Gettin’ Crafty

I finished the scarf for my mom:

She didn’t want it super long, only about 56″ so she could tuck it under her coat and nice and wide so it would cover all of her shoulders.  Mission accomplished!

I also pulled out my serger and had fun finally learning how to use it.  I’ve only had it since Christmas.

I repaired everything around the house that needed repairing in record time and with no cursing.  It was magical.

Then, I made a shirt.

That fit!!!

Again, without cursing.  Normally sewing anything with any stretch leaves me wanting to burn my entire house down.

It was getting late and I was getting tired by the time I finished, so I hadn’t ironed it when Logan held it up for me to photo.  It fits though.  I’m not modeling anything.

I do want to swap my machine over to coverstitch and try that — I did overlocking and blind hemming with it today oooooh! — but for some reason the chainstitch looper kept getting wrapped with thread so I figured I was tired and threading something wrong.

I’ll play with it again tomorrow to see if I can make the coverstitching work, that way the bottom hem won’t want to roll up at all.  🙂

All in all, I’m really happy with my first made for me item.  🙂

Now, I can get back to trying to knit that first pair of socks….I’m almost done with the ribbing, that has to count for something, right?  XD

Secrets and friends

Does everybody have that magical set of friends that they talk about everything with?  Where nothing is off limits and everything can be laid bare?

I’ll generally blabber here about whatever crosses my mind — it’s pretty moderated and what I do say, I don’t care if it’s out there for the wider world to know — but there are some things that I’ve guarded in my deepest, darkest of hearts for as long as I can remember and every now and then, there are new things that I stash there.  I do it completely unintentionally at this point.

Am I alone in that?

How do people even find friends they can talk about everything with?

 

When I was in school, I never talked to my friends about who I had a crush on or what problems I was having.  Those were my delicious secrets.  When you’re in Kindergarten and a group of girls ask if you want to be their friends and it’s promptly followed with shrieks of “APRIL FOOLS!”, it quickly adds to your growing distrust of people.

I’d listen to my friend’s relationship (or usually lack thereof) troubles, their bully problems, their family issues, and move on with my day even if I was screaming in agony inside or jumping with joy over something.

The few times I tried sharing things about me, it backfired spectacularly.  As it would turn out, most of the people I hung out with weren’t truly good friends or people, but in an area as small as the one I grew up, you didn’t have many choices.  If they didn’t actively trip you in the hallway or steal things from your locker, they were good enough to be a friend.  Our standards weren’t that high.

My escape, if you will, became the internet as soon as it became available.

It was there that I forged friends from all over and could, for once, let the bits of real me trickle out.  I could let my geek flag fly.  I could complain about the assholes at school without it ever getting back to them, thus amplifying the bullying (because it did…oh, how it did).  I was able to tell people things I would never dream of whispering out loud otherwise.

…and for the first time, ever, I was relatively comfortable in my own skin.

But now, decades later, it is causing is bit of a conundrum.

I have things I want to talk about and, more annoyingly, probably need to talk about.

…but I have no idea how to broach those topics with people, much less who to talk to them about.

I’ve kept certain parts of my life so isolated and locked away from other parts that it would be disorienting to mix them.  There are still certain things I don’t want certain people knowing or I don’t think they’d ever understand, mostly because I’ve just never shared any of the information so it would be really confusing for somebody who was there during that part of my life to suddenly hear about other parts.

I was really good at compartmentalization and apparently still am.

Oh, deer

Our yard is finally starting to wake up from its winter slumber!  I’m so happy that I don’t see any casualties (yet) from the very harsh conditions this year.  I think it was the 3rd snowiest year on record, ever, for our area thanks to the back-to-back-to-back nor’easters that hit in March.  Up until today, we also had fresh snow every day in April.  Spring as been fun for those of us who enjoy snow!  🙂

The one issue I did notice when I was trampling around in my yard yesterday was deer damage.

Do any of my fellow gardeners and plant lovers have any good suggestions for ways to discourage the pesky deer?

They really chewed on just about everything this year, even plants they normally don’t bother that much.  I don’t know if it was because winter seemed so much longer this year or what, but they’ve nipped almost every bush I have down and stripped bark off of trees.

I was proactive this year and put a wrap on my pink magnolia — they always nibble and strip it, so at least the base of it was saved and I still have some blossoms higher up.  They chewed anything else they could reach though.  My rhododendrons look like they’ve been a buffet, as do my mountain laurel and azaleas; all of them have been stripped of leaves.  They’re still supple and green, though, so I’m hoping they can recover.  I have quite a few rhododendrons and they’re all really large and would be hard to cover, so the deer have been really at it recently.  The ground around them is churned up badly and covered in scat.

Thankfully, my new-ish berry bushes have been completely unscathed.  I think the deepness of the snow spared them from unwanted attention (usually the rabbits are what get after them anyway).  They look healthy and happy and I’m looking forward to adding some blueberries, black currants, and lingonberries this year to our normal blackberry and raspberry crops!  I hope!  🙂

Aside from deer damage, Logan and I have had a busy week.

Three doctor appointments, one vet specialist, our anniversary, and two shows at our local theater!

We were supposed to have contractors at the house this morning but they had to reschedule for next week.  They’re installing air conditioning!!!   Other people lost heat and that seemed more important to all of us; it’s still way too cold for air co and the need for heat is very real since it’s still dipping into the 20s at night here.

The doctor appointments all went well.  The end results are I have new glasses — I’m getting less and less far-sighted as my optometrist of yore predicted when I was little.  Logan has to have a skin biopsy next month but we’re not too worried about it.

Our little doggo Mitzi has been having a really odd leg thing since December where she’ll randomly draw one leg up for no longer than a minute and whimpering slightly like it’s hurting her.  As soon as it’s over, it’s over.  It repeats every couple weeks.  Earlier this month, she has three episodes in a day and we took her to the vet.  He couldn’t figure out what on earth may be causing it, so referred us to a neurologist.  Who would’ve thought those existed?  The neuro said her evaluation was great but he thinks she may either be having partial seizures or have a muscle contracting disorder, which usually presents when they’re younger.  He’s leaning towards seizures right now but we’re watching and waiting and trying to gather more data before diving into a very expensive MRI or a risky drug trial.

I found a video of another Mini Schnauzer that was having the exact problems that Mitzi was and the dog is the same age, so I left a comment but I don’t have any hopes of hearing back from them.  For the sake of interest or if anybody else has had a similar experience, the video is here.

The shows we saw were lots of fun.

We saw Wrath of Khan, followed by a Q&A with William Shatner.  He was, as always, full of personality.  The last time Logan and I saw him was years and years ago at Dragon*Con when he did a panel with Leonard Nimoy.

We also saw a really odd amalgamation of things — poetry, music, interpretive dance, dramatic readings — performed by Bill Murray.  I think my favorite parts were when he chose to sing, sometimes off key.  …or maybe when he decided to run out in the audience and fling the bouquet of roses somebody gave him at audience members.  That was super entertaining.  So was his playing the piano with his butt, but that’s neither here nor there.  😛  It was an all around entertaining show and not entirely a comedy as one would expect from the likes of Bill Murray.

Amigurumi

We’ll not talk about the fact that I sewed his head on backwards this morning.

My fix was to add more chain to the belt and have it wrap around and retie in the front.  Thankfully the arms were centered really well so it didn’t make much of a difference from that regard.

I also spent more time sewing on this little guy’s eyebrows than I have ever spent grooming my own.  That’s definitely a reflection of how much I don’t care about my eyebrows versus how (not) hard it was to attach his brows.

Pattern is Mind Flayer by CraftyTibbles on Etsy.  It went together super quickly and easily.  I would suggest having made a few more complicated crocheted things before, though, as some of her instructions are a bit scattered around (some are under pictures instead of typed out) and they start to peter off towards the end.  I didn’t have any issues at all with it, though….you know, other than not paying attention and having him check out his own ass this morning.