The year that wasn’t

When 2013 ended I was happy. I’ve never been a fan of the number 13 and was glad to just get out of the year alive. I knew 2014 had to be better. But in the end, it wasn’t.

In February 2014 my mom fell. My family didn’t realize it at the time but she had dementia and slowly going away from us. In and out of the hospital since February 26th, one of the days that I will never forget. Then on May 6th she broke her back helping my dad up out of the floor. He wasn’t hurt but it was the beginning of the end for mom. She lost her battle on July 9th.

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her. Most nights find me shedding a tear or two as I head to bed. I just want to wake up for one more morning and find her there, back to her usual self.

Loving Instagram

I am loving Instagram and my new iPhone very much! Lots of lovely people to follow.

I’ve also been surfing on Flickr and appear to be adding scarf patterns exponentially. Gonna have to complete some projects before starting new ones. Maybe a one for one trade?

Slow going

Trying to get back in the habit of knitting everyday with all the cooler weather we’ve been having.

2nd pair of Toast wrist warmers for myself

2nd pair of Toast wrist warmers for myself, a photo by mysterywriter40 on Flickr.

Finished the first wrist warmer for my niece and started on her second one, so I decided to start a pair for me.

Things I love, part 1

Long before Pinterest (92 boards, but I’m not counting), I starting cutting photos out of magazines of things (1) I was interested in, (2) made me happy just look to look at them, (3) gave me a craft idea, and (4) inspired my writings. I do the same thing with Pinterest now, but I also keep adding to my sketchbooks.

These are the books I keep the pictures in, sometimes whole pages. (Sorry for the blurry photo!) Green is my oldest, where I used rubber cement to adhere the pictures. I now use double-sided tape. The blue one was the next one, followed by the current (2012+) black one. The previous ones are by no means full, but I needed to make a start somewhere and decided to buy a new one and start fresh.

Page spread from the green book.

Page spread from the blue book.

And a page spread from the current book, the black one.

From the black book, a picture of a box of postcards and maybe a notebook/diary of some kind.

New yarn makes me happy

Happiness

New yarn from WEBS

Toast restart no 2

The last straw part 2

Here it is

The last straw part 1

This is what my project looked like over the weekend. Got about 25 rows done while visiting a friend and having a ‘craft’ day.

It looks more like this only with the yarn I had used wrapped around the middle as if I was strangling it after the bad day I had had, needles pulling out of the stitches and a dropped stitch tap rows earlier I had not noticed. I know these are fixable and have corrected my own share but the dropped stitch was the last straw last night.

Toast wrist warmers WIP