Hello from the Other Side of Chaos

Its been three weeks since I posted - so long in fact that I had to go back and check my previous post to see what in tarnation I had posted about because I just couldn't remember. 

First of all, for those who were wondering, the Smidget has some food allergies and we are working to get those things cleared up. We hope he will sleep better once we solve those problems and I suspect that these might have been the root cause of the aforementioned Hell Week. In the meantime, I haven't felt inclined to post because there has been very little of interest in the crafting world while we deal with these other Real Life (ugh) problems. I had to pull out my Cranky Mama Bear persona to get my pediatrician to test for food allergies, so my suggestion to all you parents out there is to stand your ground when something is wrong and insist on getting the right tests done.

I've determined that one of my crafty blocks is that I don't have anything going on right now that doesn't require some moderate-to-intense degree of concentration, so I dug out the Red Heart yarn that I had originally purchased to make a dragon scale blanket (wasn't happy with the result, scrapped after 1.5 skeins) and used it to start a continuous square blanket. The pattern is called Joy's Journey and is available for free on LookWhatIMade.

I'm using Red Heart Unforgettable Boutique in Stained Glass and I downsized to a 4.0 mm hook, because this yarn is generally thinner than the label would suggest. There are NO STEPS to this pattern, as it is stitched in one continuous round. All the increases are in the corners, making this pattern a no brainer and easy to pick up and put back down. I think I have somewhere between six and twelve skeins of this yarn so we'll see how big it gets. It tends to curl a bit and I wonder if three chains in the corner might serve better than the two in the pattern, so its something to consider should I ever repeat this pattern.

I wish you all a Happy Easter and a good Good Friday. This is the season of hope and new beginnings! Bring on spring.

A Slow Return to Normalcy

The last two weeks have been so much better than Hell Week. We are slowly returning back to some semblance of normalcy and the Smidget is starting to stretch out his sleep segments again.  Some nights are better than others but on whole everything is looking up. Thank you all for your kind thoughts and well wishes. 

I've started going back to bed during his first long nap of the day. This unfortunately means that on most days, I do not have a chance to do anything crafty. The trade off is that I'm no longer a over-sensitive sleep-deprived cranky-faced mommy-monster so I suppose its worth it. Mostly. I'm still holding out hope that he'll eventually go to bed before midnight and leave me with a couple of quiet hours in the evening to relax.

I have managed to do a few thing here and there in February. I finished the black and purple scarf set.

I came REALLY close to completing the top half of Tiger Chilling Out. I haven't touched it in two weeks - its possible that I now associate it with Hell Week so I'm going to put it away for a bit.

My Craftsy class on JAYGo is also making slow progress. I've finished triangles and have started setting up the motifs for joining circles.

So what's next? Not sure yet, but I'll share it when I figure it out.