Fiber Fluff: Miss Gus's bonnet.

My grand-dolly, Miss Gus & My pattern notebook

So, I make stuff when I'm anxious. Kids have fidget toys, I have yarn and stuff for making yarn. Yesterday, my brain was a bit off kilter with worry about how the N. Korea thing was shaping up and the matter of Hurricane Harvey. So, I busted out some of the yarn I was donated by LivoniaLily's mom and a crochet hook. A half hour later, I had a preemie/dolly hat.

Gus is a GIRL. Snuggle Bug is HIGHLY offended if you misgender Gus. Gus is also named after a friend from the bus, who is also a girl. I had a proud momma moment over this incident. So, I decided to name this after Miss Gus.

What you can't see clearly on my project notebook is the statement emblazoned on the cover. "Perfect is Boring." It's a good reminder for me to be less hyper focused on turning out perfect results.

Here's the pattern. I think I probably screwed something up in it. If you find any errors, let me know and I'll correct them.

R1: Make a magic ring. Single crochet twelve stitches into the ring. Slip stitch the final stitch of the round to the first. Chain one.
R2: Single crochet 24 stitches (one increase for each of the original 12 stitches). Slip stitch the final stitch of the round to the first. Chain two.
R3: *Half double crochet increase by 1 in first stitch, half double crochet into following stitch.* Work * in the usual fashion around the round. Slip stitch final stitch of round to first. Chain two.
R4: *Half double crochet increase by 1 in first stitch, half double crochet into each of following two stitches.* Work * in the usual fashion around the round. Slip stitch final stitch of the round to first. Chain two.
R5: Half double crochet into each stitch of the round. At final stitch, chain two and turn.
R6 - 11: repeat R5.
R12: Crab stitch across all stitches. bind off.

With DPNs, pick up 3 stitches at corner of final row. Knit an I-cord that is 6 in long. Bind off, weave in ends. Repeat for opposite corner.

The yarn I used for Miss Gus's bonnet is a fuzzy sport weight baby acrylic. I used a 'd' crochet hook. My DPNs were size 5mm. Snuggle Bug will not want Miss Gus to lose her bonnet. So, I am going to make another one. I'll try to post a picture of it before I send it off to donation.

No spoons left, only knives.

I have been taking an unplanned hiatus from social media recently. It started when I was hypomanic because I didn't want to say or do something stupid, offensive, or cruel because in my disordered thinking it was 'clever, funny, or honest.' I continue this hands off approach towards the internet right now because my tolerance for the garbage flying around everywhere is really low.

Listening to the news makes me super anxious. It generally tends to low key trigger me for the day. Which is why I ceased my previously resumed habit of listening to the morning news as I fixed breakfast. It's hard to scramble eggs and make bacon with two small people running around. It's even harder when listening to how the nation is on the brink of nuclear war is bringing out the ugliest aspects of the nation, up to and including rabid white supremacists whom I have such a deep loathing of that it reaches into a visceral urge to vomit when I hear their trash talk.

Watching the disasters unfolding around the world breaks my heart and has me deeply concerned for everyone and everything involved. Hurricane Harvey, the flooding in India and Pakistan, the other man made disasters such as the chemical spills in major waterways responsible for providing drinking water for entire communities and regions... they're all enough to again make me feel ill, especially the ones that are created out of humanity's gross disregard and disrespect of nature.

Thus, I am weary into my soul on these fronts. I had this grand idea of starting a feminist oriented news blog where I and a cadre of similar minded female identified people kept others abreast of the threats to us all. I haven't gotten even the first post done because of how awful everything in the news has been. You don't need someone to point out where the problems are. It is slapped in your face daily.

It also is something that has made it hard for me to write. I literally am struggling with this awful feeling that all of my written work is pure vanity. This is not depression talking here. (I'm at a fairly neutral mental state, actually. This is because the medication is actually working.) It is a sense of being very small and watching the sea draw back for a massive tsunami and having no high ground to retreat to. I look at it all and go "What can I do to help? I am but one woman. I don't even have the spoons to manage all of the balls up in the air in my own household. How in the nine worlds would I manage to do other stuff?"

Horace said "Nil desperandum." Never despair. I am attempting to follow the sage's wise words. It is, however, very difficult.

Monday menu & rambling.

Hi folks,

It's been a while since I posted. The kids have kept me busy. And my own stuff regarding my health has been keeping me busy. School starts September 6th. I am literally counting down the days. We have all the school supplies they need. I may need to buy a few pairs of pants, but we're more or less set on clothes. I have been mending things as necessary. Something I learned was that if you use sport weight yarn to darn holes in denim, it makes a better patch than doing so with sewing thread or with an iron on patch. (The latest issue of Piecework also has a great articles on techniques for how to mend clothes via darning. I highly recommend it.)

My menu this week is super simple and kid friendly. I am just tired of fighting with them over food. I am also in the process of trying to figure out how many spoons I have that I can put towards lunches for the kids. I am leaning again towards the reduced lunch program. A part of me feels guilty about this. I realize, however, I am not in a competition with anyone and the goal is to have the kids eating healthy. Throw in how their medication tends to reduce their appetite, I am thinking about what I can do to get them to eat nutritionally dense foods. I'm still researching that right now. Enough about that now, let's get that menu up here.

Day	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Mon	Pop-Tarts	Sandwiches	Macaroni and cheese
Tues	Cereal	Grilled Cheese	Meatball sandwiches
Wed	Pop-tarts	Pb & j 'Sushi' w/ fruit leather	Spaghetti & meat sauce
Thurs	Waffles	Spaghetti pie	Hot dogs & fries
Fri	Cereal	Octo-dogs w/ veggies & chips	Pork chops w/ cheese potatoes
Sat	Eggs & bacon	Leftovers/ Sandwiches	Pulled chicken (bbq) with tossed salad
Sun	Eggs & hash	Leftovers	Pizza

New glasses and stuff.

Behold, my glorious new bifocals. And disregard my bad hair moment. It has been a bit of a challenge to adjust to these things. I went from occasionally needing reading glasses over the last several years to needing them pretty much whenever I sat down to do stuff that was close up. And then I started having a hard time reading road signs as I was out driving.

So, I went out and did what any other sane person trying to save money did. I procrastinated on getting new glasses. My reading glasses were a bit on the fragile side but I did my best to compensate with cheapie ones from Dollar Tree. The glasses I had gotten when I was living in the dorm was kinda the best I could do for seeing road signs that were for street names because they had some correction for the astigmatism in my left eye. (I honestly have no idea why I was told 20 yrs ago when I got them that the astigmatism was in my right eye.)  When the reading glasses came apart, I realized I couldn't put it off any longer.

So, when I got these I was astounded how much my vision improved. I could see stuff like the clock across the room and it didn't look fuzzy. And reading and close up work suddenly got an enormous amount easier. Gratitude is not a strong enough expression for how I feel about it all.

We've been working on getting ready for the start of school in a few weeks. I picked up everything that the kids needed from their lists from the teachers. I am looking around at the prodigious amount of school supplies we have leftover from last year. I have begun confiscating pencils and highlighters for myself. I have been doing a lot more writing by hand. And I've resumed doing stuff like researching things again. (I haven't busted out the notecards yet, but I am keeping notes in a notebook with references to things like page numbers, paragraphs, and line number. And noting which book, obviously.)

Looking at the piles of crayons, I am really thinking I need to do two things with this. One is to make those melted crayons that melt together into a hockey puck. Some people use cookie cutters, but I don't think mine would stand up to it well. Also, I don't want to use my cookie cutters like that. I suspect I would have a devil of a time trying to get the wax out of them. I am, however, going to use my muffin tin with some liners. (Aluminum foil generally works well if you fold it right. Like the last time we made them (which I think is just about precisely a year from sometime this week), the colors are going to have like colors with like. I will, however, do three in mixed colors from the different parts of the color wheel that are complementary.

I have no idea what we're going to do with these mixed crayons we've made. The kids just don't use them. If I had wicks, I would make a crayon based candle for a teacher or somebody else who'd enjoy it. But I don't and I have literally no idea how to make wicks.