 4 - 6 inches, you cut out the sugar cookies a little thicker than usual.  Now cut the "windows" using a knife.  Make sure to keep at least a third of an inch wall around each "window".    Remove the centers.  Fill with crushed hard candies, keeping colors separated.  Bake.  First don't crush the candies to dust.  Keep the candies in larger chunks.  Second, use a steady hand to cut the window parts.  Straight lines are nicer to look at.  Third, line your cookie sheet with parchment paper.  That candy will melt and run under the cookie.  Don't line with foil.  The foil will get stuck to the candy and not come off in one piece.  The flecks of foil show up as dark spots and make the "windows" look dirty.

I used to drag the ingredients to my mom's house or in later years a friend's house, but about the time my kids hit junior high school I stopped that.  Anyone who wanted in could come to my house.  Moving a bakery is not fun.  Once my kids were out of the house, I pretty much stopped cookie day.  The next generation had taken over the desserts for the most part in the various family parties and did things that interested them.  One year we had 14 pumpkin rolls and more variations of chocolate chip cookies than we wanted. That year was a disappointment for one of the younger "kids".  I didn't even make rum balls.  This is one of the cookies that parents (more specifically, grandma and great grandma) wouldn't let the kids have until they were of age due to the rum.  There wasn't that much rum but to keep people happy, the kids waited mostly.  One of the girls was just of age to have some of the rum balls and there were none.  I'm making her a batch this year.  Just for her.

Try a few of these wonderful cookies.  Or share your favorites.  Who knows, with grandkids close by I now have more reason to bake cookies again.  Just not in such huge quantities....

Knitting and Toddlers

I know some of you will understand from first hand experience. Other people will empathize. 

Currently I am packing up my house to move. Circumstances dictate this move. However,  my husband has packed all (or what he thought was all) of my yarn. From the various rooms and closets comes more.  

Our home also houses our son and his daughter.  The packing and boxes make for a very unsettled toddler. We adults understand that and try to accommodate her. 

Thus when we found a cake or bernat blanket stripes with knitting and needles that you as escaped being boxed up, I just let it be. It has a beginning of a blanket for said granddaughter. She likes to touch and play with everything she sees,  like all little ones. I was not afraid of her handling it.  I did have some concerns when she tasted the wood needles. She doesn't need splinters. 

This yarn doesn't run. It needs a lot of encouragement. The needle removal happened two days ago. I have not had time to put them back in the blanket. When I tried to get the needles she didn't want to give them up. The more I asked the more she wavered between the evil little look that says I know exactly what I'm doing and the cranky child crying no because Mimi is supposed to be knitting and the boxes that are everywhere are more than she can handle. 

I have a feeling it will get boxed up with more yarn found in one of the bedrooms. As for our little granddaughter, stories and songs and her "babies" will suffice until the move is complete and I can finish this project. 

She will learn she is loved no matter where we are.