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Do you know what today is?
Well, I mean, aside from it being a Monday, and February 29th, and all that.
It’s the last day of Thingadailies!
Here. Have a snowflake in celebration.
Thank you to everyone who joined in for a whole month of making things (whatever those things were). Now we’ve all got eleven months to come up with what to make *next* February. Whee!
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
We had some friends over for dinner tonight, and we played Pandemic. I’ve been wanting to give that game another try for a while, but just haven’t had the time to schedule it. Today was supposed to be spent finishing off a Call of Cthulhu game we all started months and months ago, but life has a way of throwing up roadblocks, so when half the party couldn’t make it, we decided to just do dinner and Pandemic instead.
Our first game ended in a miserable failure. We only managed to get one cure completed, before outbreaks took over and we were all doomed. We took a break for pizza fondue and chatting, and then decided to try it again, this time deliberately picking our roles as opposed to randomly selecting them from the deck. The second time around we were *so* close! Not only did we manage to both cure and eradicate one disease, but we had all the cards lined up for the remaining three cures (and to win the game, all you have to do is have all the cures)….and then we realized we were going to run out of player cards two turns short.
By this time it was late and we were all getting a bit punchy and then someone came up with An Idea. Richard scoured the rules, but there isn’t anything in there about a player (or in this case, two players) deciding to skip their turn, so we worked it out so that we actually *did* get the fourth cure on the very final play of the game….but we all knew it was winning on a technicality.
Ah well. Some day we are going to play this again and manage an actual win. Some day.
Maybe.
*****
We were scurrying around this morning doing a bunch of errands but I did manage to pin out the test knit in the spare room so it can dry, unmolested. Alas, for our cool spring weather, it is not yet dry, which means it’s not going to get into the mail tomorrow like I’d hoped. Bah.
I also whipped up today’s snowflake. Open points *plus* oodles of picots.
Boy do those crochet designers really like their picots.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
So technically the test knit I’m working on was due back to the company today…and if all had gone as planned, it would have been merrily winging its way back to them earlier this week. But alas, I discovered that I did not actually get enough of one color of yarn to finish it off, so they shipped more out to me, and it arrived yesterday in the mail. After knitting rabidly on it all morning, and then all afternoon and evening after we got back from a family gathering, it’s finally done. Yay! There were celebratory Mint Milano cookies consumed, and now all that is left is to block it and then weave in a bazillion ends and then add the //redacted because this is a test knit and thus is secret// and hopefully (all digits crossed) this will pop into the mail Monday and be out of my hair for good.
No worries though – the yarn for the next test knit is already sitting on my dining room table, plus I’ve got…uh…an embarrassingly large number of works in progress that I really ought to be poking at, so it’s not like I’m going to be bored or anything.
*****
This morning there was a rather jarring high-pitched screeching noise at roughly 5:30 am. Turns out it was the fan, giving its death scream.
Richard turned the fan off and promptly went back to sleep because he is lucky that way, but alas, that was it for my brain. So instead of lying there in bed, wide-awake and grumpy, I decided it was better to just get up and drink coffee and do something productive, like make a snowflake.
It appears we are now done with clusters and have moved on to open points. I’m kind of sad about that because clusters were actually kind of fun.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
Today’s snowflake introduces a new-to-me stitch: clusters. There were a LOT of clusters, which translates to “bigger lumps than picots”, in case you were wondering and I am sure you were.
This one turned out pretty good except for my poor blocking skills which resulted in one point being slightly shorter than the others.
I think at this point it is safe to say that any dreams of quitting my job and transitioning to a lucrative career crocheting snowflakes for fame and fortune may not come to fruition….
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
Relevant to some of your interests: did you know that there is a website where, if you enter in your zip code, a list of all the places Girl Scouts are selling cookies will pop up?
I entered in our zip code and it turns out that later this week, there will be cookies for sale at the local ice cream place that’s walking distance from our house.
GOSH AND SOMEONE HAS A 10K STEP CHALLENGE GOING ON WHATEVER SHALL I DO?
Ahem. Anyway. Back to what you’re coming here for. Here is today’s snowflake. A refreshing two-row pattern, after yesterday’s 8 rows that went painfully wrong halfway through.
At this point in my little challenge, I think it’s safe to say that I have just given up and thoroughly embraced the wobbly point.
Also if you look closely (click picture to embiggen), you might notice there’s cat hair under this snowflake. Gee, I wonder how *that* got there, Ingrid.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
I looked at today’s pattern and noticed something that wasn’t there in any of the others (so far): beads. The fact that this also comes on a day when I have rehearsal in the evening, which means even *less* time to fiddle with stupid snowflakes, wasn’t very helpful either.
I pondered skipping this one. I reminded myself that I do, actually, have some beads in stash from when I made my Golden Orchids shawl, so I figured okay, fine, I’d suck it up and use the damn beads. But then I realized they weren’t really the right size and I decided that I was not going to go buy a tube of beads just for one snowflake, so…here you go. Snowflake #22, sans beads.
Sigh.
Clearly I screwed up on this one. I am pretty sure I know the row it happened, but I ripped that one out twice and redid it and it still went weird, so…eh. A lopsided star is what you’re going to get when it’s late and I’m tired and quickly running out of…ahem….’flakes’ to give on this project anyway.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
Do you know what is even more fun than picking up 500+ stitches and knitting a whole mess of colorwork?
Discovering that you missed a crucial line in the instructions and having to rip it all out and pick up those 500+ stitches all over again, that’s what.
Fun times.
*****
This weekend has pretty much been all about getting up early, frantically knitting (also crocheting, ugh, whose stupid idea was it to do these snowflakes again?), studiously ignoring the fact that the house is in dire need of a scrub, and Vox Musica performances. I’ve ended each day simultaneously wired from the performance, and completely exhausted. The performances were pretty amazing though – and I’m not just saying that as one of the ensemble members. Both nights were sold out, and it was awesome to feel the audience’s enthusiasm and excitement after we finished each piece.
I did manage to squeak out a snowflake for today. This was a rather hasty blocking job, shortly before I had to run out the door, so forgive any wobbly points.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
Yesterday I didn’t actually make a snowflake.
I had the best of intentions When I packed up my bag in preparation for our trip down to the Santa Clara Convention Center for Stitches West, I tucked the pattern book and the cotton thread in there, prepared to spend a little bit of time working on it.
But it turns out the only time we actually sat down the entire day was when we ate lunch. Otherwise we were meandering through the market, fondling yarn and pointing out really gorgeous sweaters and shawls, and trying to make decisions on what needed to come home with us.
We also had the best of intentions for when we were going to leave. There had been plans to take advantage of the 50% discount train ticket, but it turns out you had to get that 3 days in advance and the three of us procrastinated too long, so we figured, hey, we’ll just drive. And if we’d left by 3:30 to head home, I think we would have been just fine.
But alas, no. We didn’t get out of there until after 4. Three hours later we had only made it as far as Walnut Creek, at which point we gave up, pulled off at the next exit, and found somewhere to eat dinner. Even with the dinner break, there was still enough traffic that we didn’t get back to Sacramento until close to 10pm, at which point I looked blearily at the pattern for snowflake #19, and thought, nope. Ain’t going to happen today.
So…here is Friday’s snowflake, which I whipped up this morning, because it turns out it didn’t take nearly as long to make as I was expecting (although I suspect if I’d attempted it last night that wouldn’t have been the case).
And here is today’s snowflake, which took far longer than expected, considering it had two fewer rows of patterning than the one above.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
Today at work, while reviewing an 800+ page document, I came across a section that listed the type of spaces in one particular type of building. Top at the list was ‘Dying Room’.
‘That’s oddly….morbid’, I thought to myself, before it finally dawned on me that this was in reference to color, not to shuffling off this mortal coil. But the problem, of course, is that once it’s in your head, you cannot *un*think it, so every time the phrase popped up for the rest of the document I may or may not have done some inappropriate giggling.
Anyway. Snowflakes. Here is today’s snowflake, which is the most complicated one I have made so far in that there were five lines of pattern instead of the usual 3 or 4, and I was sort of holding my breath throughout most of it because I really liked the picture in the book and wanted very badly for it to come out okay.
I think I blocked the points out a bit too severely for the picture, so when I do the final blocking later, I’ll try to soften them up a bit. Otherwise, though, I’m quite pleased with this one.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.
Here is today’s snowflake. If you squint you can pretend it’s a circle of tiny little candles. Or something.
This is one where I looked at the directions and thought rather grouchily to the designer ‘Really? you’re putting that stitch *there*? You’re being deliberately difficult, aren’t you.’
The skies opened up and stormed for an hour or so while I was making this. Good thing I went and did a nice long walk at lunch or I’d have been doing a *lot* of pacing around the house to make up the 10,000 steps.
Making a snowflake a day for Thingadailies.