2019: The Year of the Bucket -- er, To-Do List

Here's a recent photo of me. Ready for a new year
with a new stain on my shirt. 

This year, I have what I am calling the very exciting experience of turning 50. I truly am excited and for several reasons. First, if The Death Clock website is to be believed, I will live to be 99 years old, which puts me smack dab in the middle of my life, having another 49 years to live. That's plenty of time to get into the right kinds of trouble, and to accomplish a few things. More important, these remaining years will be much better than the previous ones -- at least 20 of those were spent knowing nothing about life, and at least another 10 were spent knowing only marginally about life, but believing I knew everything about it. Now, I can wisely spend my remaining years knowing that I -- and all of us -- truly know very little about life at all. And that there are rarely any true absolutes. This sets me free; I now can be exceedingly inquisitive, seeking experiences and new wisdoms that can be found absolutely anywhere.

Another reason to be excited about turning 50 is that it is a good time to create a list of things I'd like to do. I love listing. It is a favorite pastime of mine. Big picture-wise, I will likely create a master "bucket list" for the rest of my 49 years as people often do, but I think that for practical purposes, breaking that list down into manageable parts might be best. So this year, I'd like to create a smaller list. More of a "to-do" list than a bucket one. That is what I want to share with you all here on the blog over the course of 2019.

The final reason that turning 50 will be an exciting time for me is Molly Shannon. Yes. I can stretch and kick and stretch … and I'm 50 (or I will be ...)!!!! My name may not be Sally O'Malley, but this brings up another to-do list item: On my birthday, June 11, I plan to drive everyone crazy all day long (and maybe for the rest of the year, for that matter) acting out that character. At work. At home. At church (what's that you say? June 11, 2019, is a Tuesday and there is no church? I'll find a way). At the mall. All locations are fair game. Is a Rockette audition in my future? Maybe not. But I can sure act it out at random.

Although 2019 has not quite started, I am chomping at the bit to go, so here goes the first to-do list item: I want to leave the old blog and "rebrand" myself a bit. Just a very tiny bit. And here I am, with a new blog name and a slightly new look to the blog page. I never liked the name of the old blog much anyway. In fact, I have been wanting to change it for a long time, and I don't even know why I've waited; it's not like thousands of readers will lose me. It's more like I will be telling people, "Hey, my blog has moved," and they will be like, "What blog?"

Here are some of my plans as they stand right now: 

1. Work (for real) on The Master Knitter's Program through TKGA. Good grief! This one's been lolling around my life for two years or more! Okay, more. But who's been counting? Not me and that's why it isn't done.

2. Finish the precursory correspondence course to The Master Knitter's Program, "Basics, Basics, Basics." That sounds like a good theme for 2019 as I organize a future! It's been so long since I sent in a lesson that Arenda Holladay surely has forgotten me ... if she ever knew me in the first place. I don't think that first lesson of mine was such a doozy.

3. Make my daughters' birthday gifts by hand for once, for crying out loud! The oldest two are turning 31 and 19!! The 9-year-old needs one too, but probably has not been as damaged yet by broken promises from her mom and handmade birthday gifts.

4. Make my husband something -- anything -- and actually deliver it. This is not unlike list item #3. He did get three handmade items for Christmas, which was a good start, but I feel certain that I am still behind. 15 years behind.

5. Write!!! Yes, write. Here on the blog and elsewhere! Journaling, novel writing, all of it!

6. Continue to read and read and read. In 2018, audiobooks changed my reading life. Back in October of 2017, I committed to reading more often. Audiobooks to the rescue! Although I did read some paper novels, like American Gods and Paulo Coelho's The Devil and Miss Prym, among others, I took off with Heather Ordover and CraftLit! Now I have Audible and the library, too! Wowie Zowie you can listen to bazillions of books while you knit and sew!!! This year, I've read 13 books to date, a record for my whole adult life. (I, like so many others, fell off the reading novels wagon post-college and never went back to my old beloved pastime of childhood. Mine is made worse by admitting that I graduated from college in 2008 at 38 years old! Other excuses include children.)

7. Go back to college -- risky, I know, for my newly found reading habit. I'll have to work that out. I want to finish that Bachelor's in Dental Hygiene! Working on entering EWU's online program, probably at the end of summer.

8. Take a cool trip for my 50th birthday -- in the works!!

9. Act like a giddy idiot on my birthday. Done. Always done.

10. Open ended -- I am a gemini, after all. God knows what I may do.

There are many, many other ideas that could potentially enter my to-do list, and as they rumble around in my brain, shifting and trading places with one another, I will share them with you.

Let's do this -- or at least try to. (See how I didn't say "or die trying"? That would be stupid. I have 49 years left. Dying while trying would be a total waste of resources.)

Here are a couple pics showing how I'm getting started:

Amy Rose's birthday sweater -- this is the back. The front will be much harder.
One word: Intarsia. This skill is on my lifetime knitting list, therefore this project
will kill two birds with one stone, so to speak!

Annie's birthday cowl. This is an example of a Christmas gift
becoming a birthday one.I have been working on this thing for 3 months.
With 400 stitches in the round, it never seems to end.
It needs to end by February 21, 2019. 

Crafting My Face Off: A Good End to 2018.

This year was a year to plan ahead. It has been a more optimistic year, as I am feeling better than I have in a long time, getting back into better shape, eating right -- getting out of the pre-diabetic zone ... all that stuff "they" tell you to do, but you take forever to get around to it.

So I made a bunch of stuff. Well, mostly for Christmas, but it was more than I usually make! The planning started in September with this idea that I would make something for everyone. At first, my brain went straight to knitting, but then I remembered how that went in years past. The thought was lovely, but hand-knitting slippers for 15+ people was -- at the least -- daunting. Especially since I didn't usually start the work until December due to a very long string of excuses to procrastinate: "It's not even Halloween yet!" "It's not even Thanksgiving yet!" "The day after Thanksgiving is a much better start date!" "The weekend after the day after Thanksgiving is a better start date. Then I can get up the tree!"

Etc.

While I pondered these things, I was partaking in another favorite procrastination pastime of mine: looking at other people's crafting ideas online. I came across a blog called "It's Always Autumn." Well, Autumn, the blogger, has a fabulous post on polar fleece blanket-making, which you can find here. I thought this would be a great way to make everyone in my family something and not epically fail, for once, at total Christmas-making! Autumn's blankets were not the usual edge-tied type, and I was intrigued by how finished they looked, not to mention that the edge-tied way always seems to diminish the useful part of the blanket.

To prepare for making Autumn's sewn blankets, I used a zillion Joann's coupons and did a lot of shopping (online -- duh! Okay, I am cheap and didn't pay for shipping. I picked the orders up in-store to cut costs) and cutting and planning, but the blankets truly did not take more than 2.5 hours each to complete. I made 11 blankets that way, finishing them with jumbo rick rack or bias tape.

Then, I decided to go off on my own a bit. Instead of using a trim of some ilk on a single fabric, I tried sewing two pieces (planned and cut with the same rounded corners as the originals) of fleece together most of the way, flipped them right side out and top stitched them together, holding the open area of fabric together, closing the hole I left to do the flipping. This actually created a very nice blanket, double thick! And I didn't do any quilt-style tying; the polar fleece fabric sticks to itself pretty well and they worked just great as they were. This style of polar fleece blanket took a little longer, like 3 hours, but it i worth it! I made four of these.

Here are mine:

A couple of thoughts if you decide to try this: 

1. When using two pieces of fabric for a blanket, it gets a little tricky closing the hole while topstitching. Be very careful to fold the pieces in together to match the seam allowance you created when sewing them together in the first place. But also remember that polar fleece is a bit stretchy and, as such, is forgiving; you can pull a little and stretch it in place as needed to make it work for you.

2. I didn't get super picky about my two pieces matching. I did my best, laying them out on the floor together  and using quilter's safety pins to hold them together for the initial sewing, starting my pinning from the center and working out. But I didn't freak out if during the sewing the edges sort of went a little askew. Life's too short and they looked fine -- better than fine!

3. When using bias tape on a single fabric: As Autumn the blogger tells you, the single-piece blankets do take up to 3 packages of double-fold bias tape, depending on how big you make it, but your mileage may vary. My large blankets took about 2.5 packages a piece, using 2 yards each of 59" wide Luxe Fleece.

I ironed my bias tape to get the kinks out of it, you know, where it bends around the cardboard in its little package? That annoys the crap out of me. Ironing it super hot with steam worked really well. And, after getting the hang of how it goes with sewing and connecting the new pieces of bias tape, I even pre-folded the successive pieces and ironed the fold into the new piece to save time. To make the new piece less bulky, I also cut the new piece into a point before folding it.

4. When using Rick Rack: BE CAREFUL IRONING IT!! I tried to treat it like the bias tape, not testing it, not thinking ... it melted to my iron. Maybe try washing it and laying it flat to dry. Or read the package for care -- I sure didn't.

5. Finally, I used a stretchy fabric needle in my matching and I had to lower the tension to handle the blankets with double thicknesses.

Let's circle back to the slipper in the first pic. I made 6 of them for Christmas when all was said and done (When I took this photo, one was still on the needles!). The pattern I used is "Duffers Revisited" by Mindie Tallack. I am in love with this pattern as it uses less yarn, and is thus less time-consuming than the lovely (and also slightly more expensive to make) "Felted Clogs" by Bev Galeskas. Other differences include a slightly less complex construction and "finished" feel to the Duffers finished product, including a single, instead of a double, sole as in the Felted Clogs pattern. There is also no rolled top on the Duffers, but if you are seeking a simple, solid, predictable pattern and need to make several, Duffers may be for you!

I used Fisherman's Wool and Cascade 220 wool for my Duffers and would consider trying Lamb's Pride or Ella Rae, too. I suspect I will need to remember that Lamb's Pride doesn't felt quite as far as the others. Things to keep in mind!

I also made my 9-year-old daughter Amy Rose a pair of fat socks using Red Heart's new Hygge yarn!! What a treat! It is a bit hairy, but not too much unlike some other eyelash yarns, and although it has the potential to split, my Size 9 Clover Bamboo dpn's worked out just fine. I haven't washed them yet -- I'll keep you posted.

Next Post: New Year's Stuff