Spending a Month at the Beach (Mentally)

2025 did not get off to a great start for us; I had to right away contend with some family drama in my own home, and then our brother-in-law fell gravely ill, was moved to hospice and passed away in Tampa. Other issues did not contribute anything positive.

Stress causes my arthritis to flare up, as does having to travel long distances, and my hands quickly bore the brunt of that. Since crochet is the one fiber art I can do even when my hands hurt, I looked for and found a free pattern online and decided to make a throw for myself.

I have tons of thrifted yarn, of course, so I didn't buy any new for the project, but instead shopped my stash for the colors I wanted. I imagined a throw like sitting on beach sand and watching the tide come in.

The pattern seems challenging but is actually pretty simple, and soon I was able to work on the throw without having to think about it.

Every night I spent a couple of hours working on it, which helped me deal with the stress and find my calm again.

The colorblock palette may seem a bit weird, but it is how I see the beach when I'm sitting on the sand. I loved every minute I spent on this project.

The end result. Couldn't be happier with it, and by making it I saved fourteen skeins of thrifted yarn from the landfills and helped myself deal with a couple of very unhappy weeks.

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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