hand eye crafts

"T N" today means Twinnie News.    It's  her  birthday!  If you know her, you know she deserves all  the good wishes, so head over and send her some. The "T" is for two.  Two people figured out this was, indeed, a lion. Funnily enough, Kim was one,  Araignee  the other.  Kim, I've got your address, but Araignee, please send me yours at handeyecraftsAThotmailDOTcom.  Thanks!

 (Or, as my Southern self says, "minnas.").  My Twinster asked if the treats I talked about yesterday were made of minnows.  Actually, they are minnows.  Freeze-dried, whole minnows.  I moved them around in the packaging because of, you know, the eyes.  The eyes continue to squick me out. Speaking of food, I don't have one of those fancy banana racks, so my lion cookie jar stands in. (I should point out that I like greenish bananas.  Not bananas that are ripe this minute, but way overly so by the time you get home from the store.  I'm extremely  choosy on this.) Next up from Arcane Forestry greens and golds and browns. I'm probably going to make little booties instead of full socks. Otherwise, a Monday.  Errands, crafts, you all know the drill.

It appears that a couple of my pets are ichthyosnobs.  Tap's fondness for sardines has been covered here, as I think, has Maddie's and Riley's aversion to them. In another pet subscription box recently came a bag of minnows.  My assumption was dog yes, cats no.  Nope.  Riley is still uninterested.  Tap refuses.  Maddie would gorge on them if she could.  Fish is obviously not fish. What?! Check out the minnows' packaging: The minnows are made with minnow.  Good to know. No need to submit any more guesses about the little cross-stitch animal.  Someone has won.  I'll unveil the finished piece on Tiny Needle Tuesday.

Another clue about the animal before I stitch what will surely give it away.  I finished those socks I was working on, and wore them today.  They're very cushy-comfortable.  Well done, Arcane Fibreworks.  I might cast another pair with your yarn on fairly quickly.

 If y'all want to waste, oh, I don't know, an entire afternoon, start watching airport arrests videos on YouTube.  I will warn you: your thresholds for volume and bad, offensive words have to be really  high.  Like really  high. By the way, the fact that I enjoy(ed) them says many things about me, I know. No one's quite close on the animal face.  It's a cartoonish version of the animal, if that helps, which I rather doubt.  It's for a baby's room, I imagine.   Still not helpful, huh? Keep trying if you'd like.

Well, it's an animal, I'll give you that much of a clue.  But what kind  of animal?  You can leave guesses in the comments, and maybe there will be a prize or something for anyone who gets it right.

And, in my case, sort of small projects.  Remember that big bird chart from a bit ago?  (Not a Big Bird chart;  that would be an altogether different thing.) This little bird makes me happy. As does this Christmas tree: Except for that "2."  I've got to redo that "2." This one I really like. A (chintz?) cat.  I'm hyper-picky about my stitches covering the fabric, and that went really well here.  The fabric itself is interesting.  It feels rubberized or something.  Not "plain" Aida. I don't know what I'll do with any of these.  As usual with me, it's more about the process than the product.

So, you're watching something online, and it breaks for commercial, and next to the little countdown clock is the message "Send to phone."   Look, I fast forward the commercials as it is.  Why --- WHY --- would I give you an opportunity to show them to me again?

The sum total of my sock knitting is The yarn is nice, soft, but greener than I expected.  I'm not sure why the grey photographed as purple; I promise the yarn is green, ecru, blue, and grey. I have finished the cuff ribbing on the second sock.  The knitting goes much faster now that there's some stockinette mixed in.  And turning heels remains one of knitting's great joys. It's been hot and cold here, both weather-wise and in mood.  The coffee table is cluttered with at least a dozen things, none of which are particularly calling to me at any given moment.  But they're at hand if I do get the energy.

When my college roommate knit her first scarf, it was a super-long Dr. Who number, all in garter.  She was so proud;  I was proud of and happy for her.   Then when we moved on to stockinette, she was dismayed at the rolling edges and said it looked like a sweater for a snake. I'm thinking of her a lot as I work on the Koigu scarf:

For (probably) longer than I should have, I thought that piece of furniture was a "chester drawers." I once went bed frame shopping with my mother, who was looking for a sleigh bed.  I kept thinking, "Who would want a slave bed?" Growing up listening to nightly news reports on Vietnam, I constantly wondered how gorillas held the guns they fought with and why they were mad enough to fight to begin with.

When you've had a medical "event," you become hypersensitive to any little tingle or twitch.  This afternoon I had to talk myself down from a bit of heartburn. The ER doctor told me to see a gastroenterologist.  I was afraid finding one would be a chore and entail a long wait, but I've got an appointment on May 8th.  I'm not a fan of getting used to a new doctor, but you have to do what you have to do.

I'm unsure whether all the adrenaline stirred up Friday night has finally worn off, but I am so weary today.  Sleepy.  I feel good, though.  Last night, the pain came back in kind of a spurt --- it was tense there for a bit --- but it passed.  Today, nothing.  Everything seems to be back in line. I finished the Paint Horse cowl!  When waiting for the ambulance, I packed up a bag, stopping to wonder if knitting should come along.  Then I remembered IVs and the fingertip oxygen sensor and thought, "No, you dope." This afternoon, I cast a pair of socks on, with  Arcane Fibre Works'  "Where the Wind Blows." It's my first yarn from them.  It's very comfy soft.  I'm anxious to see how it knits up.

 Because my adventure began last night. Yes, in the hospital emergency room.  About 6:30, out of nowhere, I had a crippling pain right under and along my ribcage.  As in, Briton's most likely at work, so I'll call an ambulance. CT scan, ultrasound, bloodwork.  The only definite things from all of that were 1) everything looked fine, and 2) my liver enzymes were slightly elevated. Let me interject here that I was hurting.  As in, I cannot possibly drive myself.  I was at an "8" most of the night, inching past "9" until I got some morphine. The best anyone could figure out was that there is still connective tissue from my gallbladder (which has been removed) to my liver, and that it was inflamed "for some reason." Another interjection: when it hit, the pain did remind me of what I felt before my gallbladder came out. So, I'm back home, no pain except for soreness where the ultrasound "wand" was pressed in.  I have a painkiller prescript

 Which is extra large! (I had to give the "mystery project" up.  All the trying to decipher the crazy symbols gave me literal headaches.) This one has something I've never seen before. Instead of carding the floss by numbers, they're by chart symbols.  I think I'm going to like it.

It's Tuesday, so I'm not going to say much more about it, because that seems to curse my projects.  What I will say is that the chart is tiny, tiny. Tiny as in I have to use my phone or a magnifying glass to make out the symbols.  Also, the chart has been printed sideways and backward, so even if the symbols were easily readable, they need to be double- and triple-checked before stitching.  It'll be gorgeous if I can get it done.

Lots and lots of you had views of today's eclipse that were so much better than ours, but we could see a little bit.  I took Tap outside for our few minutes of possibility, and he acted kind of hyper and weird.  Maybe he sensed my excitement, maybe he picked up on the lighting and temperature changes. . .  It was fun either way. (Photo from "The Red and Black.")

Feeling low today for a not-quite-identified reason.  I don't think it has anything to do with my ongoing medication search for something that will balance me out.  It could, but it doesn't feel like that.  It's interesting how, when you've been on a number of medications for a number of years, you do get a sense of what's chemical and what's not.  Now, I will say that food poisoning paid me an unwelcome visit this weekend, so that could factor that in, too.   Craft-dump-wise, this is the Koigu scarf: I also have the red tweed scarf that was mentioned here a while back, and the Paint Horse cowl that's rather non-ending. Book-dump-wise, Old   Abe  continues to entertain.  It sat sort of to the side for a bit, though, as I got fully engrossed in The   Anatomy    of   Evil .  Not everyone's genre, I realize, but to me it was brilliant. This week doesn't look terribly exciting or interesting.  Stay tuned, though.

A sign that you have a twinster: when you were thinking about sending her some collage supplies, and she had the same thought, but beat you to it. You also realize your twinness when you're both thinking of the same crafting theme. This is just a little, ornament-sized thing.  Hope I have a frame for it. As far as knitting, progress on my sparkly cowl is very slow.  Especially considering how much hockey and football I've been sitting and watching while knitting.  I did cast on for a random Koigu scarf.  I found a few skeins that sorta, kinda went with one another, none of which were enough to make a single full project.  I am literally reaching into a bag each time I want to make a change and working with whatever is pulled out.  It's kind of fun.

Checked on Shari when I learned about the earthquake --- she said she didn't feel a thing.  Almost simultaneously, we each said, "That hardly seems fair!" Tap prefers fish and seafood to beef, turkey, and chicken.  You know, all the things dogs are "supposed to eat."  (He lucked into a home with two cats.)  Hos  Woof Pack  this month featured a bag of freeze-dried sardines.  Whole sardines.  He loves them, but I cannot bear to look at them.  Their little silver eyes. . .  I've heard that the head of the fish is considered a delicacy, but I've never had one.  Because of, you know, the eyes. If you're in Athens in mid-July, you're invited to the library to hear my son and his podcast tri-hosts discuss the films of Christopher Nolan:

Dear Twinnie  asked where I got the Lincoln casts.  The honest answer is, "I can't remember."  I collect life masks, and have bought them from all over.  Most are in storage now.  There's a wall in the dining room that was once pretty much covered with them, now only Redford, Hepburn and a life mask of Lincoln remain.  The 3-5 weeks I was into feng shui, I found out that that room was space for admiration/heroes, so the masks were hung there.  The Lincoln death mask and hands are on a den table. This next story needs a bit of 'splaining. Since starting to own books, where to put them has been an issue for me.  Without fail, the shelves, armoires and book chests get full.  In the past, I've posted pictures of books being kept on the staircase ---- there was nowhere else to put them.  The idea of invisible bookshelves has intrigued me, so I bought a couple to see what was up. When Briton and Hannah were little, I painted a tree on a downstairs wall that we named

Tiny needles, but not mine.  This set was made by my mother.  I wish she'd dated them. I really like the green and gold in these.  And I'm a sucker for fiddler's cloth. If you were thinking to yourself, "Gee --- what's there in the upper right corner?  Some sort of Abraham Lincoln thing?" Why, yes.  His death mask and casts of his hands.  I've long said, if the house were on fire, and I was sure all the heartbeats were safe, these are what I'd save.

Rabbit Rabbit.  Any other double words that are appropriate. Today has been a quiet one.  Literally.  I didn't realize I hadn't uttered a single word all day until about half an hour ago when Tap needed to be scolded for chasing Riley.  Utter silence.  Which I've just realized is an oxymoron.  How can you say quiet?  Yes, "utter" there means "total," but it's possible to look at it differently.  The bird cross-stitch that could have been so pretty utterly crashed.  All of the tans and beiges and creams and nudes ran together, which made picking the work up to continue working SO aggravating.  I also made many, many counting mistakes, which is fatal in stitching.