Reflections On The Past Three Months
The energy of the past three months had a constrictive feel for me.
January gave our family a great deal of trauma with which with to deal…and we are all still dealing with that trauma and the fall-out from that situation. We pray it gets resolved any day now. We know it will.
Now, for December I don’t think I did much of anything other than focus on two things: family and recuperating from being so sick I thought a visit to the hospital may be necessary.
Come on. I pretty much slept through most of the weeks around the holidays. We completely missed Solstice for the first time in decades.
January. I tried to pick things up in January and make a run with them all. I managed to accomplish a few things, but not everything I wanted to accomplish. Ever since the issue in our family happened, I have been fighting anxiety and sleeplessness, depression, and stomach issues. These are normal issues for me, but these are now a bit more exacerbated.
What did I accomplish during January?
Actually, beginning in late January, my brain started to gather and coalesce. I might not be able to keep up with my writing online for my blog and for this newsletter. But I keep working.
For February, I admit to pulling back at points, to the detriment of my blog and newsletter usually. But, during this time, I bought a Jibun Techo First Kit, a B6 slim one at that. It was on sale and I had the money saved for Hobonichi things. I bought myself a 2023 Spring start Hobonichi Weeks with bunnies all over it. (This is Melangell.) I have to have my bunnies. As well as the Jibun.
I love the Jibun. Next year, I may buy the Jibun Days instead of a Hobonichi Techo. I prefer the A5 size. B6 is a little bit too small for me to use for a daily planner with my eyesight.
My Jibun is a weekly planner, no daily pages, no extra pages in the back. The kit comes with the weekly planner, the life book, and the idea book. The life book is full of prompted pages to fill out. Honestly, for me, it is too much. I will not need to buy another one. That is sort of the point of this book: you only need to buy one. The idea book is completely empty. The pages are gridded, so I can keep things in line if I so desire. This book is far more useful to me since I can put anything I want into it, which is the point of the idea book. You fill one, then buy another one. And so on.
I love the set-up of the Jibun. On the weekly pages, there is a space for a lot of things I already track. Meals. Weather. Mood. Sleep tracker. It’s pretty cool in my opinion. It is a bit funny that I already have trackers set up in my Weeks Mega (my original Hobonichi weeks, Ophelia). These two sets of trackers are set up into April.
This leads me to another issue. My planning system is completely up in the air at the moment. My tracking needs have changed…and I have trackers drawn in until April. See my dilemma there? I’m working on that. At least the trackers in Melangell are more clear and on par with where I am going now. I’ll get into that later on.
Until then, you can read this blog post about Melangell here.
I learned to Tunisian crochet and managed to complete a couple of projects, between January and February. Not huge projects, but they still count. A have a pretty colorful simple stitch cowl now. I gave my husband two simple stitch washcloths once I finished making them.
I also crocheted this rainbow blanket for my husband, and then my son swiped it, so I will have to make another one, lol. It didn’t even take two days to whip this blanket up and it is soft and squishy and warm. I’m the one who uses it most at the moment for some reason. Maybe because they both always steal my throws off my chair. Lol
My Goth Girl Klaralund is done, and all seamed up. I am not exactly overwhelmed by my seaming job. In my defense, I was watching Megan on Peacock’s streaming service while seaming.
I also learned how to do the puff stitch, which is a crochet stitch. I have a practice square that I worked on for far too long. I am trying to decide what I want to do with either the square and/or with the puff stitch. I have a few ideas in mind. I am still pondering it. But I have had so much fun working this up.
I am proud to say I have kept up with my Temperature Blanket for this year. At least so far. Ok, I still have to catch up with March’s square, but I’m very happy with the way this blanket is shaping up. I do have January and February’s squares seamed together. I simply single-crocheted them together down the middle. I am using an ivory-colored yarn as the spacer between months and to fill in non-existent days so that every square has the same number of squares.
For example, January has thirty-one days. Well, February has twenty-eight days. To ensure February’s square had thirty-one days worth of rounds, I made the final three rounds using the ivory yarn, plus the delineating round that I put around the outside of each square so designate the difference between one month and another.
But for the seaming of the squares, and for the final border once this blanket is completely finished, I used a khaki yarn. I pulled the Big Twist Value Worsted khaki color out of another stash that I have handy, so I will have to buy a couple more.
I am not planning a huge finishing border for the entire blanket once it it complete. Maybe one round of granny clusters, followed by a round of picot edging. And then, done.
I wrote a post recently about my Temperature Blanket journey that you can read here, if you wish.
Since I wrote that post, I found a few other issues with which to contend in regards to my temperature blanket.
Summer is coming. Warmer weather is coming. I think I may end up with square after square in nearly the exact same color for every single round for a month or two come summer because I didn’t plan ahead better. Even though I have tracked weather and temperature daily for several years now, it didn’t hit me that I should do more than ten colors for the color delineation for this blanket.
So, next year, not only will I be changing up the way I break up the temperature gauge I have used for this year (this year: 1-10 degrees; next year, 1-9 degrees—for example). Next year, my temperature gauge will look more like: 10-14 degrees, 15-19 degrees, and on up. For below zero up to 9 degrees is one color. My scale will go all the way up to 115-119 degrees. Anything over 120 will be included with that color because typically our temperatures do not range that high, so I am planning to hedge my bets there.
I have been doing a lot of research lately the yarns to use for next year’s blanket. Although I dearly love the idea of how huge this year’s blanket may be (if I don’t decide to make it into two different blankets, each having six squares, next year, I would appreciate something smaller and more easily attained.
The yarn I am currently planning to use next year is Hobbii’s Rainbow Sock Wool 4-ply, which you can see for yourself here. As implied in its name, it is a sock yarn, so sock/fingering weight yarn. Plus, it’s wool. well, a wool blend. This may be the only way I can afford to make a wool blanket. Plus, it won’t end up being too big or too heavy. I have plenty of other blankets for that.
It is just now March and I am having such happy thoughts about next year’s Temperature Blanket. I cannot wait to buy the yarn and start gauge-swatching.
This month, I am already working on a stash-busting one large granny square blanket. I am using up all the random cake yarn I have. A lot of random colors. Two different textures of yarn. Three different brands of yarn. One cake from Hobby Lobby. A bunch of Premier Sweet Roll cakes. Even more Bernat Pop cakes. I started working it up on the 3rd of March. I cannot believe how fast this thing is working up. Plus, just mindlessly working through cake after cake, round after round, is very soothing to my mind and my soul.
I also started working up a Pocketful Of Tee shirt using Blue Ocean Cotton. I am not focusing a lot of time on this yet. My personally set deadline to complete this is the end of April.
I also have a project in mind to start once I finish this stash cake granny square blanket. I am going to take all the yarn I bought to make the Weasley Burrows Blanket and work up a queen-sized granny spike blanket. This will be the first row-by-row blanket I have done, versus my typical granny square round and round blankets, since I had the last miscarriage when we lost Dylan. So this is a big deal for me.
I have also altered my publishing schedule on Medium. I am posting once a week from here on out on Medium. Right now I am posting all my old coursework, workshops, knitting patterns, and crochet patterns there. Once I have published all my old work, I will see where my head is at in order to decide what I will write and publish there.
I am also feeling a need to change up how and when I am posting on my blog, but…I have a lot that I need to keep posting about on my blog. For example, my planners and planning journey, my knitting and my crocheting, as well as prompts.
Now, with everything that has gone on with us since January, I have not focused as much on my work as I needed to. I am behind in creating the content for my courses. Not to mention, as I have sat with my journal the way I want to create has changed. So, it’s not a bad thing that I haven’t done all that much.
So, what I post to the blog will be what it will be. I need to make sure I make time for my other projects, which includes designing knitting patterns, my Grimoire of Self series, and some other plans that I have held up my sleeves for a while now.
Reflecting on the past three months, a lot has happened. A lot has not happened. I am currently happier now than I was last year. I still have so many undone things, but for now, I have more hope. That is something.
What about you? How have the past couple of months been for you?