Category: Needlecraft

Updates on works-in-progress and finished projects.

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TMM – Week 1 (Pt. 2) . . . Again

Thursday:
My naming scheme for restarting these MM posts are so original, ya know?

I actually woke up 5 minutes before my alarm went off today! But then I climbed back into bed after getting my phone and didn’t wake up until 7:30. I could’ve sworn that I put my alarm on snooze after it went off, but I guess I turned it off instead. I should wake up when it goes off the first time, anyway. At least, that’s what (part of) my goal is.

Here's an example of the style of abstract stuff I've done in the past -- though a majority of the time it was on some scrap paper or in my notes. I think this is probably on some printer paper.
Here’s an example of the style of abstract stuff I’ve done in the past — though a majority of the time it was on some scrap paper or in my notes. I think this is probably on some printer paper.

I recently something called Zentangle — I was at Michaels earlier this week and came across a section of books on it. On the official website for it, Zentangle is “an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns”. The way it’s elaborated on, it basically sounds like an alternative way to meditate. I’ve doodled in the past in a similar way, where I just zone out and let my hand draw whatever abstract stuff it wants, but I like the appeal of this in that you use simple, repetitive strokes to build into a complex pattern. In any case, I bought an ebook on it from Amazon and look forward to trying it out, but I think my sketchbook might still be packed up in one of the few boxes that hasn’t yet been unpacked from my move last summer. I’m not exactly sure where my sketching/drawing/art pencil bag is, either, though I’m pretty sure that’s been unpacked and has just been shoved away somewhere that I don’t remember.

Friday:
Today I woke up at 7 when Chris got home. I apparently forgot to turn my phone off of vibrate yesterday after I got off of work, and I keep my phone in the kitchen now, so I didn’t hear it at all. At first I thought something might’ve gone wrong with my phone/alarm since I know I didn’t turn that alarm off. And I *always* know when my alarm goes off if the ringer is on, since Toto howls whenever he hears it.

My new set of knitting needles came in today. I forgot to mention that on Wednesday, Remi the Terrorist got into my bag of yarn and made a mess of them all over the apartment while Chris was working in the garage downstairs. He chewed up the circular needles that I was using to knit a sock, but luckily, he didn’t pull out the cable holding the stitches so the sock is still intact. I also have to knit Chris’s mom a beanie/hat; I told her I would make her one for Christmas when she visited for Thanksgiving, and we bought a ball of yarn for it, but now I can’t seem to find it. We’ll be visiting Chris’s family the week after next, so I want to get it done before we leave. At least that project shouldn’t take more than an afternoon. I’d heard that knitting socks is “quick and easy” or something like that, but so far it hasn’t seemed that way to me. Maybe I’m just used to working with a bulkier yarn that works up quickly.

In any case, it’s time to leave for lab, so off I go!

Saturday:
I actually woke up at 6 today! And Chris and I started the morning off intending to be productive, but we ran into some bumps. Our plan this morning was to get Chris a new phone and set up a joint bank account, but getting a new phone turned out to be a little bit more difficult than expected, since he needed to go to a specific Verizon retailer in order to get his upgrade. We ended up not finishing up with that until around 11 (we left at nine, but apparently Verizon stores don’t usually open until 10 anyway). We tried to get a joint bank account open, but when we got there, all the bankers were occupied; we waited for 20 minutes before finally getting fed up and leaving.

Well, here’s to hoping the rest of the day is a bit more productive.

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TMM – Week 1 (Pt. 1) . . . Again

Sunday:
We’ve been here before, haven’t we? It probably would’ve made more sense to start this back up with the new year, but the new year didn’t start on a Sunday, and I also wanted to indulge in some hardcore dunning after the end of my last semester.

Speaking of which, I graduated from the program and got my masters degree! Yaaaaayyyyyy! The semester ended up feeling pretty hectic and stressful. I’m not sure if I was expecting it to be easy or not, but I think those were mainly from trying to do PhD applications and the realization that “Holy sh!t, if I don’t get a B in this one class, I won’t graduate, AND, if I don’t get B’s in both classes, it’ll make the end of my degree look really weak.” So then that made me avoid stuff, which made things pile up, and then I got more stressed — you know how the cycle of procrastination goes, I’m sure. So, I did manage to graduate, but my applications were pretty weak and half-hearted.

In any case, here we are again, with me starting fresh on establishing my TMM routine/habit again. I woke up around 7:15 instead of 6, but considering I slept in til 9 or 9:30 yesterday and didn’t go to sleep last night until around 3, I think I did pretty well for the first day. After about a month of hardcore dunning, I’m starting to feel motivated to be productive . . . or something like that.

Look out, 2016, we’re gonna (try to) get sh!t done this year!

Monday:
I got up at 6 when my alarm went off this morning, but I climbed back into bed because it was so chilly. Ended up not actually getting up until 7, but hey, it’s better than 8! The way I see it, I’m working my way back to 6. I’ll get there — I did it once before, so I can do it again.

Pic of my stencils before I got tattoed. The Triforce had to be repositioned a few times before I was satisfied with the placement, but luckily the quote was good on the first try!
Pic of my stencils before I got tattoed. The Triforce had to be repositioned a few times before I was satisfied with the placement, but luckily the quote was good on the first try!

I forgot to mention that I got some new tattoos this past weekend! My boyfriend told me he’d pay for a tattoo as a graduation gift to me, but we didn’t get around to finding an artist/scheduling an appointment until last week. One of them, the Triforce, is on the inside of my left forearm. The other tattoo is on the inside of my right forearm, and is a quote from Persona 3. “Attaining one’s dream requires a stern will and unfailing determination.” I’m not exactly sure why, but I had planned on getting those two at the same time. Maybe for a sense of symmetry?

I chose the quote mainly just because it’s a good quote, and also because it’s a sort of tribute to P3. P3 Portable was the first Persona game I’d ever played, and I got completely sucked in by its charm. As for the Triforce, I consider Ocarina of Time the true beginning of my deeper interest in games. I’d played Pokemon on my Gameboy color years before I got the N64, and I’d played games like Crash Bandicoot and Prince of Persia: Sands of Time with my cousins quite a bit as well — but Ocarina of Time was the first game that I’d really owned outside of Pokemon. Its story was so different and fresh in comparison to the Pokemon I had played and replayed, and since I owned OoT, playing it alone was an experience that was markedly different from playing Prince of Persia with my cousins.

Pretty sure my parents won’t be big fans of them, so I might have to start practicing how to use makeup/concealer once they heal up all the way.

Tuesday:

New tattoos freshly after being inked on. The shading on the Triforce hurt a surprising amount!
New tattoos freshly after being inked on. The shading on the Triforce hurt a surprising amount!

Today was basically a repeat of yesterday in terms of waking up. Maybe I’ll just shoot for 7 for the rest of the week and start trying for 6 next week.

Not much planned for today — the main thing is to schedule some doctor appointments. After that I’ll probably work on knitting socks as a “Thank you” gift to one of the people who wrote a letter of recommendation for me. I get the feeling that I probably should have given thank you cards/gifts sometime at the beginning of January, but I’m hoping that the fact that the gifts are going to be handmade will make the lateness forgivable.

Got lots of compliments on my tattoo from people at work and in the lab yesterday, especially on my font choice for the P3 quote. Surprisingly, no one recognized the Triforce. I guess I’ve been a bit spoiled by the culture at UTD.

Wednesday:
It was difficult to wake up this morning; I stayed up til about 1 AM last night knitting/watching a playthrough of Until Dawn by Strippin (@Strippin) and Dodger (@dexbonus/@pressheart2continue) on Youtube. I’ve been a fan of Dodger for a few years now, and her relationship with Strippin is adorable. I’m excited for them having gotten engaged over the holiday — especially since their relationship seems so healthy. I’ve gotten into the habit of watching Dodger’s playthroughs while knitting or crocheting, which basically amounts to one of the most enjoyable and relaxing hobbies/pastimes I have. Watching her co-op with Strippin was so entertaining, in spite of it being a horror game.

In other news, I recently bought a pair of headphones to use while working in the lab. The ones that I’ve been using are on-the-ear “Creative” brand headphones that I’ve had since freshman year of college . . . so about 6 years now. They don’t sound all that bad to me quality-wise, but I don’t think I’m an audiophile. My main issue is that they’re uncomfortable — the padding that was on the headband has long since worn off, and the way that they pin my ears against my head makes it that much more uncomfortable when wearing them with glasses. I’d have to reposition my glasses so that the arms sat above the padding of the earphones.

So the new ones I bought are a pair of circumaural headphones by Koss that I found on Amazon for $20. I was hoping that they’d insulate my ears from outside sound a little better, but they still do a pretty good job. Compared to my old pair of headphones, they are amazingly comfortable. If I still feel this good about them by the end of the week, I’m going to buy a pair to keep at home as well.

Speaking of lab stuff, it is really chilly in here today. Maybe I should bring a snuggie to keep in my cubby cabinet. Too unprofessional? Lol.

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750 Words: Work Stress

20150131_153439
This is about 23 hours of work on my nephew’s blanket. One ball of yarn out of the 3 that I bought for it, so the finished product should be about three times this length.

I’ve always found it difficult to make posts about mundane little details of my life, which is partly also the reason why I have trouble making daily posts. However, I saw two posts on my Tumblr dashboard that were basically lists of questions that followers could choose for the poster to answer, so I copied a few of them into a word doc to use as topics for these 750 Word posts. Maybe I’ll aim for 2 posts a week and work my way up during the year, ’cause once a day is too much of a commitment for me right now lol.

In other news, apparently this past week has been pretty stressful on me. I opened every day that I worked last week, and only one of those days was with an associate who’s been at our store for more than a month. Two of those days was with a manager from another store who was helping us out since we have only one associate at our store who can open during the week, and she was gone on vacation. It was nice though, since the other manager was able to show me how to do more of the paperwork and stuff for the store. The last day, we borrowed an associate from another store, and the closing manager from the day before forgot to do the computer stuff so that the associate could clock in and had the correct register permissions and whatnot. I vaguely remembered how to do it from when I helped out another store, but in the end, I still had to call the help desk.

Speaking of the help desk, I had to call them pretty much every day that I worked last week because we kept having issues with our coupon codes not working properly on our registers. I’ve gotten the same tech support person practically every time I’ve called, which feels a little weird. I guess we only have a handful of tech support people for the stores in our region? It’s the only plausible reason I can think of for me getting the same person that many times in a row.

IMG_6104
Here’s the picture from last summer, after I had worked on it for about 13 hours.

I didn’t realize how stressed I was until I saw the schedule for this week and just raged. First of all, I’m scheduled for 26 hours this week, when I specifically requested for a max of 20 hours. Secondly, I’m scheduled to open again on Thursday for the few hours before my class starts because I’m the only associate who consistently has opening availability on Thursday. And thirdly, two of my shifts are with new associates. I just dislike that they schedule me with new people when I’m still new at my position. It’s frustrating that most of our associates only have closing availability, so I’ll probably be stuck opening on Thursday for a while until we hire someone who has opening availability. At least our new store manager is done with training, so he’s working at our store starting this week.

I actually raged so hard that I cried after I clocked out on Friday. I’m stuck on campus from 1:00 PM – 9:45 PM on Tuesdays, and even though I only have a class for just over an hour on Thursdays, I still consider it a “class day”. Being scheduled on Wednesdays and Fridays makes it difficult to read ahead for class, or even review stuff for class, since work mentally tires me out so much. So the days that I actually have off from work and don’t have class are mostly spent catching or keeping up with classes, making it feel like I don’t get much time to just relax. So that, and the fact that they disregarded my max availability really irks me. Additionally, my parents are visiting this weekend, so I’ll probably be spending a good deal of my free time cleaning my apartment. I’ve actually been wanting to clean my apartment for a while, but I’d need at least a day to do all of it, and since I’ve been using my days off to study, I haven’t been able to get to it.

I dunno. It doesn’t sound quite as complicated when I explain it, but I guess it feels really stressful to me since my time management skills are still pretty crappy. That, and a whole bunch of new stuff was thrown at me this past week.

Well, on the plus side, I worked on the blanket I’m knitting for my nephew, and I’ve been rereading the Harry Potter series before bed since I don’t have any of my portable game systems to play on lol. I’m already on the fourth book in the series even though I’ve been trying to limit myself to only one or two chapters a night. Then again, the first three books are kinda short — and I also binge read a few times last week when I was feeling frustrated and unmotivated to do anything requiring effort.

Somehow, I can’t believe it’s already February, but I also can’t believe that it’s only February.

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750 Words – Hyperbolic Crochet

I haven’t been keeping up very well with these “daily” 750 word posts, have I? During Thanksgiving week and the following week, I had myself checked into the inn on HRPG so that’s the main reason why I haven’t been posting. I also changed the “750 Word post” daily task to “work on blog/750 words”, so I sometimes (often) cheat by considering updates and comment moderation as “working on the blog”, even though those usually take less than a minute or so. In any case, I haven’t been doing anything particularly noteworthy  . . . and I also just didn’t feel like making a completely random brain dump post. I know these types of posts are supposed to be uncensored and free-flowing thoughts, but I still prefer my posts to have at least some type of focus and structure.

Mine doesn’t look very coral-like . . . I think it’s because of the Christmas-y colors.

I probably won’t be posting these daily starting from now, either; I’ve got finals and papers due next week, and then I’ll be visiting family for winter break (plus my parents don’t have internet), so I might instead type up little blurbs each day and post whenever it reaches 750 words/I feel like it.

So I came across this thing called hyperbolic crochet. I actually discovered it from a Kickstarter that is showcasing them as stress balls, but I think hyperbolic crocheting was popularized as a way to raise awareness concerning environmental issues while at the same time paying homage to the beauty of coral reefs. (See more coral-like crocheted versions here.) I have a few balls of yarn that I impulse bought because I felt like knitting/crocheting quick and easy things for instant gratification — and as a way to take a break from the yarn projects that I was working on for other people — so making little crocheted coral stress balls seemed like a quick and easy way to use up that yarn. It is rather stress-relieving to toy with, but I was also pleased to discover that it’s really simple to make as well.

I learned how to crochet before learning how to knit, but I much prefer knitting over crochet. It’s easier to keep track of stitches since they’re always on a needle, I like that the resulting fabric is stretchier and less stiff, and it’s easier to knit by touch than it is to crochet by touch (knitting/crocheting without having to constantly look at your work, if that didn’t make sense). It’s easier for me to space out and watch videos or shows while knitting, which makes it more relaxing and enjoyable. On the other hand, with crochet you typically have only one loop/stitch on your hook at a time, and sometimes it’s difficult for me to tell which stitch to work in — plus I have to count stitches at the end of each round/row to make sure that I have the right number. And when I’m off by one or a few stitches, I’m usually unsure of whether it’s from me just being ADHD and herping up when I was counting, or if I’m actually missing stitches. So counting (and often recounting) rounds is tedious and frustrating when I have to tear out the previous round because I was off, and has a high potential of devolving into a frustrating cycle because I don’t pay close enough dsafdsafsdffsdto where the previous round ends.

Does my desktop background look familiar?
Got a vertical notebook riser so that I have marginally more desk space!!! :D

The beauty of hyperbolic crochet is that I don’t have to keep count of stitch count nor number of rounds. The pattern is based off a simple repeat, and it doesn’t matter if I miss a stitch or forget where in the repeat I am because it’ll look delightfully convoluted regardless. It’s practically impossible to mess up, so with this pattern, I’m able to enjoy crocheting to the same extent that I do knitting. It’s an easy and simple project that I can pick up and put down without having to keep track of how far along I am because I can make it as big or small as I want. The only downside is that there’s not much point in me making multiple stress corals for myself, and I probably have enough yarn to where I’d make way more than I have friends and family to randomly gift them to. I suppose larger ones that I make can be replacement bath loofahs. (Image for those of you unfamiliar with the term lolz.)

The only other thing I know I wanted to mention is that I got a notebook riser for my laptop to increase the screen height and (hopefully) reduce neck strain from sitting in front of it for so long. I finally have some desk space in front of my laptop so that I can write things in my planner or random notes! My desk doesn’t feel so cramped now haha. Plus my cat can’t sit on my laptop keyboard anymore, and him sitting on my desk will no longer obstruct my view of the screen. However, I don’t mention this because of the increased potential in my productivity, but because of the herp solution I came up with in figuring out how to raise my external monitor to approximately the same height.

Monitor Solutions
I tried to camouflage the herpery with nerdery. Did it work?

I’m not sure how noticeable it is in the other picture, but I took a closer one so that you could see exactly what I’m using to prop up my monitor — 2 empty daily vitamin bottles and an empty bottle from one of my past Adderall prescriptions. It’s not the stablest setup, but at least my desk is up against a corner so I don’t have to worry as much about it potentially falling back off of my desk.

THIS ALSO MEANS I HAVE MORE ROOM TO EAT STUFF AT MY DESK WHILE WATCHING STUFF ON THE INTERNETS. It just feels more spacious, less cramped, more enjoyable. I have more room to do stuff without having had to drastically change the layout of my work area.

Aaaanyway, I’ve already spent over 2 hours on this post and it’s time for bed. Hopefully I won’t be tossing and turning in my bed for hours tonight — it’s been a while since I’ve taken my Adderall regularly, so it’s making it difficult to fall asleep even though I take it at 6 in the morning.

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750 Words — Knitting Adventures

First off, no call from Bath and Body Works today, so I can only assume that they were busy and/or still going through checking people’s references. Hopefully they call by tomorrow, and hopefully I get the job so I’m not back on here whining and complaining about not being able to get a job.

It probably doesn’t look like there’s anything missing at first glance.

Today was rather uneventful, but then again, pretty much every day of my life is uneventful. I had planned on going to pick up my Adderall prescription and maybe go down to the Galleria to get my watch fixed at the Fossil store in there. It’s not malfunctioning or anything, it’s just that the decorative ring that denotes the hour, 15-, 30-, and 45-minute marks fell off. (Here’s what it’s supposed to look like.)This happened with the last watch I had — it was the same model, but I got a free replacement watch because one of their store employees derped when changing the battery, which resulted in my watch fogging up. The first time it happened, my boyfriend at the time had just reattached it with epoxy. I’d rather just do the same thing again, but I don’t really do anything that requires epoxy and wouldn’t want to buy some just to fix my watch. At the same time, I feel like even if I brought it to the Fossil store, they either wouldn’t know what to do with it, or the glue that they would use to fix it would only be a temporary fix. I wear my watch pretty much 24/7 and I’m not as kind to my jewelry as I should be, so I’m sure it would just be a matter of time before it fell off again.

I feel like there’s a potentially great watch pun in that last sentence, but I’m not gonna try to force it lol.

This was my first go at the pattern. It doesn’t look bad, but I realized when I was nearly done that I was repeating both the first and second rows for the pattern, when I was only supposed to repeat the second row.

Most of what I did today consisted of catching up on Dodger’s (DexterityBonus) daily “Coffee Time” vlogs while knitting. I had stopped keeping up with all my YouTube subscriptions sometime in February, so I’ve got a lot to catch up on. Thankfully, she started putting her uploads in monthly playlists, which makes it easier to watch and marathon while doing something else.

I felt a bit tired of working on my nephew’s blanket, so I decided to try something new: arm knitting. It’s supposed to work basically the same as regular knitting but with your arms, and projects work up much more quickly because arms are so much bigger compared to knitting needles. I decided to try this triplet shawl that I had pinned on Pinterest a long time ago. Well, after undoing my work 3-4 times, I decided that I’m not really into arm knitting. It’s probably partly because I had trouble dealing with 5 separate strands of yarn (for some reason some of them didn’t unravel from the ball as evenly as the others did), and then I kept ending up with 3 stitches on the last row instead of 2, so I dunno. I finished the project, but I’m not too sure on how it turned out. It might’ve also been the colors I had chosen; they just don’t look as pleasing to me as the various shades of blue that were used in the pattern instructions.

I had some leftover yarn pulled out from the first time I had tried the pattern (and done it wrong), so I decided to crochet a rectangle. I’m not exactly sure what I was planning on making when I started it, but I figured I could maybe make a hotpad — except hot pads are usually square. I often heat dishes up in the microwave to wear they’re too hot to touch when I go to remove them, so for now I’ve decided to use it as a derpy towel/oven mitt type of deal. Otherwise, I think it shows some promise for being a soft washcloth.

I’m really not sure what to think of my handiwork.

All in all, I spent about 3 hours working on this stupid shawl (the crocheted rectangle only took about 20 minutes max). The pattern creator said that arm knitting is amazing for some instant gratification and “it took [her] less than 30 minutes to make [it]”, so that just goes to show how fail this venture was for me. I suppose I should give myself some leeway since I’d never arm knit before, but still. This project took me what, 6 times longer than it should have? Super derp.

So yeah, we’ll see if I’m adventurous enough to try that again, but for now I’ll just stick to regular knitting with needles. Here’s a picture of what the shawl looks like when it’s not draped on me derpily, and here’s a bonus picture of me looking uncertain with derp dog charging in the background.

I tried sleeping on my stomach last night, and I think I was able to fall asleep more quickly in comparison to the past few nights. That may have also been due to me taking this zinc, melatonin, and magnesium combo in addition to my diphenhydramine sleep tablets. I tried lowering my thermostat to 80 Fahrenheit — it was too cold. I had to get up an hour or so after I went to bed to set it back to 83 because it was too cold for me to fall asleep.

That just about sums up my day. Fun fact: I’ve been sitting derpily with my derpy shawl draped around my shoulders even though I’m still not sure whether I like it or not. I keep repositioning it and probably looking all bewildered with an expression that says “I don’t know how to wear this what do I do with it.”

Anyway, I’mma go try to take a quick shower and make a sandwich before Nightmaren starts streaming P4: Golden in 45 minutes. I’ll be back again with a riveting post tomorrow.

DUN.

 

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750 Words — Sleep (Or Lack Thereof)

It’s only 8 PM right now, but I feel rather exhausted. For some reason I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. It takes me a while to fall asleep, and I feel the quality of it isn’t all that great, either. I’m used to this sort of thing happening when I’m on Adderall, but I haven’t taken any for the past month or so because I ran out (picking up the new prescription at the post office tomorrow).

Here’s a picture of Jager. I am never going to be able to get rid of that Maruchan box now. He lies in it way too frequently for me to feel okay with taking it away from him.

I’m probably also tired from stressing out about whether or not I got hired at Bath and Body Works. I feel like it has become stupidly difficult to be hired for entry-level jobs. My sample pool probably isn’t big enough to give reasonable evidence of this, but c’mon, I’m more than capable of putting stuff on shelves according to a diagram, and while talking to people isn’t exactly my forte, I’m pretty decent at it when it’s one-on-one. If it’s because I’m “overqualified” since I have a bachelor’s degree, well that’s just even more frustrating!

Anyway, going back to the topic of sleep, a while back, my sister bought this lavender vanilla pillow mist for me as a gift. It’s an aromatherapy product from Bath and Body Works intended to enhance sleep, and when I went for my job interview at Bath and Body Works yesterday, I noticed they had a whole bunch of other products with that fragrance also; I’m thinking about maybe picking up  a bottle of their lotion in that scent. I don’t recall ever really having had trouble sleeping when not on Adderall, so I’m not sure why it’s being a butt right now. I guess it’s probably stress-related, and maybe I’ve just gotten so used to feeling stressed that I don’t even realize when I’m stressed anymore? In any case, I’ve noticed that when I flop onto the couch on my stomach for a rest, I pass out pretty quickly. I’m usually a side sleeper, but since I’ve spent the last few weeks flopping from side to side when I go to bed at night, I’m willing to try out a new sleep position and see if that does me any good.

In other news, I set up the plugin that automatically tweets when I’ve posted a new blog (Microblog Poster) to also post to my Tumblr. So if any of you came from there, welcome to my blog! I’d warn you that there’s not much of interest here on my site, but you should already know that from looking at my Tumblr.

This is my cute nephew, Owen! This was taken when he was about 2 weeks old — I went to visit him over Easter weekend. I’m just glad I like him lol.

I haven’t really done much today besides stress over my job application to Bath and Body Works and work on my nephew’s baby blanket. Oh, I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here that I’m an aunt now! My nephew, Owen, was born on April 11th. I’m actually going to be his godmother also! (I was really surprised when my sister asked me, so it’s a big deal to me.)

This blanket will probably be my biggest needlecraft project to date. The sweater I made my dad was pretty big, but this blanket shouldn’t be as frustrating since the pattern is so simple. It’ll just take a while to get it to a decent size. I’ll try to post pictures up here regularly to track my progress. (I’ll also post on my Facebook, so those of you who know me on there will see the same pictures.)

I’ve been trying to meditate more often recently, especially at night when I’m having trouble sleeping because I keep stressing out about all the things, but I’ve found knitting to be a pretty meditative activity. Counting and keeping track of rows and stitches keeps my mind focused on one thing, similarly to how in yoga, you’re instructed to focus on your breathing while doing the poses. It’s also nice to do while watching TV shows or gaming streams, since I usually choose fairly simple patterns that don’t require too much attention. I’d say that crocheting is also somewhat meditative, but it requires most of my attention since it’s so much easier to lose track of stitch count. I definitely enjoy knitting more than crocheting, but I still appreciate having the skills to do both. They each have their own projects where one method is more suitable than the other, so being able to do both just gives me that many more projects to choose from. Not that I need more. I still have a half-finished scarf that was supposed to be someone’s birthday gift last year. (They’ll still get it! Eventually . . . )

13.5 hours in, and this is all I have to show for it. I’m not sure whether or not to feel that I’ve gotten a lot done for that amount of time. At least it’s starting to look like a blanket!

I’ve been working on it more often, now that I’ve added “Knitting/Crochet” to my Habits list on HRPG. So every 30 minutes that I work on it, I reward myself, and since it’s already a fairly rewarding task, it’s like DOUBLE THE DOPAMINE. Or something. Ionno. Shameless neuroscience reference? Speaking of neuroscience, I’ve added “Read one ADHD article” to my To Do list since I have that folder of all these scientific articles I found when I first was diagnosed. You’ll probably be able to tell whenever that happens, as the content of my post for that day will most likely talk about it at some point or another.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got to talk about for today. The only other noteworthy thing I did was play Diablo III for an hour. The furthest I’ve played so far is the beginning of the third act (out of 4, and for only one character), so I need to finish that game. Since I originally started playing it with my brother-in-law, I felt like it was a multiplayer game experience thing, even though the previous Diablo games were single-player. Not to mention the fact that the Diablo franchise is kinda RPG-ish.

I’ve been going to sleep around 2 AM the past few nights, so I’m thinking I might be tired enough to pass out before midnight tonight. I’m sure tomorrow you’ll hear about whether sleeping on my stomach was a success or a failure.

Hopefully tomorrow or Wednesday, I’ll be able to blog good news about being hired at Bath and Body Works. Otherwise you’ll probably just get an angry rant about the difficulty in finding a job.

DUN. DUN ALL THE THINGS.