Never a Dull Moment

I recently wrote a detailed account about what was going on with my ferret, Pandora, in another post.  In between all that drama I had other things going on, of course.  Nothing is ever simple around here!  Did I mention that I finally caught my kid's cold over the weekend?  (Frequently going out in the storm washing helping things.)  Blur and Anna both came down with a second cold, too, so we were all miserable.  'Tis the season!  This threw Blur's new schedule all out of whack, and he had been making great progress with his sleep / wake cycle. 

I started knitting a stocking cap for my nephew while I was visiting family in June.  He requested a slouchy black beanie with a symbol from his favorite anime, Fairy Tail, on it.  He has a large head and sock yarn with size 3 needles takes a long time to knit a beanie.  So unfortunately I didn't get it finished while I was there.  I did finish knitting it sometime after I got home, however when I found a model with a similarly sized head I found that the hat fit perfectly... not slouchy.  So I was going to have to frog out the decreases and knit about 3 inches more.  Well I finally got around to doing that last week and finished the hat a second time.

Next came the hard part; duplicate stitching.  I had in my mind that the emblem was going to be fairly
small, maybe a couple inches wide.  Unfortunately the picture was quite detailed and I was feeling like taking the lazy way and using someone else's graph to stitch this on.  The smallest graph I could find, however, was a rather large pearler bead pattern.  So now I was duplicate stitching a roughly 5 x 5 symbol onto this hat.  (Head desk).  I am not a big fan of duplicate stitch.  Yes, it has its place, in small amounts.  I'd really rather do intarsia if there is a lot.  This is one of those times that I should have done intarsia but it was far too late.  I was not going to knit the hat a third time!

I pulled out my embroidery hoop.  I have to really love you to do that.  I'm sorry but it's true.  Hand sewing has never been a joy of mine, and making-it-pretty-sewing?  Ugh.  I messed up so many times during this that at one point I literally got out my seam ripper and ripped out twelve rows of duplicate stitch.  It looked so bad that I know I wouldn't have worn it had it been my hat.  Then I stared again, even slower this time.

I didn't keep track of how long it took me, but it took a large chunk out of two days, and one of the days the kids were at school so I was uninterrupted (except by Blur, and my trips out to look for Pandora).  I estimate that it took me from eight to ten hours to duplicate stitch the emblem.  I think I need to find a way to staple the hat to my nephew's head so he never looses it.

Another day I was trying to recall if I had a specific person's phone number somewhere in my phone.  While I was looking through old texts I instead found one I wasn't expecting.  I found one from an aunt, buried in texts on the day I was driving home from vacation.  She was commissioning me to make some gift hats!  Oops!  I immediately (4 months later) replied to her apologizing and told her that I would happily make hats for her anytime.  She wasn't upset at all and instead replied with a new order for Christmas gifts.  lol  After listening to her request details I researched several patterns.  She chose these two very pretty patterns:  Flower Stripe Beanie and Purple Crochet Hat with Flowers .

(Yes, I have too many tabs open.  I need to finish up some of these projects that are haunting me.)

Now I have to learn to read crochet charts!  lol  I found this great diagram online at Craftsy.com  https://www.craftsy.com/blog/2014/11/making-sense-of-crochet-diagrams/  If I had a Russian speaking friend (anyone?) it would sure help a lot, but I'll figure it out eventually. :)

I've been a bit scattered this week and didn't keep track of when I did what, but I know all the events on Wednesday!  That was the day Pandora finally came home!  I found her walking in from picking up my daughter and 5 minutes before I had to leave to pick up my son, and the two kids I watch, from school!  That was really hard to leave her so I rushed the kids to get back home as soon as possible.  I was back and forth doting on Pandora, watching the kids, and fixing dinner.

Just after I got dinner in the pressure cooker I had to run (literally) out the door to a parent teacher conference at the school.  Then I ran back to check on dinner (pressure cooker didn't start. grr), check on Pandora, and to prepare for that night's Royal Ranger skill lesson.  Fortunately the current unit is "Art".  lol  This week's lesson was to be on chalk pastels.  Easy!  So I grabbed all tools and put them in the bag and moved on.  The pressure cooker failed again.  It finally worked when I had Blur scoop out a few handfuls of food.  It was overloaded.  I guess I cut a couple potatoes too many.

Writing about this makes me aware that I've not taken pictures of the doodles I've been doing in class with the kids.  I'll make a point to do that and show you everything when we're done with the unit. :)  It's quite a fun one!  Essentially the boys are learning about different mediums and techniques and are drawing the same object differently each week.