I Changed My Mind

I was going to crochet the checkerboard blanket in strips then sew the strips together but Jennifer at my Tuesday evening craft group mentioned she hated to sew in ends. I'm not a big fan of that either. I then recalled watching a video on attaching along the side as you crochet and decided I would pursue that option.

My technique varies from the video because I don't mind a gap between squares. 

Basically I attach the bottom of each row to the bottom of the corresponding row with a single crochet. Then I chain two and attach to the top of the adjacent row with a single crochet and then crochet the row. It may not be as aesthetically pleasing but I won't have a lot of ends to weave in as I do them as I go.

At stitching on Monday morning, I cleverly left my threads at home except for the dark blue. So I spent the time finishing the blue waves and started to outline the rest of the 'ocean'.

I haven't touched it since then. However, this arrived in the mail the other day.

I got it from a Facebook cross stitch destash group for a very good price. However, the shipping was almost three times what I paid for the chart. So annoyed. I would have been OK with just having it sent in a manila envelope because postage rates with tracking from the US is costly. Next time, I'll tell the sender to find a less expensive method.

I haven't decided how I will do it. Ideally a light, medium, and dark fabric would work. Perhaps a white, medium blue and a navy?  I'll take it to the guild's free stitching day tomorrow and see what other folks suggest. I also may or may not use buttons either.

I have become obsessed with doing jigsaw puzzles. I only did a couple during COVID and somehow didn't get hooked then. Many of my friends were doing them and swapping them but I wasn't that interested - probably because I didn't have a good setup for them in front of the TV in the family room.

I don't even remember what got me interested in doing one last week but I tried a 500 piece puzzle I already had. That went well. I started another one but the pieces were so thin they didn't interlock very well so I abandoned it. I ordered a couple of Springbok puzzles from Amazon and finished them in fairly short order. I also bought one at Value Village for a tenth of what Amazon charged me but once it was assembled, it was missing three pieces. Oh well. I enjoyed the process. 

I then decided to try for a 1000 piece puzzle and had one in my stash. I rolled out my yoga mat on the dining room table and spread everything out on that. If I needed to put it away before it was finished I could just roll it up in my yoga mat for safe keeping.

I started it yesterday and finished it a little while ago.

Although it had a lot of pieces, there were a lot of motifs which made sorting and grouping much easier. There was even one piece left over which must have been from another puzzle. Oh well.

Also this week I had another delivery from HelloFresh. This was the crusted chicken with mashed sweet potatoes and sautéed snap peas. Yum-mo!

It was very easy and I will easily be able to replicate it for another meal. I like that the meals are easy to prepare, the ingredients provided are very fresh. the instructions are very clear (if I can learn to read and follow them properly) and include photos, the portions are generous, and I don't have to think what to eat on those nights I prepare one. Sometimes there is more than enough for Skip and I to eat so we get leftovers - yay!

One perplexing thing that occurred today was a change in how I load photos into this blog. The change must have occurred when I recently updated my laptop. Before, I could easily add photos to the text by clicking the icon on the task bar. It won't work now. Instead, I have to go to my photo files and copy and paste the photo into the body of the text. I sure hope Blogger continues to be available for me to use and doesn't disappear. I realize there are other platforms but having used Blogger for this blog for almost 18 years, I'm very familiar with its features. I'm having a similar problem with adding photos in Gmail as well - grrrr.