justwingingknit - Tumblr blog

[justwingingknit]

Fiber arts is just Math in sheep's clothing

[justwingingknit]

Sometimes when I’m playing yarn chicken, I’ll start to knit faster as though the speed is going to have any impact whatsoever on how much yarn is used up.

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My brain is tired today. I’ve decided knitting needles shall now be written as kneedles.

That will be all.

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A little peek at the project I've been working on, the Movie Night Cocoon Cardigan by Alexandra Tavel.

I started this on April 20th and have been making steady progress, my goal is to finish up before we go out of town this Wednesday so I can get started on a new project for the drive!

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May the 4th be with you! I'm working on finishing the seam on my Twi'Lek hat 😄

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Fun, easy-to-follow sewing patterns by RosieTaylorCrafts

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I made a plant that I won't be able to kill! It honestly came out a lot cuter than I expected and I plan on trying out the other versions at some point. The pattern was super beginner friendly so I recommend it to anyone whose starting to learn crochet and wants to move past granny squares.

Pattern: Cactus Garden by Elf ♥'s Dwarf crochet

I used a bunch of yarns which can be found in my ravelry project here: Knitted Banshees Cactus Garden

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Admiring my work before looking at the horror behind it....

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-🌿Updates on the moss rug! Exhausted and still have a ways to go but I’m getting there!! For context I’m making large individual Pom poms and tying them to a rug Matt!🌿-

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Here's an update to my bag!

Ignoring the fact that I accidentally sewed the mushrooms on sideways I super love it!! I don't think it bothers me enough to undo the mushrooms and reattach them so I'm either going to leave it be or I have considered trying to make an X shape out of Mushrooms on those squares but I'm not sure how that will look.

I've been dabbling into crochet recently! Here are the granny squares I've made so far, my plan is to turn them into a bag.

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(Long post, sorry y'all)

A little more than two years ago now, my grandmother passed away. She and my grandpa had moved down to my home town a few years before so we could take care of them. I brought them groceries once a week, helped them write checks, fixed tvs, and found lost things. I was really close with my grandma.

In addition to her hilarious personality and dry wit, one of my favorite things about her was that she was a painter and a crafter like me! She used to crochet, and I took her to the craft store a couple of times so she could get more yarn and books on crochet. But her arthritis and the shaking in her hands kept getting worse, so she eventually had to stop.

She kept her most recent project, a granny square blanket, safely packed away in a plastic bin. She told all of us she was going to finish it one day.

Her hands never got better, and when she got sick, and we found out it was cancer, she rapidly deteriorated.

After she passed, I went to work helping my mom clean out my grandparents apartment so we could move my grandpa in with her. In our frantic cleaning, I found that bin again:

DOZENS of granny squares, dozens of half used skeins. I asked my mom what she wanted me to do with it, and she said she didn't care. I set it aside and later took it home.

Maybe a month later, that tumblr post about the Loose Ends Project was going around. It felt like a sign--I was never going to learn to crochet in order to finish my grandmother's blanket. But they might be able to help!

So I filled out the interest form. They got back to me SUPER quick. And maybe 2 weeks later, I was paired with volunteer in my state (only 2 hours away!) and the box of yarn, granny squares, and my grandmother's crochet hook were in the mail. That was at the end of January this year.

Over the next couple of months, my "finisher" emailed me regular updates on her progress, and asked me questions on my preferences for how she constructed the final blanket.

At the end of August, the blanket was done!

I had always intended the blanket to be a gift for my mother. So I cleaned it up, put it in the only bag I had big enough to fit it, and drove to my mom's. I gave the blanket to her and she was gobsmacked. I explained to her all about Loose Ends, and how someone volunteered to finish the piece for us. She was speechless. (I was quite pleased with this, because I am not the best at giving gifts, so this was a pretty exciting reaction!)

She said that it was the most thoughtful gift she had ever been given. She said "your grandma would love this". To which I replied, "yeah, I know she really wanted to finish it a couple of years ago". But that was when my mom dropped the bomb of a century on me--she told me that my grandma had started making those granny squares OVER 30 YEARS AGO. She had started the blanket when my grandpa was staying in the hospital, but that was back when my mom was younger than I am now! My grandma had packed them all away, planning on finishing it, when my grandpa was sent home from the hospital. Then it went from house to house, from condo in Chicago to their apartment in my hometown. All that time and my grandma had wanted to finish it, but couldn't. First because she was busy, then because she forgot how to do it, then because of her arthritis, and then because of the cancer. My mom said she had given up on expecting my grandma to finish it. 

She said I brought a piece of her childhood with her mom out of the past.

And really, all of this is to say, if you have seen or heard about the Loose Ends Project and have an uncompleted project or piece from a loved one who has passed away--these are your people. They were so kind and treated my project with such care. That box probably would have been found by my own grandkids one day if I hadn't heard about Loose Ends.

Five stars, absolutely worth it!

(From what I understand, you can sign up to volunteer too! If you have time to share, it might be worth checking out!)

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I finished my brother's Christmas present a month before the deadline, which is far sooner than I expected. The cats are based off ours. Charlie is the orange boy, Kiki is the b&w and Jane Doe is the tortie. I'm hoping it fits, but if it doesn't, I hope no one tells me!

[justwingingknit]

idk who needs to hear this but if you knit or crochet you do not need to stress about it all of the time. that defeats the purpose of having a hobby. yes sometimes i do projects that require learning new stitches and making several runs to the craft store and searching for a specific brand of yarn and counting stitches and recounting stitches. but i also have a blanket that i call my "idgaf blanket" and it's literally just a giant gloriously repetitive chain stitch blanket made of a conglomeration of whatever yarn i happen to have scraps of. my rules are no undoing for dropped stitches, no overthinking color patterns. for just this one project, i simply crochet it because i like the feeling of crocheting. sometimes i just need to work on my idgaf blanket and that's okay and when it's done i'm sure i'll appreciate it a lot more simply because it never gave me anxiety

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I literally don't learn from my mistakes.

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2023 Temperature Blanket: 🌻July, August, September🌻

God the catch-up on this project is unreal. Today is 11/26/2023 and I'm up to 10/22/2023 in my work. I'm going to try to get these three sewn on to the rest of the blanket tonight if I can.

September gets a little bit of an extra shoutout here. The center of it wasn't crocheted by me. My grandma brought it back with her when my Great-grandmother, Granny, passed in March. I've been saving it for this project, and saved it for September. September 18 would have been her 103 birthday. Having this little square in the midst of a year that's held so much feels very comforting. I know she's still here,, in her own way. Granny, I miss you. We all do. Miźpah 💙