Puzzling

I think finishing that massive cross stitch project is still affecting me.  I am having a really hard time absorbing myself into crafty things.  I'm even having a difficult time getting a new blog out.  What do I talk about when I've been so unfocused?

Well, that's not entirely accurate in the first place, I found myself eyeing my puzzle collection.  I haven't done a proper jigsaw puzzle since my brother came out in December 2019! Well, since we last spoke, I did many of them:

The bottom two were new!  I ordered them around the time that I finished the first puzzle.  I could feel that puzzling was going to be a 'thing' for awhile. I was a great puzzle adopter.  I adopted puzzles from a few people who were moving or didn't want them, and that's cool, but I didn't get to choose the puzzles.  So, I would never in a thousand years choose a puzzle of Chicago, I've never even been there!  So getting a few new puzzles that I got to pick was exciting!  I got to decide what type of puzzle I wanted to do.  I'm a sorter, for example, so landscapes are kind of right out.  Nothing with too much of one thing. Even though the new ones are 1500 pieces each, they aren't difficult.  They keep moving.

But on the subject of crafting projects, I think that I'm more willing to proverbially yank the needle out of WIPs than I ever was before.  I'm really starting to feel the weight of all the finished objects I have in my life.  In spinning, there's the responsibility to knit with the yarns I've made, and in knitting, there's the responsibility to store/give away/deal with the knitted items I've finished. and there's a lot.  How many sweaters/hats/shawls does one person need?

And in that vein, a few days after I gifted that brioche hat to my new friend:

She invited me to work with her.  Like, it's a lot more complicated than that, she works for the school as a paraeducator in the special needs room at boy's school.  But I did the thing, I applied for a real life honest to goodness job.  For about three days I did the things required to apply-- I wrote a resume for the first time! I got a TB test! I asked several of my friends and former neighbors to vouch for me. (I needed three letters of recommendation for this job).  And yeah, at the end of all this I may not get it.  But the idea of getting out and doing something was huge.

And it gave me quite a bit of confidence that after we move (cause yeah, we are still moving as soon as the house is done-- more on that in a minute) I'll be able to find a job then if I still want one.

I'd been feeling so listless lately, and the impending move wasn't helping any.  I'm excited to move to a new area and do all the things to get settled there, but it is at least 7 months away.  And that picture I shared last time of the framing of the house up was actually a mistake.  It was my future neighbor's house, two doors down.  Unfortunately mine is still a hole in the ground and they're waiting for permits to start pouring the foundation.

So, I suppose I'm at a cross roads, and that seems like as good a time as any to continue to wonder what sorts of things I actually value and need in my life.

 For example, how long do I want to spend fighting with chain plying a singles that I severely under-spun?

The answer: maybe twenty minutes and 8 breaks.

The rolags I made, I spun them into singles and now they're in the garbage.

And it's fine.

I'm thinking about doing the same thing with that gradient lace targhee.  but I won't, not yet.  I did start a new spinning project the other day though.  I decided I deserved to do something new and exciting.  I had bought a braid of fiber a few months ago from Three Waters Farm.  It's rabouillet, and so soft.  It's in the colorway Rocks and Sand, and I've decided I need to take my spinning to the next level.

That is, I think need to learn to spin thick again.  3-ply fingering is all well and good, but it's limiting, and it's also frustrating when it comes out more like a light fingering or a sport.  So, that probably should have clued me in to doing a control card, but I did not do that. I'm just trying first to spin a bit thickly in this palate cleanser of a spinning project.

No stress.

What else can I prattle on about?

Oh! Though I haven't been knitting very much at all these days, I did finish Toby's birthday knee socks:

And I did start Hazel's birthday knee socks:

I am about 16? stripes down the legs of these.  I'm doing them two at a time.  I don't know why, I just felt like it this time.  Unfortunately these were also wound reverse each other, so I am pulling from the center of one of these skeins.  And also unfortunately there was a join in that one, and it wasn't from the correct place, it was from a stripe 2 or 3 colors away from the one it should have been and I didn't notice until I was to the next color in the sequence.  So even though theoretically these should be perfectly matched, they won't be.

And yesterday was her birthday and I am not done with them yet.

That's cool.

So, I'm not sure if puzzling has left my system.  It is exceptionally hard on my back though. So I think for its sake, I am done with it and am back to spinning and cross stitching during the day. Cross stitch Lady has gotten a little bit of love since I restarted her, and I decided to stop being a lazy cross stitcher and perform the stitches in the way they were meant to be performed.

I used to cross them any which way, Ok, if you're not a cross stitcher you may not know what on earth I am talking about.  In cross stitching you make exes out of thread or floss.  I do consistently stitch with the left leaning crosses on the top, but sometimes I would change up which way it's going, depending on where the previous stitch was or the next one will be.  On the fabric that I'm working with, I'm not sure what it is about it, but doing it willy nilly like that was causing the stitches to look weird.  I JUST restarted her, and don't want to fuck up the project by messing with tension, that's the very reason that I restarted her in the first place.  So, I'm consistently going from left to right and back again (I believe I did talk about this in the last post) and I'm also going through the correct holes in the following rows.  I think I started doing it differently to save thread, and I think it saved quite a bit, but thread is Cheap, there is no reason not to just do it the right way.

It's about that whole value system I was talking about.  I can cross stitch a thousand things in my life, but I'd rather stitch fewer things in a better manner than more things haphazardly.

And that my friends is as good a place as any to end things.  I'll continue to keep you updated about house and new job if it comes to anything.

Cheers!