Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Another week that is simultaneously thirty days long and three hours long has whizzed or crawled past. I think my perception of time has been permanently changed. I am forever going to live in a world in which the month and day are best determined by a consensus of the people around you and time is irrelevant. I don’t think losing my daily homeschooling schedule helped with that shift at all. It’s been two years since Hannah graduated, yet I still lack a good rhythm to my days. Perhaps in the fall, after the horror of summer heat and humidity have passed, I can think about such things. For now, I will try to make it through the bad allergy and asthma months unscathed. 

I have been focused on the shawl I hope to wear to the June wedding I RSVPed for yesterday with a QR code, no less! I feel old. I could have sent the pretty little card back, but I didn’t want to use a stamp, so QR code it was. Anyway, the shawl is going remarkably well. 

I’m using a very open lace stitch that reminds me of quilting stitches without the quilt. It works up really quickly. I’m using Lotus linen thread and a 2.5 mm hook. It’s not soft like the alpaca silk shawl I just finished, but the drape is so nice and the stitch pattern looks so sharp that I find myself stopping to gaze at it far more than is good for my time crunch to finish it by June. 

I’ve pulled a couple of border ideas and I think I am going to use the set-up row for one (dc, ch 3), the entirety of another (a nice block of v-stitches sandwiched between two blocks of singles), and the very edge of a third (some rather large shells). I ordered more yarn already because I think this ambitious plan is going to need more than one cone. The body of the shawl already needs a third cone, which should arrive today. I am still not always the best at working out how much yarn I need. 

When I only work on one project at a time, they go really quickly. I get sort of bored and start dreaming of new projects to start or UFOs to pick up again, though, so this is a sort of dangerous time for me. I could finish this shawl and find myself picking up three new projects just to feel creatively active again. 

I have continued making circles for my long term circle project, so I am not utterly devoid of various projects. They are going well. I laid them all out yesterday and forgot to get a picture, of course. I am overall quite pleased with that project, but I think I need to focus more on the darker colors so the bright colors read as a pop and the overall shawl is deep blue, purple, and gray. I think I will try to make this into a shawl though I wasn’t sure what it would end up being before. In case you don’t remember or didn’t read that post, I’m making one circle for everyday of our national nightmare to remind myself that beauty can still happen in the midst of atrocities and that little acts of resistance add up. It also endlessly amuses me to think of certain felons learning, as he never will, that someone made a shawl about how much they hate him.

Here are a few of the circles.

In my around the house news, the robins are back. I really hope this is their year. Nearly every year they build a tidy nest under our deck and nearly every year something eats up their children. One year it was raccoons, another it was squirrels. I think some violent birds have gotten the robin babies some years. So here’s to hoping the robins get to raise their children in peace this year.

I used to have the most wonderful bunny friends whom I sat with every morning and had tea and read aloud to. Bunnies actually like being read to. If you have some, give it a try. Alas, they are gone, but I have new and very bouncy friends now. They are sisters and act like it far too often. I don’t have tea near them because I fear they would land in it, but I do read with them. They try to eat the books far more than the bunnies ever did, but they make good company anyway. Here they are getting their morning snack of oats.

This is Tsukiko.

This is Celia.

I’ve started using the Merlin app to record the birds in the morning, too. This week, Merlin reported that we have a brown creeper in the yard. I love this bird. It is so wee and cute! The description also describes it as cryptic. I think I like a cryptic bird. We need more cryptic birds.

I’ve been hardening off my somewhat pitiful seedlings for Hannah’s garden this year. A swallowtail was kind enough to drop by and say hello while I watered the seedlings. It made me very happy.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope you have a wonderful week and enjoy your crafting!