Krissie fixed my internet–she spent a lot of time on the phone talking to a very nice rep who got us online which I needed Krisse for because she has the patience of a saint and I have the focus of a fruit fly–which made it possible for me to hit the Knitpicks/WeCrochet Big Sale hard. For those of you not fiber freaks, once a year the two sister sites have a two week sale that’s really a blow-out, and even though I swear every year I have enough yarn (because I have enough yarn) they get me. So for the past week I’ve been killing my budget with new yarn, and now it’s starting to arrive, and it’s like Christmas every time another box lands. (For the record, this is my Christmas to myself. That makes it okay that I’m spending that much money. I think.). So for me, this week, happiness is yarn, and a working internet because that’s actually more important than yarn.
So what made you happy this week?
We had our Thanksgiving last night. For the first time in over 10 years, the part of my family that has been estranged returned to the fold. There was no drama and there was acceptance and joy.
Filled our hearts with Thanksgiving!!
It’s actually difficult to buy yarn without a working internet! I don’t get Knitpicks emails anymore – probably got unsubscribed at some point when my inbox exploded – but the Aussie dollar is so woeful at the moment it’s probably a good thing.
Not like I am going to run out of yarn (or fabric, or beads, or spinning fibre) any time soon…
I am happy to be finally looking forward to thanksgiving- don’t know why I wasn’t, don’t know what changed, just grateful.
My dear niece and her family who live on Maui have decided to buy a mobile home, which they can park on a friend’s property, since it will be a long time before they can get their house rebuilt. She still has a long commute but this is better than living in a tent which is what they have been doing. I can’t even imagine.
Many lovely food things that are not helping my waistline, but are helping my mood. And new black sweatshirt on sale helping to hide the waistline so all good so far.
I planted all my spring bulbs. Primarily tulips but also crocus and allium. I didn’t mark where I put them so it will be a surprise next spring.
I got my first manicure since the spring. I wear gloves when I garden but it’s hard on my hands. Now my nails are tidy and shiny.
I got my new credit card this week so I can buy Rebecca Yaris’s new book and read it on the plane tomorrow. DH and I are going to California to spend American Thanksgiving with my brother and his family (Canadian Thanksgiving is in early Oct). I’m a nervous traveller so happy to have a long book loaded on my reader to keep my brain busy.
Happy Thanksgiving to US Argh readers.
We’re in Curaçao this week. A friend of ours is having a Big Birthday and so invited everybody to celebrate with her for the week. It’s our second beach vacation this year but I’m certainly not complaining.
Not exactly hard time!
I mostly like living in Ohio. We see lots of birds, and early spring wildflowers, and in the summer the prairies are breathtaking, but I love walking and wading on the beach, too.
I’ve only ever been to Cincinnati in Ohio – many times.
I am green with jealousy. (ha. also my last name).
I haven’t been to a beach in five or six years and I long for it. The only thing better is a whale watching tour…
That’s a lot of yarn! Do you have plans for each color, or are you going to have it handy for when inspiration strikes?
I am very pleased, because I finished cutting back that huge bush/tree in my back yard, and raked the leaves off both patios so they could be mowed into the grass. I moved the trimmed branches onto the cleared area next to the bush, and I’ll break them down so they will go in the bins. Then I mowed. I have one bin already full of smaller bunches of twigs. I did leave some branches low to the ground for the bunnies. I remembered just in time that they chew on bark in the winter, when grass is scarce.
I also consolidated the metal mesh cages for plants in the shed. Several fit inside each other, which helped. I only have a few of those, now, in use. The small trees are thick enough that the bunnies won’t gnaw them down, now. One plant is getting pretty big and might benefit from a bunny trim. Then I put the plastic chairs in the shed, and put the rolled up hoses on top of them. That was a full day’s work, and I ached at the end of it, but I took some extra pain meds and slept very well, last night. I’m so glad that is done! The leaves are still falling, but I may just leave them after this. Some of my neighbor’s Sycamore leaves are as big as a dinner plate!
Plans for most of it. I mostly buy fingering weight but I wanted heavier cardigans for winter so I got worsted and bulky this time.
I survived babysitting my 7 and 5 year old grandchildren for a week while Mom and Dad took a much needed break in Punta Cana with friends! They arrived home around midnight last night and I got to spend the night in my bed with my two cat snugglers for the first time since last weekend.
By the way, I just checked online and, if any of you knitters are in my area (around zip code 18017), we have several knitting supply/yarn stores within reach:
1. The Knitters Edge
2. Conversational Threads Fiber Arts Studio
3. Kraemer Yarns
4. Fabricland
and several more within an hour’s drive.
I am happy and relieved today because my reliable old car started like a dream yesterday after two idle weeks while I recuperated from the dam flu or whatever it was. Drove it to library, post office, and found some valuable leaf bags near someone’s curb. Makes for wonderful soil to dig into next spring!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday–all the food and family of Christmas, but without the stress of gift-giving and decorating.
A perfect year would be two Thanksgivings and no Christmas.
Or three Halloweens.
Yes!!! All the Halloween. No stress, no obligations, only community and candy and fun themed cocktails and hearty food.
I adore fall and spooky season. And I have recently begun calling Valentine’s day “pink Halloween”.
You could consider celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving in early October , as well as the US one 🙂
I mostly skip the decorating. But we do put up a metal tree which DH insists looks like coat hangers and hang our ornaments from our travel and kids on it. I do enjoy that and we don’t kill a tree or have to clean up dropped bits of dead tree.
You hang kids from your travel on a metal coat rack? Do they object?you hang kids
Scratch the second you hang kids. My ipad did something weird. (Also, sorry but I couldn’t resist)
My first happy this week involved using up yarn instead of buying more. Finished some chemo caps for a friend, so I can mail them Monday, to arrive well before she starts losing hair (chemo begins soon).
My second happy was solving a puzzle that low-level bugged me for a while (although not enough to do anything about it). For those of you who read the Rivers of London series, in one book, Peter and Abigail bribe a fox and his mate with “cheese puffs.” Now, in my world, cheese puffs are these addictively crunchy, faux-cheese-topped bits of styrofoam-textured artificial stuff. Which didn’t match at all with the “home-made” descriptor of the foxes’ cheese puffs. So when I was looking for appetizers to bring to Thanksgiving this week, and ran across “cheese puffs” (aka gougeres), I was ecstatic. Not only do I have something different to bring to Thanksgiving (and at least some of the people at the table have read the Rivers of London, so they’ll be amused), but I’ve also solved the puzzle of cheese puffs in American v. in English. (For anyone who, like me, doesn’t know, they’re like cream puffs, except with cheese in the dough and no filling, although I keep thinking maybe some kind of filling would be interesting, maybe some kind of softened dried fruit?)
Oh, and my third happy is also food-related. I made applesauce (really love home-made applesauce with some whole cloves and cinnamon in the crock-pot) and happened to have half a bag of cranberries left over from a less successful recipe attempt, and tossed them in with the apples. The result, after food-milling everything was absolutely perfect. The cranberries tarted up the apples and the apples sweetened up the cranberries, and the spices were just right. And it’s even relatively healthy (no sugar added). I’d made cran-applesauce before, but hadn’t been impressed with it. I think I used too many cranberries before, and now I’ve got the ratio correct — half a bag to as many apples as will fill my extra-large crock-pot.
Gin-Great idea! Chemo caps are a thoughtful gift for a friend since a lot of heat leaves the body via a bald head. (Learned from experience over 20 years ago. Please verify that the yarn is soft, a few acrylic hats were too harsh for my sensitive scalp.) A few hats to use for sleeping can use up yarns that are not as pretty.
I played “mad scientist” in the kitchen when I had excess cranberries and made a nice relish with orange slices, cranberries, a bit of sugar, rosewater and a few other goodies that I cooked together. Enjoy your cooking experiments! Taf
They’re soft, I promise! I’ve made a few bazillion chemo caps (mostly to donate to cancer wards) over the years, always in cotton (I’m allergic to wool), and I’ve worn a few myself in particularly cold weather in my drafty house (not bald, but my hair is really short). They get even softer with washing!
My biggest happy was reading my piece at my memoir writing group. The group ran for 9 weeks/3 pieces per woman. I feel that my writing has improved a lot. The others praised my piece generously; the downside is that my youth elicits responses like “Gothic” and “grotesque” which are, unfortunately, correct. I’m trying to decide how I’ll approach my next piece when the group reconvenes in January.
Lots of secondary happies: dryer guy repaired my dryer; daughter and cat are here through Thanksgiving; saw a great folk concert last night with a performer I first saw 40+ years ago; at the gym I am officially doing all the exercises — I hadn’t been able to do some since injuring my knee on October 16th. Now, if I could think of a way to help the world.
Also: I gave up trying to learn to crochet so that I could make a blanket for my granddaughter when she’s born. Failed attempts at following YouTube and printed directions for beginner crocheters litter my desk. I should use them as book marks. Huge relief to give up.
I knitted a cardigan for my niece, sized for 6 months, it was a year before I finished. Knitting is easier, if you just knit little squares and then sew them together it is much easier. Then you don’t tell yourself you have to knit a blanket, you tell yourself you just have to finish this little square.
Those are beautiful colors! Happy early Christmas to you.
I finished the massive overhaul of my professional file drawers (years of contracts, royalty statements, printed out articles I’ve written, story ideas, etc.), which got stalled out in mid-explosion stage because of a sick cat. Now the giant mess it gone from the table, desk, and top of the double file cabinet, and I can actually find things and close the drawer again. Whew. I don’t love the process of neatening and rearranging things, but I sure do love the results.
Happiness is clean blood tests and a clear ultrasound on said cat, Koshka. He’s been steadily losing weight for a year with no obvious explanation (he eats fine). We’ve been battling allergies that made him pull out his fur, but now that we have that mostly under control, there seems to be another issue. He got completely stopped up earlier in the week and had to be rushed to the vet for an emergency visit on Wednesday, including x-rays, which resulted in the poor boy having an enema, fluids, and an anti-nausea med that made him drool like a fiend. I have a new vet who agreed with me that the weight loss was concerning (he’s only 6, but I have a friend whose cat was just diagnosed with cancer at 5 and a half), so I held my breath until the scan on Friday came back showing nothing except a too-skinny cat.
So we’re operating on the theory that he has some kind of gastrointestinal issue, and he’s going to get a new food (gluten free, among other things) and extra wet food in addition to the two meals a day everyone else gets. So I am cautiously happy, although really, I’ll be happy when he puts back on the two pounds he lost. Still, happy the news wasn’t immediately horrible, so I’ll take the win.
Deb, I assume the first thing they checked was his thyroid? I don’t blame you for being concerned. Those little bodies can’t take big changes without consequences. I hope the extra meals help get him back on track.
Yup. Blood tests were all textbook good. Thyroid, renal, liver, all good. That was the first thing we did.
Deborah
I am very impressed with your epic paper overhaul-Wow! I spent two hours sorting a very small box of papers in the living room and had to take a break. Five more small boxes to do when I finish this one. (Why yes, procrastinator is my middle name…).
So glad that your cat had a clear scan, and I hope a change in diet solves the skinny problem. I love seeing healthy cats curled up napping looking very round and healthy, may that be the case soon.
Jenny
What a beautiful bunch of yarn! May you have a lot of enjoyment working on fun projects with it. My yarn pile is not as large as my cloth pile for sewing projects, but at least it is not as much as the room of cloth a friend has…The good news is that she does a lot of sewing to downsize the piles and often sells her great designs at events and online during each year. I need to follow her example and do a few projects soon. Taf
I was desperate, because it got so out of hand over the years. And I hate clutter. But it literally took me a week.
I hope your kitty is much better, soon. It’s hard to see them decline and not know why.
Is it possible to feed him the special diet without the other cats getting at it?
Congratulations on getting the paper sorted! Also, praying that all things work out well for Kosha! He’s such a beautiful kitty.
My happy is that my medical stuff is now far enough along that I can wash my hair, brush my teeth, and floss.
And that with the right sunscreen I can plant my spring bulbs.
Happy this week: Day Job wasn’t hellish and the coming week is short. Miss Kitters O’Scruffian was successfully dosed with anti-flea goop and forgave me almost immediately. My anniversary orchids are still beautiful after 6+ weeks. We got some rain on Thursday. The yard still looks acceptable. Jenny’s yarn porn is delicious.
Happy mum’s visit went well! …mentally, if not healthily: We both ended up sick her entire stay. But, the anxiety I had expected to have to wrestle with didn’t come. Yay!
Happy Matcha still doesn’t hate me, despite me having to wash her rear twice this week. Instead she’s even snugglier now, and slept with me two of the 3 nights Sven was away. Butt-washing = bonding, apparently.
Happy Sven is back home again. <3 Although he is sick, too. Everyone's sick.
Seem to have developed a strange case of scary gonna-faint-any-moment-now-sensation over the last 4 days. Thought it might've had to do with the fever at first, but the fever is gone now and still I occasionally feel as though I'm…being pulled away from the world. It's very scary. Also tingles here and there and dizziness. If it was the flu or whatever it was earlier this week, shouldn't this be moving on now too, then? We're confused. Will call doctor tomorrow if not miraculously better.
Do let us know what the doc says Shass! And have some pocket hugs
Phone-appointment with internist tomorrow. That’s all I know so far. Pocket-hugs are cherished!
Does the room turn upside down?
Labyrinthitis does that. It’s an inner thing and it’s awful, but it’s not deadly.
Yes, all sorts of vertigo related things can be caused by imbalance of the inner ear. Sometimes out of nowhere, but certainly if you’ve been sick, there could be a relationship. They sell a medicine over the counter called meclizine (used to be prescription, and it is used for sea sickness and nausea, but it is also good for vertigo). The brand name of the one in my medicine cabinet is Bonine, but I think there are all sorts. You might want to try it and see if it helps. It might make you sleepy or groggy, so you may want to talk to your doc first if you take other meds.
No upside-down rooms, thankfully. Generally speaking I feel like I’m on the verge of passing out now and then during the day, if I strain myself even just a little (including stuff like washing the cats’ food-bowls and such). I also feel like I’m half in a dream-state, as if reality isn’t…really real. Dissociation? I had that a bunch of years ago. It was a bit like this, minus the passing-out-feeling. So it doesn’t really feel like vertigo (anymore), more like my body is considering… taking a break. Very weird/scary.
Also, I assume you tested for Covid? Covid can mess with you in lots of different ways.
I tested earlier this week when my mum was still here. It was negative. No safe way of testing now without sighted company though. 🙁 COVID-tests aren’t made for blind people, what with them wanting you to drop specimen-droplets into small containers and whatnots. But, if the first test is still to be trusted, I should be Covid-negative.
Bad, bad, bad, Jennie. The plan today was to start my annual yarn and not started/in progress knitting project inventory. Then you come along and tell me about the sale (insert emoji of exploding head here). I was like Homer Simpson and a do-nut, drooling over all that potential. Since I can’t knit and watch TV at the same time, I suppose I will have to find your audio books. Also, when Liz Danger came out I went back and read Agnes and the Hitman. Then I read Bob’,s two follow-ups which then lead me to more of his books. So, thank you for the books and yarn.
That yarn is absolutely gorgeous. Happy dreams as to what you’re going to make first.
Joys, this week included getting my hair redyed and cut. I feel a lot more like me.
That was the day after I did, the podcast, which was also a great joy.
I had three auditions this week. Always fun.
on the Book side I got the print cover from E-BookLaunch for maybe this time. Now I’m awaiting the copy. And surprise of all surprises:. I got a reply on a book I queried four years ago. I really think it’s nice She remembered. So I replied, and sent a query for a picture book on Nonverbal autism told from the point of view of the sibling. I think it’s her kind of thing. And if not, oh well.
My son, Christopher sent me a list of what we’re going to have for Thanksgiving. Since he is vegan, and the kids are thankful for pizza, we’re going to do a small turkey breast for the turkey. But all the sides sound interesting. He’s planning us a full day of cooking and shopping. I read a good article in nice news about helping people who are morning or still grieving during Thanksgiving.
https://nicenews.com/acts-of-kindness/grief-around-holidays-how-support-loved-ones/
However, you choose to celebrate or not celebrate I wish you joy in the season.
Oh, I almost forgot. Connie Willis has a book of her Christmas short stories. I borrowed it from the library and I’m loving it.
I have to admit I don’t understand how yarn and fabric stashes work. How do you decide how much to buy?
I am sure that this confusion has saved me thousands of dollars in yarn and fabric stores because I wait until I have a specific project to buy things.
That is my approach, too, Debbie, unless I see something that is so gorgeous I can’t pass it up. Then I get at least two, maybe three, skeins, since I usually make hats or smaller things when I crochet.
I mostly make scrappy quilts, the appeal of which comes from the wild variety of fabrics. So I collect one-yard pieces of fabrics that I find on sale or can’t live without. That way, if I decide I want to make a purple quilt or teal quilt or red quilt, I know I have enough variety on hand to do it! One particular advantage to having collected fabrics for something like thirty years is that fabric trends change just as much as clothing fashion trends change, so the red you get one year is not the same as the red you get another year (especially true for reds and greens, but also for other colors). That way, over time, there’s real variety, which makes a scrappy quilt sparkle. If the fabrics are all from the same year, there’s often a similarity to them that destroys the sparkle. If you want to see some great examples, search for StashBanditQuilts (beware of imitations, look for the one with the colorful logo (woman wearing a mask) on Instagram.
The fabric I have my eye on for a splurge of an acquisition, isn’t available yet, but is from an artist I follow on Instagram. I started following her initially because I thought her designs would be so good in quilts, and was ecstatic recently when it turned out that a major fabric printer agreed and is releasing a collection based on her art. You can see it here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzqKChlITfE/?img_index=1 Yes, I have a bit of a thing for blue-greens, which are often featured in her work.
Beautiful fabric – both the colour and the design. Would love to see what you do with it.
Beautiful fabric! You’re completely right that her artwork would make beautiful fabric lines.
Sales. I know the yarns I like to work with and I have patterns I want to make, but mostly it’s the prices on the yarns I always use. With the Big Sale, they mark yarns down 40-50-60% and then I put a 20% off coupon on top of that and buy scarf or shawl quantities (800 to 1000 yds) or sweater quants (usually 2500 yds). Then when I decide I want to make something, I shop the stash.
I really crochet to calm down; it’s very soothing. And then I end up with a lot of scarves and shawls, and when people compliment me on them, I give them away. Otherwise I’d be up to my ass in scarves and shawls.
I used to crochet when I was (much) younger. Sadly, when I tried to pick it up a few years ago, it turned out to have gotten much more difficult over the years (that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it) and also really aggravated my already bad eye strain issues. But I envy the people who can do it.
I have much more fabric than yarn. I sew more than I crochet. I know about how many yards I need for a dress or pants and I buy that much (or more if it’s really special). When I want to make something I poke through my stash until I find something I like.
I have not, in fact, bought any fabric in the past twenty years. I’m seventy. I’ll probably have plenty left when I die. I have not bought a pattern since the early 80s. My clothes don’t go out of style because they were never in style to begin with.
My yarn stash is from finding an outlet store and going nuts in buying yarn that was 90% off retail price.
My fabric stash has been built up over the years. Like Jenny, mine tends to be more likely to be purchased when there is an amazing sale or I’ve gone on a shop hop. I am also collecting other peoples fabric stashes through estate sales. When I’m buying it for myself, I will either buy a 1, 2, or 3 yards depending on how much I like the fabric. When I’m trying to be a little more frugal, I might buy a fat quarter bundle or a single fat quarter because it’s pretty fabric but I don’t really need it. Then I have one designer whose fabric I love and have no rhyme or reason why I spend so much on his stuff other than I love it. For other quilters here, it’s Jason Yenter’s fabric from In The Beginning fabrics.
When I go to make a quilt, I start with my stash and try to get as much from what I already own as possible. Occasionally, I will be missing one or two fabrics of just the right color, so I will go shopping for those and I will base the amount I purchase on the pattern.
I have yarn I inherited from my mother (who always bought on sale), and yarn I bought on sale years ago, and yarn I’ve bought over the years, usually on sale, and now I buy only yarn for a specific project I need new yarn for, and yarn that’s so luscious I can’t resist, usually just a skein or two, unless it’s obviously sweater-yarn. Which is to say I buy yarn as a treat, now, and while buying it on sale is great, it doesn’t have to be on sale like it used to be for me to buy it.
Though I must admit I live an hour from WEBS, the big yarn store in Northampton, MA, and I go to their yearly between-Christmas-and-New-Years’ sale most years. I went to college in Northampton, and so it’s a lovely day out, revisiting shops I once knew, buying more yarn than I need, having lunch at places I couldn’t have afforded when I was there.
We lack nice wool shops, I have to buy acrylics from little independent/charity shops or head to the big craft chains shops in the next big town. Occasionally when I am in the London area I visit Loop, so beautiful https://loopknitting.com
I’m off the Wellbutrin, for now at least. It gave me whopping insomnia, couldn’t eat much, and on day 13 my throat refused to swallow pills any more. Thankfully at that point Kaiser called me back and said I could stop. I feel better already–well, not psychiatrically (that never kicked in) but at least I can attempt to sleep and eat again. Back at square one, I suppose. The pharmacist said there’s a lighter/chewable/breakable dose of it I could take, we’ll see if that is a reasonable option or not, but…
Adding to my other drama, like I needed more, I now have the laryngitis. Not so much of an issue in a musical since I can lipsync and I don’t have a solo, but I have a lot of talking appointments tomorrow and that’s a problem 🙁 I have some throat remedy in the house, hopefully that works. Though I also hope this means I can extend my medical leave since I have to go back Tuesday.
Other than that, I had a nice Friendsgiving thing yesterday before the show, and there was a tailgate party before the show, which cracked me up. I’m sorta sleeping again, so there’s that.
Best of luck with your talking appointments, Jennifer. Have you ever worked in the theater for pay? You are clearly on time, well-organized, creative, and responsible, as well as a good communicator. And you act, dance, and sing. Another thing you are good at is one-off projects that require a lot of focus.
If it makes you feel any better, Jennifer, lots of people have issues with side effects from anti-depressants. They can be very tricky. (I can’t tolerate them, apparently.) But if one doesn’t work for you, another might. There are quite a few options.
Wellbutrin helped me with SAD, but it gave me hallucinations. Only in the morning while I was waking up, but it really freaked me out. We’re heading into SAD territory again, and I still have Wellbutrin, but . . .
As Deb said, you are not alone.
I use a light in the morning for SAD so that’s also an option. Mine is a visor so I do it before I get out of bed to make sure I do it early enough.
Just curious Jenny, were the hallucinations related to your dreams, like hypnagogic dreams? When I first started Wellbutrin I had super intense dreams and some of them were hypnagogic, but I’ve had those my whole life so they weren’t really a surprise to me. When I have a nightmare they are freaking terrifying, I hate waking up and seeing the monster from my nightmare standing there. Fortunately, I don’t have nightmares that often anymore.
I have found that HTP-5 supplement works for me with my SAD. It helps with serotonin. I also have a happy light.
Happiness was finding the yarn I needed to complete a big project in my hemisphere! I love Australia but I’d rather deal with my postal system than anybody’s customs’ system at the holidays. Yay!
I pulled out my winter project, a knitted light wool blanket, and found that somehow a small hole has opened up in the middle of it.
Does anyone know of any good video tutorials on how to repair such a thinking without unraveling the blanket?
I’ve been reading a book on SAORI weaving too. Every once in a while I dream about learning to weave.
I see a lot of videos on YouTube —it probably makes sense for you to browse to see what would work best for your wool and hole.
So many things to talk about. So much to share. First, lighting. I have a bunchaton of under-the-counter lights. I installed three with motion sensors in the stairs down from the dotter’s kitchen. Let’s minimize accidents, right? I bought four packs of six neodymium stick-on magnets.
More lighting. Using more magnets, I stuck five lights (no motion sensors) to illuminate the expanded portion of my “kitchen.” They’re attached to the I-beam that divides and supports the basement ceiling joists. One other hides in the receiving box of the laundry chute from upstairs, so when someone drops laundry from the second floor, or more to the purpose, when someone takes laundry out to wash it, the contents of the box can be seen.
Meanwhile, the gothy dotter has stored her Halloween/autumn décor and busted out her Christmas stuff. I’ll be taking pictures while she is in NoCar* for Thankfest and setting up another “Woman at Work” post on my blog. She should work for a decorating company (unless her skills are limited to gothic.)
===================
* NoCar = North Carolina, home of my first-born male child and his family.
Surely there is a Goth Decorating niche to be exploited.
Happiness is making other people happy.
Yesterday was my aunt’s birthday. She does needlepoint and various types of embroidery. When I go to book sales I look out for pattern books for her. She prefers Celtic designs, repeating patterns, Ukrainian designs and such to representational images. I have bought her all sorts of things, including doll house rug patterns. She mostly embroiders hand towels, so a short repeating motif is ideal.
She is also very thrifty and doesn’t spend much on herself except for thread on ebay.
Anyway, I bought her a brand new book of traditional Japanese designs in mostly blue and white. And she was so thrilled. We talked about what a great book it was for over an hour. It made me so happy to find something that pleased her that much.
I would say that I have yarn envy, and I do, but I finally have all of mine corralled and organized and the tote actually fits under the bed. It feels so good to have that off my list of things to do that I am able to resist the temptation to buy more. Barely.
I knit and crochet both, but my real love is learning a new technique. I can crochet blindfolded, but there’s so much more to learn with knitting! I just taught myself stranded and started a three color cowl for which I shopped my stash. In theory it will be helpful whittling down my stash of single skeins and odd lengths, but it’s really about learning something new.
So that’s my yarn happy. Unrelated but even better, I spent yesterday afternoon doing the tourist thing with my niece’s family and had a blast with her 11yo.