Oiy, time flies.

Well, I suppose I should briefly give the rundown of what's been going on over the last few weeks. I'm still depressed but I'm now seeing a counselor. My second appointment is tomorrow and on the 29th I'll be meeting with a psychiatrist to determine if the medication I'm on is correct for my condition. I'm not really looking forward to either appointment, but they're something of a necessary evil right now. Between my problems with daily flashbacks, difficulty sleeping, and deep depression that frequently tends towards feeling suicidal, I can't just say that I'll tough this out.

I've been writing J- when I'm not feeling terribly inadequate about it. I don't know why it's been making me feel that way, I think it's another manifestation of my depression and some of the social anxiety I'm struggling with right now. To say the least, he's going to be getting a moderately sized stack of letters from me with the various attempts to write a story for him in there as well as the various other half finished letters I wrote. I think he'll be relieved to read that I am seeing a counselor.

I did a little more with the Tunisian Crochet. I made a vest for Cuddle-Bear in this fairly nice commercially made yarn. It's a sport weight yarn in a lovely chocolate brown color. It suits him fairly well. I still need to put some buttons on it, but he already loves it. I think the fact that he decided to try to wear it as a hat could have been among the most hilarious parts of the whole deal in giving it to him. I'm now attempting to learn how to do entrelac with the Tunisian Crochet hook. I think I can truly say that I am a masochist because this is driving me crazy. I keep trying but it's just not coming out right yet and this is after almost two weeks of effort. Rome wasn't built in a day and such, but good grief I know I'm smart enough to figure this out.

I am spinning up more yarn of my own. My mother in law gave me a bunch of her remnants to use towards my big project for Beloved. His scarf is coming right along. I'm using a pair of large knitting needles on this so that the scarf will be quite warm. As it stands, it's going to be pretty wide and I'm fairly sure this thing is going to be... painful to look at long before I reach the point of being half finished. Already, there is a lot of internal clashing of colors. Washing and blocking this thing will be an adventure because it's a combination of several different kinds of yarn. Commercially made, hand made, synthetic, natural, and what feels like everything in between is going into this thing. I'm fairly sure he'll wear it with great pride.

My mother in law took me out to a meeting of the Genesee Valley Spinner's Guild yesterday up in Victor, NY. They are a lovely bunch of people and if I wasn't so caught up in my social anxiety, I think I'd have had more conversations then I did. She brought along some roving for me to spin if I ran out of what I brought with me. It was a good thing she brought it because I did. One of the two batches of roving was absolutely charming. It had a really lovely feel to it and the dye job was fun. Looking at it, all I could think of was a watermelon.

As such, I'm calling the chunky yarn that I made by that name. I'm going to be saving a snippet of it in my scrap book and writing a note about how it was to spin. She didn't tell me what kind of wool it was from but my guess from how it felt in my hand was that it was Merino. She also gave me some really fun and heavier wool roving that has a blend of red, indigo, and dark gray to it. I'm spinning that up into a chunky yarn. The colors of that reminds me of a fading sunset. So I may call that yarn by that name too. I figure if the professionals get to name their yarns, I can do the same too!

I'm taking the proverbial miles of yarn that I have sitting here which is handspun (by myself and others) and I'm going to be turning it into a blanket for a friend of mine. I was trying to get others together to help me make a quilt but that project rather stalled out. So, I'm going to be doing it on my own. Rather then making two big quilts this year, I'm only going to make one and I'm going to crochet the other blanket. I will be making a crib quilt for Snuggle-Bug because I didn't make him one last year. Cuddle-Bear still loves his though he has clearly out grown it. I'm considering making him a patchwork afghan for the toddler bed he's going to be getting soon. I am still debating on that project. I don't want to take on too many things right now.

One of my maternal aunts has a charity project that she is involved with in donating teddy bears to needy children. I'm going to be making a few and donating them up here in memory of my late cousin Matthew. I was going to send them down to her but she wants me to donate them up here in her son's memory. I am thinking that I should also make up some hats or blankets to donate for the babies at the hospital too. I really felt good about giving that blanket to the gal who had nobody there for her when she was at the hospital to have her baby.

Apparently she didn't have a baby shower or anything, the father of the baby left her, and she was all alone as she sat there laboring. My heart was breaking for her and rather then just sitting there feeling badly, I gave her the baby blanket I had just finished making with yarn scraps I had. I think that it's good for somebody to have something special for when their baby comes into the world. Blankets and hats are always useful for newborns.

I'm playing with yarn again.

As part of my effort to cope with my anxiety and stress, I'm striving to learn some new crochet techniques. I have this really nifty Tunisian Crochet hook and it's been a real eye opener as to how fast it uses up yarn. My first project was to make myself a crochet hook holder. It was insanely simple because the whole thing is just a rectangle made with the basic stitch.

I'm almost finished making a scarf for a surprise gift to somebody. It's shocking how fast this thing is working up. Over the course of about a week (where I work on this thing for about 2 to 3 hours in the evening), I have it almost finished. This thing is almost a full yard long. It's really shocking to me how fast this works up. It's also rather startling how much yarn gets used for it. I'm pretty sure that I could make some truly nice and warm sweaters for the boys over the course of a few evenings in this method. Given that Cuddle-Bear has outgrown the sweater I made for him so fast that he got to wear it for about two weeks. :P Hmm... I think I need to locate yarn...

In one of my crochet magazines, they discuss methods for making lace using Tunisian Crochet. I'm considering using some of the fine yarn that I made last year to do so. Once I get this scarf finished, I am going to be plying together the two balls of singles that I made with the Corridale wool that my mother-in-law gave me last year. I still have that lovely deep blue wool to finish spinning up. I haven't fully decided how I'm going to use it but there's some patterns that have caught my eye.