I’m joining Kat & the Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday Thursday!

KNITTING CROCHETING:

I’ve been crocheting squares for my Fair Square Riff… using Purl Soho’s Fair + Square Blanket, Crochet Version, as a starting point. (There’s a Knit Version, too.) I went with the crochet version because it seems like it might be a little quicker to do and it just seems like it’s a bit more portable, too.

The Purl Soho blankets also each have two color versions — one uses 16 colors and the other uses four. I have SIX colors, so… riffing! I don’t even remember exactly how I made the calculation that I came up with — do not ask me to show my work — but I came up with color combos for each square, each using two to four colors, always bordered with a row of white. I tried to employ the Granny Squares Color Pattern Generator, which I used so successfully to generate a chart for hexie love (read/see that here), but I needed something more random pattern-wise. I used it to give me the colors for each square, then used whatever calculation I came up with for the row counts, and employed one of my other favorite design tools — a spreadsheet — to make my chart!

I’m working top-to-bottom with this as my guide, and have the top row & three squares of the second row finished.

Obviously, my colors are a little different than charted. I kind of like those brighter colors, but I’m working with what I’ve got/was given (and the guidance for those choices was “jewel tones”). The colors are a bit richer & more vibrant in person — I ran outside to take photos last night as the light was fading.

Anyway, I’m sort of single-minded about this project & want to get it done so I can move on. I’ve been knocking out about one square every evening during TV time. We were watching a Swedish series for a minute, so reading subtitles slowed me down a little bit, but more recently we’ve started watching some historical docu-dramas — Wyatt Earp and the Cowboy War, and The Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen — which are more crochet-friendly.

READING:

I’m a bit more than half-way through Kaffe Fassett: Dreaming In Color: An Autobiography — there are a lot of photos & photo spreads (it’s a workout holding that bulky book up in bed) which are really fun to look at, and it’s interesting to read about his (really rather) charmed life. And I’m even more interested in meeting The Man next month.

I’m joining Kat & the Unravelers for Unraveled Wednesday!

KNITTING CROCHETING:

WordPress has a daily writing prompt, and this is today’s: What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it? Lordy. Some of my search history from last night:

• n k calculator
• what are the combinations of 3 with 6 numbers
• I need 35 random variations of 1-6
• what are the possible variations of 1-6 in sets of 3 with some repeats
• generate sets of three numbers that equal 6 with no negative numbers
• etc.

I’m using an existing pattern as a jump-off point — the size of it & that it’s 7-row granny squares, really. That pattern uses four colors, and I’m using six. I want the 7th row of each square to be white, the other six rows a random combo of three colors… or two. I tell ya, my head was spinning last night after looking at (meaningless to me) math nerd calculations; reading the comments/feedback was a whole ‘nother level o’ nerdiness.

Google AI was helping a bit. Mostly, I discovered that it came down to wording: what exactly was I looking for? I’m not really sure, but I think I landed on a solution.

Meanwhile, the little hexi-ish flower above was me getting my crochet legs back… it was supposed to be a square! (Another thing that I’ve discovered is that I prefer a crochet chart over written directions — opposite of my preference for knitting.)

SEWING:

Front & back of my current panel as of last night:

And the back of that same panel last week:

I’ve added just a couple of things on the middle section — usually when I still have a pretty good length of thread or floss to use.

Close up (side-by-side photos are galleries, so click for bigger images).

There are three motifs remaining on that bottom section, and I marked each with a pin.

All three will be done in applique… not certain about other embellishments yet.

READING:

I finished This Long Thread last week — that took a while, but I read a few things in between (and, also, there’s just a lot going on!). It was a good book, and interesting to read so many makers’ stories.

I picked World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain off the pile o’ books. It was written posthumously, using his own words (written, or from a show). It’s going to be a good read, but I’ll be skipping over the logistics part of each locale — perhaps I’d use it as reference if I were going somewhere, but I already know, for instance, that the part about the airport in Lima, Peru, is different! It’s also a book that I can pick up & put down without really losing my place…

And I’ve already put it down, since Kaffe Fassett: Dreaming In Color: An Autobiography arrived on my front porch! It’s rather large & heavy for reading in bed (which is where almost all of my reading is done), but I’m enjoying it so far, especially because Kaffe Fassett Is Coming! to MDK HQ in Nashville… and I’m going! More later.

Finally:

Ali shared this year’s First Day of School photo with us and wrote, “I’m starting to see why everyone sees me in Malina!” Turns out, they’re not as hard to get out of bed in the morning this year, which means they ended up with a little too much time on their hands before they had to leave — one thing led to another & it didn’t end well. From the look on Davy’s face, I’d bet he was involved. Anyway, speaking of Malina, I think she’s probably going to have a growth spurt pretty soon!