Obsessing

Gods help me, I need a distraction. That's not to say that there is nothing to do. I have truckloads to do, but the procrastinator streak in me makes me put everything on the back burner. Well, at least the swimming is going.. rather.. swimmingly; everything else, not so much.

Apart from that one hour of respite where I'm still gulping quite a bit of (eww) chlorine water with (eww) who knows what, most of my day goes by obsessing over certain somethings. To make matters worse, I've got the blues in all its hues. By rights, it shouldn't even matter. It is, after all, following in the same pattern. What was expected did happen. One theory goes that when you keep expecting negativity, negative things happen. Oh well. But then again, what is a pessimist to do?

It's just the stupidity of the whole thing that bugs the hell out of me. No, scratch that. I don't even know if it is stupid. Things just go from A to C, completely missing B, and no one seems to bother telling me what on this godforsaken Earth happened to the bleeding B. I mean, honestly, can someone/anyone send me a memo next time?

Right, so now that a bit of ranting is done, next post is possibly gonna be about resin casting. Here's hoping, anyway. Toodles.

Stole(n)

Ever since having done the unmentionable (or having taken a career break in common parlance), banality of one's existence was never so felt. Still, thank the God/Gods/aliens/super-being/whoever-is-up-there for putting enough creativity in otherwise idle hands and just-about-enough money in the account to survive extreme levels of bored-outta-my-mind-edness.

Those familiar with my blogging style (from when I actually used to blog, i.e. long before the double entendre of "winter is coming" was thought of), will realize that I still write as if I'm smoking something potent. Rest of you - congratulations on having made it this far, and I tend to use a lot of parentheses (you WILL have to re-read stuff).

Being a hobbies junkie (I pick them up like I have velcro all over me and hobbies are random bits of hair/lint/dust/etc. which get caught (eww, I know)), I start stuff enthusiastically, get distracted by another hobby and start that, get distracted by a third hobby and start that, and so on. However, one constant that I keep going back to is crochet. I'm also a yarn junkie. I tried to get myself interested in knitting (started and stopped) and tatting (bought a tatting shuttle and haven't started yet), but crochet is just so much more familiar.

I've recently discovered a store which is a treasure trove of lovely yarns and I keep spending my not-so-ill-gotten-gains buying and making and buying and hoarding. I have about a gazillion unfinished projects. Few of them are for my cutie pie niece (I know everyone says it, but I believe that my niece is THE cutest thing on the planet and I'll out-argue anyone who says otherwise (even though I never did join debate clubs in school/college (and even though I'm more inarticulate in person than I'm on paper/screen/online))). The project that I'm blogging about though is one that I made for me (it's mine, all mine, hu hu ha ha ha (that was my evil laugh if you hadn't already guessed)).

Folks interested in learning how to crochet this particular piece, please continue reading further.

The yarn blend that I've used for this project is premium acrylic. It took me 2 skeins (200 gms with total yardage of 480 meters), a 4 mm crochet hook and about one week (each day of which included about four/five hours of playtime with the aforementioned cutie pie niece, an hour of daily French lessons on Duolingo, an hour of sitting in front of the laptop feeling anxious over "where my life is headed" and what mom fondly calls (and probably what Douglas Adams would call if he were alive (I try telling mom to try catching it out of the corner of her eye, but no use)) "somebody else's problem (or SEP)" (I call it Twittering)) to finish (toldja you would have to re-read stuff). The pattern used is called the broomstick lace, worked without the long thingummy that most tutorials require and worked in the front loops of the single crochet stitches.

This is the tutorial. Very easy to follow. And below are the images of the finished stole.