i hear the voices when I'm dreaming

1. Still alive. More or less.

2. Finished my cactus bunny. It's frickin' adorable. Next up: prototype of a doll I'm designing. It is a person in a wheelchair, but more of a centaur-esque hybrid than a person and a separate chair, because really my chair is my legs. Concept art on my instagram.

3. Either I've been having more drastic reactions to low blood sugar, or I'm just noticing it more, but holy crap does my mood plummet if I go too long without eating. Today I was deep in lethargic anhedonia (not sure how much is depression and how much is blood sugar) and i had to force myself to eat because I knew food was good but I wasn't hungry and nothing sounded good, so I shoved food down and then twenty minutes later was feeling a lot more human. It's a little frustrating having to think of foods, because I don't always get hunger signals. And because I can't get stuff out myself, I need to remember to have sides leave something out where I can get it but the pets can't, and then I have to remember to eat it and also hope it still sounds good.

4. It doesn't help that my roommate tends to cook uber-healthily, and sometimes the "roast chicken and/or roasted veggies and/or sautéed kale and/or roasted potatoes and/or plain quinoa" gets a little ... boring. I'd rather have that than the polar opposite, and I'm in favor of generally eating healthy but with exceptions. And when I've forgotten food so nothing sounds good anyway, "oh hey i could have plain almonds for a snack" is kind of ... less appealing than usual. (Almonds are okay but not my favorite nut, and they're better salted; these are basically tasteless wood). It has the appeal of sawdust. And I have a voice in my head saying I should be eating super healthy anyway because that's the only way to keep my weight down or whatever, but it's a lot easier to eat when I actually want to eat.

5. I've also been in a funk lately. No energy to speak of, no enthusiasm for anything, no desire to crochet or read. I have theoretical desire to watch stuff on Netflix but that ends up not happening. I don't know how much is situational stress (chair, aide issues, generally not having reliable comfort) and how much is my depression changing its presentation and how much is blood sugar stuff. I should probably talk to my doctor, because there might be a medical issue behind it. I've had depresssion a long time, but it mostly manifests as self-hate and lack of energy, not lack of desire.

6. My iPad may be dying. Boo.

7. What is it with people doubling down on racism o.O There is a designer on Rav who makes really pretty stuff who is now on my never-buy list for being a total asshat. Short summary: she designed a shawl with a racial slur in the name, tried to openly circumvent the automated "no racist language" filter while mocking said filter, persisted in re-uploading it with problematic names, and is now claiming persecution.

Longer version, content warning for racial slurs (largely Rroma-related) --

( Read more... )

Anyway, where was I...?

8. Duolingo streak is up to 933. Woo. I'm thinking of trying again to tackle German. (Advantage: I have some stuff already ingrained. Disadvantage: that stuff is from twenty years ago, so is wildly out of date as well as rusty. Also, Spanish, which I'm lazily refreshing, is more useful around here.)

9. My side K has never seen Princess Bride. I am making her watch it soon. I keep wanting to make references to it (we were talking about something the other day that reminded me of Vizzini logic, a "something is X and also not-X" type of joke argument; I do not think [thst word] means what you think it means; something being mostly dead) and then remembering she wouldn't get it.

10. I am also going to have her watch Into the Woods -- the good one of course, not the recent abomination of which the ONLY redeeming value is Chris Pine's Shathering in "Agonny", and I still can't fucking believe they didn't include the reprise augh -- but that's less urgent. Also I don't actually own the DVD of it. Yet. I look for it at every library book sale (they have dvds and cds as well as books). One of these days it will be mine ... mwahahaha.

I have finished a Hat! Even sewed the button on myself mwahaha.

(The yarn is sparkly, which doesn't show up well in the photo. It's also a pita to work with and I'm not planning on ever buying it again, despite the pretty,)

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* Because I am a big dork, I decided to start learning Welsh on Duolingo. I am very amused that one of the sentences in the second lesson grouping is "I am a dragon" (draig dw i). I also got a Les Mis earworm with "pwy dw i" (who am I), which even scans. A welsh version of Les Mis would be awesome.

* my Inner Critic had a moment of "wtf why are you learning Welsh" -- the other languages I've done have made sense, because Spanish is useful in California, German and Russian are both languages I've learned previously (albeit to vastly different fluency levels), Russian has the additional benefit of being the native language of one of my aides, but Welsh??? -- but I was able to stifle that quickly. Can I use Welsh in my life? No, not really. But I like learning things, not just to be useful but purely for the sake of learning.

* I realized recently that a Mystery Knitting Object I've had for fifteen-odd years, which I got as part of an eBay purchase of yarn and knitting tools and so I thought was some weird large U-shaped stitch holder, is actually a look for hairpin crochet. Which I am utterly captivated by. (Summary version: the loom has parallel inflexible sides, and you hold the yarn behind and to one side. Flipping the loom over loops the yarn around one side; you crochet in the middle to stabilize it; flip the same direction to loop around the other side; crochet in the middle to stabilize; and you end up with a strip of crochet up the middle with loops on either side kind of like fringe.) I have, however, come to the conclusion that it requires three hands (one for yarn, one for hook, one for loom).

* Speaking of crochet, I made a video showing how I crochet (and babbling rather a lot). I will embed it here once I look up how to do that (I'm on my iPad, and I can't find embed code on the YouTube app) but for now here's a link: http://youtu.be/v4P2pK0joHk It's 16 minutes long, and fully captioned. I hope to make more videos showing other things. It's pretty basic and amateur-looking, but eh.

* Also speaking of crochet, I (re)discovered tonight that switching immediately from a project using thicker yarn and a 5.5mm hook to one with thinner yarn and a 4mm hook? Really throws off muscle memory for a bit.

* random icon ftw \o/

I have not made progress on any sort of yarncraft in November. This is mostly understandable: the puzzle ball is stalled in What If I Get It Wrong mode, the baby sweater hasn't been started, and NaNoWriMo means I am spending most of my "free" time writing, not yarning. Plus, there is a sort of inertia issue where setting up the crafting stuff takes a lot of effort, so for one thing I tend to be disinclined to do crocheting when I have a short amount of time so would spend 75% of the time setting up and 20% putting away and only 5% actually crocheting, and for another thing I am lazy and it is easier to refresh ravelry than get out crocheting supplies.

But even though my body is all inertia-y and lazy, my brain is in MAKE ALL THE THINGS mode.

( list o stuffs, all rav links )

I think that some of the make-all-the-things impulse is, like, the same thing that is me wanting to do cross-stitch. It's unreleased creativity that my body can't really do any more (or at least do easily) that I want to be able to do in the way that I did before. I want to do cross-stitch; I want to knit normally, using whatever size yarn and whatever size needles; I don't care about crocheting normally because I never did that and my current method works, but I want to be able to crochet objects larger than a dishcloth without having the fabric get in my way or having problems flipping at the ends of rows; I want to be able to use a yarn needle again, for weaving in ends and for sewing things.

I want to, and I can't, and my brain hasn't willingly caught up to my body's limitations.

Decided I was going to get some crocheting done today. Have yarn; have hook; have bowl for the yarn to live in so it doesn't flop onto the floor and act as a hair magnet. Even managed to start. Sort of.

Initial start to the pattern: chain 51, work 16 rows blo slip stitch, then do complicated pattern stuffs.

Guess how much I got around to doing?

...a whole fourteen chains of the starting chain.

Sigh.

* I am craving lots of water today. Given that I am not normally a water person (I tend to prefer teas), I suspect this says something about my dehydration levels

* According to my Christmas presents this year, people seem to think I like things which are a) fuzzy, b) penguiny, c) yarn-related, or d) purple. This ... is not wrong :D

* Crochet gingerbread houses: still the best. ...and I don't think I posted the post-decoration pictures here, so let me fix that by adding some pictures ( behind the cut )

* plan for next year's crafty Christmas project: reindeer hat. Just because.

Mom asks about my current crochet project. I cheerfully show her the third-of-a-sphere I have, made from green yarn. She asks what it will be.

Under the assumption that pictures are best, I show her this picture. (Pattern is here.)

Mom: ... ... ...is that an octopus?
Me: Nope! Issa cute'n cuddly little Elder God!
Mom: ...
Me: Well, he usually is depicted like this [google image search for cthulhu], so less cute and cuddly, but...
Mom: ... Elder god?
Me: Cthulhu?
Mom: ...
Me: From the works of H.P. Lovecraft?
Mom: ...

Yep. That went well.

Finishing things can sometimes feel /great/.

(in this case, shawl for my mom; I missed the soft first deadline of her actual birthday, but only by a few days, and tomorrow is when we are doing a birthday dinner for her, so it still counts.)

\o/

Will post pictures when I have some.

The shawl I’m working on right now?

I can. Not. Get. It. Right.

I am on row 13. In the last four rows, I have had to frog back seven times because of finding an error in the previous row (and since it’s crochet, I can’t just drop a stitch and work back up, as one can in knitting). And I am a slow worker, so it will probably take at least two hours to fix the latest error and get back to where I am now.

I am extremely frustrated and feeling extremely incompetent at all things yarny.

Waah.

This is Lenny:



[Pictured: a ball of yarn in shades of blue and green; for them as know yarns, it is Crazy Zauberball color #2136]

I acquired Lenny at Stitches West, along with hir sibling Charisma (who is a deep pink, marled with black). I didn't have a project in mind for either of them, but I knew they had to come home with me.

(This is normal... honest...)

So a few days ago, I was browsing Ravelry, as one does (at least when one is me), and a group that I lurk in -- "Crochet Shoulder Wrappers", not that I eeeever make crocheted shawls or have any interest in them -- has several monthly crochet-a-longs, always at least one free pattern and at least one paid pattern. I'm not a very fast crocheter so I tend not to do CALs, but I like looking at the patterns to see if I want to acquire the pattern(s).

And one of the May patterns, Blue Lagoon, was one I had been eyeing anyway.

And Lenny promptly declared in no uncertain terms that a) this was what xie was going to be, dammit, and b) for the May CAL.

Well, then.

(If you've never had yarn dictate anything to you, know that it is not unlike a Gibbs-esque slap upside the head, and is the sort of thing that you only say no to at your own peril.)

...we are currently in the process of negotiating beads...