Craft Ramble

In this post are some recent attempts at spinning, knitting, cross-stitch, and more. Creative endeavors galore. Most of the time I do them in the kitchen at home, but sometimes I take them with me on public transportation or bring them out at a cafe. Sorry to say, I am not really great at keeping notes and carefully explaining how to do something. I really admire people who blog that way. But here’s a bit of what I’ve been up to:

Spinning Yarn – I spun the merino wool I bought from the NY State Fair on my spinning machine. It took about five days and it definitely could have been completed sooner, but I had to stop and interact with parts of life outside of my hobbies unfortunately! Each day I was anxious to get back to it. Going  through the whole process is very satisfying- from selecting the wool and spinning it into yarn, then washing it, and waiting for it to air dry, to measure it, then finally winding it into a ball, is satisfying. It is so nice to turn fluffy wool into a sleek tight string! The yarn I made is an uneven but thin single ply, about 632 yards, which is enough to knit a lacy shawl or scarf (but not with the pattern I had in mind, alas). Sadly my technique is not advanced enough where I can control or even estimate “how much” yarn I’ll end up with! Sometimes I have spun 4oz of a wool/silk blend into over 1000 yards, and sometimes I make a thick yarn that’s 2 strands plied together, and it’s closer to 200 yards. There are a lot of dynamics that affect how the yarn comes out, it’s very mysterious to me. I had knit for more than 25 years before I ever started thinking about spinning my own yarn, so it’s a whole new prequel world. It’s crazy to think about how I interacted with a product for that long and never thought much about how it’s created, but I was only focused on the mechanics of knitting and gaining expertise with my needles then. 

Cross Stitch – When I showed my daughter my pumpkin cross stitch inspired by the Animal Crossing pumpkin colors, she liked it, so I felt like making another one for her! It came out better than my first try, but it also has many mistakes again. It took about a day or two for me to stitch each pumpkin, so that was made in a week of crafting, and a pretty chill experience compared to the weeks or months that it can take to knit something. 

Floral Arrangement – I made a flower arrangement one day. It probably took about 30 minutes total, including getting the materials. I had some time to kill and went into a store where I decided to buy some of their cheapest flowers. Usually, I buy a ready-made bouquet but felt like spending $9 on loose flowers instead of a $10-20 bundle.  The clean-up after flower arranging isn’t too bad, but I did have a pile of leaves and stem pieces after my floral design session. I’ve never studied flower arrangement and don’t know much about it at all (there are different flowers for certain occasions I’ve heard), I’m not sure if I can appreciate what is going on with that artform, but it was fun to try. Science suggests that nature can make people feel better, so I think that having a floral bouquet is important for self-care. Americans are so lucky that I’m not in charge of the CDC right now, I would try to replace everyone’s psych meds with a bouquet of flowers. I would love to impose a mandate for insurance companies that people must at least try it first before any kind of pill.  💐 

Writing – The AI assistant wants me to remove that CDC “tangent” from my post unless humor is essential to my branding. Maybe it sounds funny and cheeky, but I wasn’t kidding! This is becoming an anti-psychiatry blog. I use it to feel better and process my life’s events instead of paying anymore PMC dummies. If it’s offensive to real people who believe in taking antidepressants and such, I’m sorry! 

My New Planner- I haven’t written in it, I will wait until closer to January 2025. It’s so blank and inspiring! I’ve bought some tiny stickers for it, and am considering different pens this year too. My daughter used the Kokuyo Jibun Techo planner for a few years before I was convinced to try it (at first just to bond with her and give attention to something she cares about) but now I’m a convert. It’s a vertical layout where you can detail your daily activities in 30 minute increments. It’s pretty intense for a small B5 size notebook. Because it comes from Japan I have to use Google Lens to remind me what some areas of the planner are for but it is extremely helpful at keeping organized. There are pages for books, movies, gifts given & received, budgeting and so much more. It is a powerful amount of organization in such a small agenda. 

Hair Cut – I used the scissors I bought online in 2020 to cut the bottom few inches off my hair. It’s still long, but not like “fundamentalist cult member” length. Maybe it’s not a very noticeable change at all! But I think it makes a difference towards drying faster. During the coronavirus times, when many industries were shut down, all kinds of hair stylists posted their tips and techniques online for free. It seems so unlikely I will ever visit a salon again. Cosmetologists used to gently bully me into dying my (boring, brown) hair, and I usually went along with it. Having grown up with no mother, I tend to cling to advice about my appearance from random women like that. But when their door were forced shut and my natural hair color grew out, I decided to use a gentle purple conditioner and some sharp craft scissors at home to beautify my locks.

Culinary Arts – it’s not exactly what I’d call what’s going on in my kitchen, but there have been some new items put to creative use. After watching a cumulative few hours of videos of people cutting fruits and vegetables, I was inspired to buy a big Santoku knife. I considered a “chef knife” instead, but when I was at the store google searching their differences, I decided to go with the Japanese steel. After the fire in my apartment building, I threw away so many things instead of cleaning them, so I’ve been slowly rebuilding my collection of dishes, utensils, and such. It was probably six months of using paper plates and utensils, cooking on aluminum foil and not really missing many of my small appliances. But I’ve slowly assembled a new supply of useful cooking stuff. Electric kettle, rice cooker, and a toaster were the first most important things to buy, and I use them every day. I have a mixing bowl and a set of spatulas, paring knife and steak knife, not much else though, a few random pots and utensils I ordered as I needed them from Amazon. There’s an idea that keeps coming to me, that I should buy an egg steamer, but I also think it would be better to become a vegan and never eat another egg in my life! So that’s been a very conflicting decision. My daughter somewhat discouraged me, reminding me it’s a “one-use appliance” while the rice cooker and other items I have are more versatile. I am struggling to decide. My cabinets are pretty empty, so it’s not going to become clutter. I have a long history of being mentally ill about food and eating, and this is the kind of situation I used to really depend on a therapist to tell me something like… ‘you are allowed to have an egg cooker!’ or “you can buy the egg cooker and then return it if you feel bad”. As I try to imagine what one of those annoying women might say I find it hard to believe any one would ever be like “yeah it’s a good idea to become vegan and not crack open another egg” but I’ll see what an AI chatbot has to say later too. Please comment if you have one and tell me, do you use it often?!

Knitting – my current knitting project is a hat made of scrap yarn I plan to donate, there are so many places that accept clothing at this time of year, and I will share more about what happens, soon.

If you’ve got any creative projects going on I would love to hear about it! Any recommendations for a great craft blog to follow would be appreciated and I thank those who read mine.