Well, I reported the finished projects last week, so today I’ll share new projects and progress of others.
My new flower balloon is grounded. The dark drill eyestrain is done.
The yoga socks on the Hiya-Hiya Flyers are coming along. The more I work with these skinny, sharp needles, the more I like them. I just need my stronger glasses to ensure nice stitches.
My experimental yoga socks will teach me, soon, how to leave out a heel. But will I have enough yarn for the ankle? Playing yarn chicken.
The watermelon socks have progressed to the arch.
The slipper socks are coming along.
I’m sight-reading through this book. I’m about halfway through, song titles starting with “I” as in “I’ll Be There”. This is fun. Some songs surprise me. Eleanor Rigby was fun to sing and play. As I play I’m finding the ones that challenge me while being doable. Then I will systematically print them. Then I can learn them well enough to sing.
Having not found a website to track my November novel, I’ve started to prepare anyway. My friend and I got together today to start finding characters. We’ve done it often this way. In person when we could, but now on Zoom.
We take each characteristic, randomly select a trait, and move on to the next.
It’s always a surprise how quickly the new character becomes nearly flesh and blood. As my first character came through, Ervin Norbert Dorris (the name randomly generated in WriteItNow 6.03c) seems a dirty troll under his homemade bridge with an attitude like Dexter. Well, the antagonist showed up first. That’s different.
My friend found a rather strong pretty punk character I think will be quite fun.
How do you start a book? For us the characters seem to people a world. Hopefully, all that prep gives us a start.
Hopefully I’ll finish the Balloon Diamond Painting by next week. I like the pretty colors, but all the dark skies are hard on my eyes.I hope I have enough of this yarn for a full pair of at least anklets.Because my friend and I seem to go through our heels and sometimes toes, I found a pattern in A La Carte Toes -Up book.https://a.co/d/7XRqJGT
The thing is, there aren’t many YouTubes teaching open-toe cast-on for two at a time, magic loop, long cable needles. In this case Chiaogoo 40″. Still by casting on (long-tail) 1/2 of sock one, drop 1st sock yarn, pick up sock yarn 2. Long tail cast-on first half of sock two. I used a marker between front and back, then cast-on second half of sock two. Slide down sock two. Pinch and pull to divide front and back by magic loop. Now finish casting on second half of first sock.
It is fiddly at first, but now it’s coming together. The pattern calls for stockinette stitch between toes and heel. But I plan on an inch of stockinette then the arch ribbing that feels so good.
Another slipper sock pair. This is my favorite yarn.This is a fun yarn. But fine yarn and needles make it more difficult.Finally, Sammie wanted to be a part of the blog. He’s a small tiger now and so very confident.
I hope to add a Warts and All video next week. I have four songs that are working on me.
Wow. With summer heat and humidity, not to mention ADHD with non compliant stresses, progress is slow. But my super power is running.
Even the smallest amount of progress will get the job done eventually. It is in the giving up that nothing happens. Except drama. Reliving trauma never brings positive results. Acknowledging the downside, not jumping in and feeling sorry for myself, helps me survive and thrive.
In this case:
Talking too much, distracting thoughts, feelings, actions, and resulting health issues. They all are there. It was worse when I was working in jobs that weren’t healthy for me.
I wish when I’m interrupting I could say I’m sorry. But I believe that sorry implies a will to change. Sadly, in my 74 years that change is detrimental to my health. Every time.
I was Hermione raising my hand with the answer. But being fair, I let others answer first. By the time the teacher called on me my mind had already gone a thousand places and I couldn’t even remember the question. Then someone else would get it right and it was exactly the answer I knew I knew. And I knew what I had to say was unimportant. That my gold star was unimportant.
Yet learning was the reward. Still is. And friends. And family. But ADHD threatens all of it. Unless I do little bits. Many, many little bits.
I’ll never be a concert pianist or win great awards from my efforts of anything. But I have to be happy with my little wins. And keep trying to be a human who does her best to be kind.
Anyway. My little win is my new slipper socks.
I move the stitches as I work the last ribbing row onto separate 9 inch circular needles. That makes the cast-off work so much easier.
Shorty slipper socks with arch hugging ribbing.
Yep. For me.
And because I love how that arch feels I’m trying it on the watermelon shorty socks.
Two rows into the ribbing.
The heat makes yarn too hot. My brain needs something to stimulate it. But often, I find I get sloppy and make a ton of mistakes.
My Duolingo is still going but Chinese is as hard as Hebrew and Navajo. I tend to lose a lot of hearts. But I find a successful language like Italian to play with until I build the hearts up.
My music is even harder to get to because of heat and disruptions. But. I will keep trying to get all my passions back into my daily schedule. I miss having a good routine that pushes me to try.
Across from my piano that didn’t get touched is my sunset beach. But that’s the south side of the house and it gets hot in there. Bring back nice temps!
My other socks took a sideline as I finished the slippers. So I’ll take pics next week.
The dock is nearly finished. It reminds me of my son-in-love and daughter’s wedding dock At his parents’ home, at a lake. It is so beautiful there.
I feel better about my piano. We have love/hate moments. I do learn a lot with each sit down. I play not practice. I do work on problem areas. I work on my concentration. I see my playing as meditation. Here’s a thought. Check. Don’t dive in. A slight thought given attention can bring about a mistake tornado. Distraction of any kind can throw off the fun.
Take for instance, today I wanted to analyze the few pieces I shared last week. By thinking about key signatures my fingers lost their groove.
I’m much happier about the ukulele now. Being able to sing while playing makes this instrument far more fun than piano or recorders.
See those post-its? I can sing and play 16 songs in this book. No, not for an audience, but for fun. Still, I stumble, but it is fun. Isn’t that what counts?
This is that songbook.
Recorders seem to be helping my breath control. Note recognition between the soprano and the alto instruments is getting better. I still have goals of playing duets with myself. I need to learn how to record like that.
That’s about it for now. Time to get to Duo, and the recorders and uke.
Here’s that holey bendy bits and the rings bits. How do they fits?
Bendies at the top and bottom of the three chains. Ringies hook the top of the chains to the heart and another hooks the big gem at the bottom. Squeeze the hole parts onto the chain with pliers. Make sure they are on tight or you will be flustered and floundering and possibly throwing all the bits. Two suncatchers more to go. Enough frustration for this day!
Progress, mostly halfway finished
Real flounders entice sea turtles down to floor. The flounders are having a feast!
Another pair of slipper socks. I’m incorporating that nice stretchy arch I learned with the no-show socks.
I’m getting a little better with chording on the ukulele. I almost don’t have to look when changing from C to F to G7 and back to C all the while singing. Almost time for a new lesson. It’s supposed to be a 30 day course, but my soft, achy fingers needed more time. I’m still learning day 9 a couple weeks later.
The recorder comes and goes. Teaching myself and my fingers soprano, alto, and tenor. I can finally reach all notes on soprano and alto, though not consistently. I can barely get the top three holes of the tenor.
And. AND I CLEANED THE PIANO WELL SO IT WELCOMES ME! Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually play!!!!
A quick note. Door push-ups, floor to ceiling stretches, then more than 30 minutes or more than 5 miles on the stationary bike. All still happening. So some things are growing into habits. Others are still work. But a lot of flounder still happens. Ah, well, it’s February!
Since this guy showed up in my purview, I keep hearing about it or seeing new ways to use it. But when I looked up this comparison, this is what I found on Google:
Flounder and founder are happy little nouns that don’t get mixed up. But it all falls apart when they’re verbs — if you’re floundering, you’re struggling.If you’re foundering, you’re failing completely.I don’t feel I am foundering in any way. Just finding ways to see successes.
So, I am sticking with the fish. And that is better than a horse who founders.
Her hooves hurt, and she can’t go on. Actually, I don’t know that about the above horse. I just was looking for a picture of a horse on the ground. And she is so pretty!
The groundhog is a floundering hog. Or is it that Winter is floundering? Because we are supposed to be getting an early Spring. But we got this:
Yeah, the bag of trash got deserted on the front porch. And we only got inches. Our friends got feet!
Meanwhile, I finished the little boy’s slippers:
It’s fun to make smaller socks because they get finished quicker. But now I’m on the mother and the older daughter, and possibly Auntie and Grandma. All around sizes 7 and 8. Yes, the yarn is already on the needles.
My biggest floundering seems to be on the ukulele. My fingers just don’t want to be in those chord situations. But I keep trying. I did figure out I could plunk out Mary Had a Little Lamb on the strings as I figured out where each note was. But moving from F to C and back within a singing timing was crazy. The F chord is the hardest. Well, until I met G. Getting pretty sounds is crippling!
I’m not floundering so much on the recorders. Except I probably should play them before deadening the fingertips on the Uke. I am trying to remember where the F, F#, and B flat are. Other than that I’m getting better, slowly.
And so, I’m off to try again tonight. Wish me luck!
Well, I made the mistake of working on my knitting all day and forgot to blog or do my Duolingo. At least I had a ‘freeze’ on Duo, so I still have the count of 1,146 days. But I bet I am back to day one here on WordPress. I was heading for the 300. I’m so disappointed!
Slipper socks are coming along, and I love them so much more on the Flexee fine-gauge loom.
This hat is coming along. It won’t be long now until the decreasing crown.
I started a brand new little hat. I love working on circular needles.
This hat is close to the end of the brim.
This is the bear that took all my time and concentration. Knitting is the fun part. I hate the next part, sewing and stuffing. But I think he will be cute.
These are the double-ended but not needles that I used for the bear. These were my mom’s. I think she chose to make single-ended needles out of many doubles. Sorry for the dog hair. Kali share’s her wealth!
Here’s a close-up of the gobs of gum or putty that she had on the ends. They are on there pretty tight, and it looks shiny, whatever it was.
Finished the right third and top of middle third.I took this when closing down yesterday. This was before I started on the middle. It is soothing, and cooling to work on this one.This pair of slipper socks will be finished this weekend.Toes done on this pair. It’ll take some time before they are done. They are bigger and finer-gauged.
On the writing front, I’ve entered a few more of my books into yWriter. I even worked on the memoir a bit. Now that I’ve moved into the new laptop I’m having a bit more time to get creative again.
It may seem I’ve been reading a lot. The fact is, when the electronics were down, I got behind in reviews and writing. Now I’m finally catching up.
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
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