Valerean

Since I finished last year's calendar mood blanket I miss crocheting it, and my fingers have grown stiffer without the daily exercise. To deal with that I decided to look around for a simple pattern to make a throw. I liked the look of this Ocean Tranquility blanket designed by Anastacia Zittel, plus it was free, so I downloaded and printed out the pattern. I decided on a sand, foam and sea colored palette, and pulled some yarn from my stash. I may add or substract skeins as I make the throw. I managed three and a half rows of the largest size throw in the pattern in one evening, so it is pretty simple and easy to work up. It's also nice not to have to restrict myself to one row per day like last year; working on it as much as I like helps exercise my fingers. Stay tuned to see how it turns out.

Thanks to my arthritis I have trouble some mornings working the clasps of the bracelets I wear to remind me which hand is weaker that day (see what people with arthritis do as hacks?), so I decided to invest in some with elastic that just slip on. I found this lot at ShopGoodwill.com. I have one jasper beaded bracelet just like the beaded ones that I like a lot. I bid on them for the minimum and won the lot with no challengers. Here's the bundle when it arrived; let's see how they look. Nicer in person, really, with nice quality semi-precious stone beads. I've bought bracelets like these for myself and my favorite person, and they run about $5 to $10 each. This lot of ten cost me $14.99, which works out to $1.49 each. Very good deal. Image credit: the first pic in this post came from the auction listing at ShopGoodwill.com.

While at the Dollar Store last month I noticed some new fat qaurters in the craft section that were very much like Minky. I liked the solids and cute animal novelty prints they had available, too. So I decided to get four to make some pillows. The plush fabric is thin but super soft. You need to pin these down a lot to keep them from shifting, but the amount of fluff that came off them during trimming and sewing was (unlike actual Minky) very minimal. They made up into two cute pillows that will be nice when I need to take a break or a nap. By using the solid color pieces as backing I made them reversible. This is an economical project, as Minky runs about $14.00 per yard these days. I made these two pillows with a yard total of Dollar Store FQs, and thread and poly-fil that I had on hand, for five bucks.

Sunshine of My Life is a long series that features a lot of unusual elements: a not particularly handsome male lead, a fashion industry story set in France and China, a female lead who is probably the most unattractive female in the cast, and secondary characters who tried to steal every scene they were in (and often succeeded.) The less than perfect leads convinced me to give the first episode a watch, and then I got hooked by everything else and watched the remaining 44 episodes. I'd call this more of a saga than a series, with multiple plot lines, a pretty extensive cast and excellent showcasing of the Chinese fashion industry. The storyline revolves around Tang Ming Xuan (Zhang Han), the heir to and manager of Ming Yuan Fashion Group, who is entirely career-focused. He collides with Mo Fei (Xu Lu), a postgraduate fashion design student about to head over to France. I love the timing of their meeting, as it's the ultimate monkey wrench to romance. Despite their i...

I'm in the process of making the second mini-quilt for my 2025 calendar project, and once again I have so much respect for quilters and sewists who do needle-turned applique. This one little bunny near about drove me crazy trying to sew it to my mini. This improvised piece has been slowly developing over the last week, and I have one last addition to the tableau before I call it done. I'm going to embroider 자신을 사랑하세요 on the right side, which in English means love yourself. I printed out the words in a large font so I could reference them while stitching, and used a disappearing marker to write them character by character on the piece to give myself embroidery lines. Then it's just a matter of back stitching all the lines. Here's the final mini-quilt. Since 2023 (the year of the rabbit in the Chinese zodiac) I've been quietly working on ways to be kind to and love myself instead of depending on kindness and love from others. These calendar project...

This is that lot of yarn I thrifted for $7.99 locally. I was particularly interested in the variegated yarns, which I can work up into pretty baskets. I needed to exercise my fingers, so I went right to work on the basket I wanted to make. That was a good thing, because I had to deal with some family drama that was completely unnecessary and made me very angry. That's also why my one-week project only took two days. There wasn't enough of the variegated yarn to make the entire project, so I finished it off with a coordinating white top. I used six skeins of thrifted yarn to make the basket, but more importantly, by crocheting I was able to channel my anger in a positive, non-harmful way. I'm still angry, but my emotions are finally settling down. I also have more flexible fingers now as well, so it was a win all the way around for me.

Back in January I went thrifting for some variegated yarn, and found this bag at our local Goodwill. Everything looked clean, and there were several variegated skeins, so I brought it home. They packed a lot into that little bag, too: eleven skeins of acrylic yarn in total. Since they are clean and have no odor I'd price each at $3.00 resale, which is $33.00 total. I paid $7.99 for the whole bundle, which works out to about .73 per skein. You can't buy yarn at the dollar store that cheap.

I first spotted Elli Beaven's Quilting ~ 20 Mindful Makes to Reconnect Head, Heart & Hands while browsing around the thrift sites. While I prefer to buy reading for pleasure books used, I buy sewing and quilting books new to show support for other textile artists. No one ever gets rich writing these, honestly, and I admire the authors for teaching others what they do. The book is compact and well-written, and the projects are largely small and practical, like this cushion. There are some quilts, one of which I'm seriously tempted to make, but none that I think are too hard for a confident sewist. The author talks about mindfulness in quilting, and encourages the reader to repurpose fabrics, collect and reuse textile waste, and try their own variations and ideas with the projects, all of which I love. Elli also gives a nice crash course in the basic techniques of quilting (including hand stitching) before getting into the projects. I'm going to try a f...

AI certainly has an interesting way of generating an image with a name prompt. I used my old professional byline and got this very pretty girl who looks absolutely nothing like me. Using another filter this is how my name looks as a logo. I did have long hair something like that a looooooooong time ago. :) This was my favorite AI-generated image based on my name. Maybe my spirit looks like that. Sure wish it did. All of the images in this post were created by Hotpot AI's art generator .

Because I'm not interested in any new movies or series at the moment (probably due to an Interstellar hangover) I'm rewatching Lighter and Princess , a Chinese college romance drama that I really liked the first time I saw it. It's like brain wash; I get rid of the aggravation over poorly-made productions by watching those I enjoyed enough to want to see them again. I'm also researching bad boy characters to find out what makes them so appealing. For most women, it's the hope of redemption that makes anti-heroes like the classic bad boy so absorbing. With the right reason (like love) even the biggest jerk will gravitate toward a better path and personality, yes? I wish. In my experience people rarely change for anything, especially when they're loved. It's hitting rock bottom or having your world blown up in your face that usually create an opportunity for redemption and change. That said, sometimes it makes the bad boys (or even good boys) into mo...

Secondary characters that seemed more interesting that the leads are the reason I decided to watch Go Go Squid 2/Dt, Appledog's Time , as the leads are both among the reasons I kept watching the first series. It's a bit confusing at first, as the creators decided to throw out most of the backstory from the original series and reinvent nearly the entire storyline. There's also a big cast shakeup with only a couple of the original actors. I guess they figured out the boring CTF gaming angle needed fixing; this time it's all about attack robots that battle in huge arenas. Which is also a bit silly, but not as much as the first series. High points: The series is more romantic than the first installment, and there are intermittant scenes of introspection that take place in a dark room lit by many hanging edison type light bulbs that are pretty dreamy. Both leads did a great job in convincing me they were in love. The gaming with the robots is also far superior...

While I'm a fan of shows about the future, for many years I have avoided watching Interstellar . My main reason is that I don't especially care for the director and one of the lead actors in it. Stories about a supposed race to save the human species from extinction have been done to death, frankly, and still never ring true to me for reasons I will not discuss online (like talking about sex, politics and taxes, just not a good idea.) So those were my biases, but when the movie became available on Netflix I thought, "Get it over with already" and so I watched it. Positives: most of the visuals are quite well done, particularly on the worlds away from Earth. I grew a little misty-eyed seeing Michael Caine, who has retired from acting and has always been one of my favorite actors; I didn't realize he was in the film. Negatives: I've got a laundry list. The dialogue often came across as awkward and forced, the emotions stunted and forced, and the plo...

I got a very early jump on spring cleaning this year by beginning on January 1st. Then our brother-in-law fell ill, was moved to hospice, and passed away, so coping with that and some very depressing aspects involved derailed me. I jumped back on the spring cleaning wagon in early February and will keep going until I feel a bit happier with the state of our home. If you'd like to see my accomplishments so far, see the pics in my spring cleaning album here .

I'm writing this while you're still here visiting (on November 9th, to be exact.) I'm pretty sure that you're too busy with your work to keep up with my blog, too, so I think I can post this without worrying that I'll upset you. It's just something I need to write today. I don't hate a lot of things, but you working on the other side of the planet is one of them. I say to you that I'm happy you're pursuing your dreams and living in an island paradise, and I mean that with all my heart. I do. I just hate that it puts a planet between us. Because I'm old now I wonder every time I see you if it will be the last time I do. That's why I want to be with you every second while you're here, because someday I won't ever be able to do that again. I don't want to die on you. I'm not afraid of dying; it's almost comforting to me now to know that I'll be finished one day and not have to suffer pain and heartache over...

Happy Valentine's Day from Valerean.

You might remember the home office chair that I rehabbed two years ago by covering the cushions and armrests with some vintage bamboo fabric. The chair still works, but the coverings are showing their age. This is my fault, as I usually sit on it for at least six to eight hours a day while I'm working my day job. The elastics I used to attach the seat cushion covering have stretched out. I've also worn a hole in one of the armrests. I need to find some sturdier fabric to use to cover the cushions again, so it's time to head to the stash. Stay tuned to see what I pick for the recovery.

I'm actually writing this post on December 31st, 2024. Last night my guy and I had a hilarious video call with our favorite person for her thirtieth birthday. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much. She and her boyfriend were making a birthday cake and going out to be with friends, which made me so happy to hear, too. After that I went back to work on this art quilt, but my shaky, cramping hand knocked over a can of flavored sparkling water I was drinking, dousing one corner and soaking a dish of beads. So I had to clean and dry that out, and then spent the rest of the night winding up yarn balls to exercise my fingers. Absolute delight to utter frustration, all in a few hours. That's the rollercoaster of my life as a senior these days. Yet I got to see my girl's face and laugh with her. That made it okay to be so clumsy. I'm having trouble multi-tasking these days, and I get easily confused if I try to do too many things at once. As som...

I need to go on hiatus for a bit. There's nothing wrong; I just have a lot on my plate at the moment. I've scheduled posts to publish up to March 22nd, when I hope I'll be in a better place to return to social media. See you when that happens.

I thought I'd photograph my first art quilt of the year in stages as I improvised the design and post pics of how it went. At one point I used a reference silhouette while cutting out my koi, and some printed words on paper as reference to the embroidered poem, but otherwise it's entirely spontaneous and free hand.

Let's see how I did on the latest round of wannabuts, or thrift items that I want but only if I can get them for the minimum bid. This lot of vintage linens had in it a vintage tablecloth I fell in love with, but I was willing to pay only $10.00 for it. Alas, other linen lovers swarmed, and the final bid was a whopping $56.00. I haven't tried doing latch hook in years, and this kit would have made a nice big rug, too. Did I get it for $10.00? Nope. The final bid ended up being $23.01 (which is a pretty good price, just not what I wanted to pay.) Taste of Home cookbooks are fun to read, but I wanted these three for no more than $13.00. As it turns out, I got them for $12.99! Really delighted about that, and looking forward to discovering some new recipes.