Yopping Update #38 - You were right!

The readers who hazarded a guess were correct.

This:

Became this:

I made him for my sister who is a great supporter of this Sheldrick Wildlife Sanctuary for orphaned and injured elephants.  Check it out.  The baby elephants wear blankets just like the one pictured on this little guy I knit.

I finished my St. Patrick's Day handspun - 132 metres.

I want to knit a sock monkey puppet for my tree, but I have no brown in my stash - so next up to the spinning wheel will be something suitable for a wee monkey.

I knit one of the Alan Dart patterns I had in my queue.  I needed some metallic thread for the wings and star so I ordered some from Michaels online that I could pick-up at the store.  Minimal human contact as I am seriously self-isolating.

Free Alan Dart Pattern

My cardiologist appointment was done via the internet on Tuesday as the doctor was not well and staying home.  Interesting how technology is saving the day in many ways during this CoVid situation.

I doubled my online meat/fish order so our freezer is well stocked, and I even got some of the powdered peanut butter I like from Amazon, because my grocery store was all out.

Speaking of social isolating, as I mentioned I gave up fb and instagram for Lent.  I was being a hard-ass and not taking advantage of being allowed to use fb on Sundays.  I am going to start doing this today as I think a lot of socializing is happening on my groups on fb and I want to stay connected during this time.  For some of my friends and family fb is our meeting place.  I will remain off Instagram though.  Small steps.

Speaking of steps I have been using my fitbit to make sure I get up and walk for at least 10 minutes every hour from 10am - 6pm and I did a bit of raking on Friday and Saturday.  Some days we drive down to the little park near our house and I go for a short 30 minute walk.

I was interested in starting the Wrapped in Jamie CAL but, oh my god, I downloaded the stitch compendeum and it is FORTY pages.  After hemming and hawing for a few days I decided to go for it, and after four days, and the great video help from the designer, (her voice is very calming) I finished the first square last night.

Year of the Ox

And even got started on square 2.

Sawny

I am super proud of myself for this progress.  I think I can call myself a real crocheter now!  Each square takes 100gms of dk weight yarn, so I may have to do an on-line order in the near future.

There have been lots of phone chats with friends and family, and video chats with my son, daughter and grand-daughter.  I am so thankful for technology.

This morning my WW meeting was done virtually via Zoom.  It was great to see and hear from my WW friends.  I have heard that CoDA has an on-line meeting on Friday evenings, so I will check that out this coming week.

Here is a picture of Otis and I chilling while watching Netflix last night.

And this is the picture I received soon after of my daughter and grand-daughter chillin'!

Have a good week everyone.  Stay the course.  Social distance.  Self Isolate.  Stay calm and knit/crochet/bake/garden/quilt/sew/stitch/paint (have I missed anything), on.

Yopping Update #4 - It's the little things

This week it is all about the little things.

The week started off with this water bottle holder:

and then I had just enough blue cotton left for one more wee produce bag:

Since little things seemed to be the order of the week I decided to get started on those advent knits.

I had 37 gms of sparkley, multi-coloured home spun that I had received as a gift a couple of years ago at one of our knit night christmas parties.   So here is what became of 31 gms of it:

I love how the colours naturally changed from his legs to his body and then to his hat.  (I used something else for his little head).

I started looking at my advent knit list and my eyes fell on this advent calendar.  The instructions are all in Norwegian so thanks to my trusty friend google translate I was able to get this done:

and then this:

this:

this one is a little bigger cause of using sport weight yarn - I might re-do it at some point with fingering.  

and last night this when I couldn't figure out the instructions to the tank I wanted to start (see below):

Only 20 more to go?  They will make a nice advent calendar, just big enough for a colourful stone, or chestnut, or chocolate I think.

I perused my queue for other advent knits and found the pattern for stjarna.  It starts out very complicated with me casting on to two sets of circulars,  then transferring the top half of the cast on to dpns, and leaving the bottom half to pick up later for the back half of the star.

It starts like this:

and ends up as a three dimenstional five pointed star:

Last night I was going to cast on a crocheted tank but the instructions were too complicated for my late night brain.  I will try again today.  I have 2.2 pounds of cotton on a spool that I got from the free store,

and this tee is made with four crocheted squares.  I think I can manage that once I wrap my head around the instructions - I may have to learn how to read a crochet diagram after all.

That is my week.  There was some pool time, and I helped my husband put together a workbench:

almost done

I also took my car in for an estimate - and it will get fixed sometime this coming week.

My grand-daughter turned 7 months yesterday.  Look at those teeth (she has six already).

To follow the other intrepid crafters check out their progress for the week here