The Marci Rating System

Good news! I (may) be closer to finishing my current large blanket project than I thought!

Bad news! I'm really bad at estimating how much yarn I'll need...

Here's the thing: I started with 7 skeins of yarn. (I'm sure this story will sound familiar.) After I used the first one, I measured how many inches of blanket I'd gotten from it. (It was SO FEW. SO. FEW. My resolve to carry on was tested!)

So I used another skein, and I measured again. It was about the same as I'd gotten from the first one, so I tried to calculate how many I'd need in total. It was, uh, more than 7.

There are two possibilities of what happened next, and I honestly can't remember which one is correct.

1. I made a perfectly reasonable calculation, hedged it a bit just in case, and placed my order.

2. I attempted a reasonable calculation, entered some sort of fugue state, and picked a number that felt big enough basically at random.

SOMEHOW the result was that I ended up with another TWELVE skeins of yarn (could this really be a 19 skein blanket? that seems like a lot). I'm currently on skein #14, and I'm not saying I've reached the desired length, but I feel like I'm closer than 5 skeins away. (IDK, the yarn stretches? Once you have a lot of it in the blanket? Maybe???)

Conclusion: neat! I may actually finish this blanket someday!

When I crocheted my first large-ish blanket, it was with a pretty thick yarn (a 6 weight) and I did it all with my right hand. (I wasn't confident in swapping when I started, and by the time I was, I couldn't figure out how to make it work with the pattern.) And by the end of the project (okay, well before the end) my wrist hurt.

When I started my SECOND large-ish blanket, I figured out a plan for swapping righty to lefty before I started (hahahaha which took a BUNCH of tries on a small swatch, but was absolutely worth it). It also happened to be with a thinner (4 weight) yarn. No wrist pain. I, of course, attributed this improvement to 1) maybe my wrists are just getting stronger! and 2) doing half the work with my left hand.

But THEN (in the middle of the second blanket -- it's not done, I just wanted a different distraction) I really wanted to do something with a thick yarn, and I had a big fleecy 6 weight yarn that could pretty easily become a lap blanket (aka cat blanket!), so I started up a simple back and forth, right hand-left hand swap each row. Wrist pain returned! Clearly not all my problems have been solved, and it may have more to do with the yarn weight than I hoped.

OBVIOUSLY, the answer here is to collect more data! aka do a lot more projects, so I can see the trends! It's SCIENCE!

*Work continues to be work

*But I turned on my diffuser this morning and I can *almost* smell it even with my sinus congestion, so that's one good thing

*And I decided to make the cat a lil' crochet blanket for her bed, so I have a fun project for downtime, which is another good thing (this is maaaaaaybe a ploy for me to reclaim her current blanket, but if she's insistent, I'm sure she'll wind up with both)

*Also this day has coffee for drinking and leftover pizza for eating, and those are even more good things

*OH! And it's monthly budget day, which means after I do that, it's officially next month (financially, lol) -- time to start daydreaming about March purchases!

I'm pretty sure this is how my train of thought went:

*ooh, yarn!
*now I have So Much Yarn
*what do with So Much Yarn?
*you know what I love?
*SLEEPING
*you know what I could make?
*A BLANKET
*how hard could it be?
*oh, hard
*and decisions
*and math?!?
*but I could just do some assorted shapes
*in whatever stitches seemed fun
*and then figure out making them into a blanket later!
*makes note: problem for future me

ANYWAY that's what's happening over here. Big kudos to the knotted half double crochet stitch, which I found to be as quick and easy (and fun!) as promised.

Extra cold outside today, so it's another good day for winter crafts!

(The book Ox-Cart Man, by Donald Hall was a staple of my early childhood, and it convinced me that winter was for staying inside and doing crafts. I'm genuinely thrilled that this winter I have a fiber craft to do. It's so authentic! I'm living my childhood dream!)

Yay 2024! I started listing out some things I'd like to do this year, and then I started trying to group them thematically (as one does), and then we made fun collages!


(scrapbook paper, LOTS of stickers and washi tape, and the central image is from a mini wall calendar of art by Geninne D Zlatkis)

2024, year of enrichment! With three overlapping themes, because contrary to all current goal theory, I prefer my goals to be broad, vague, and as easy to achieve as possible.

2024's Themes:
*move
*learn
*connect

Lots of my more specific goals have elements of more than one theme, which worked great for the collage but less great for my plan of writing out a few of them for each theme in this post...

Some General Goals:
*using my left hand more -- this was directly inspired by the desire to be able to crochet wings both righty and lefty so they could be symmetrical, but I've long been intrigued by improving my left-handed skills for things like brushing my teeth, writing, and coloring

*yoga practice -- this was a 2023 goal that I'd like to continue; it's been particularly helpful for my balance and range of motion. I've been enjoying Yoga with Adriene's 30 Day Yoga Journey for January.

*creative outlets -- yay for learning things and self-expression! So far I've been expanding my crochet yarn options and writing my daily haikus.

Very Specific Goal:
*ONE DAY ONLY! SKY EVENT OF THE YEAR! THE RETURN OF TOTALITY! April 8th, 2024 -- a total solar eclipse will be visible from many parts of the United States. The path goes from Texas to Maine, and we already have our SKY EVENT OF THE YEAR commemorative coins, so you know we're excited!

Deeper Meanings:
*At the heart of all these goals is really one thing: I'd like this year to be one where I feel more comfortable and connected to my physical body -- I'd like to learn and move and express myself as a path to embracing my current physical presence in this vast spiritual universe. This quote from the Yoga With Adriene site resonates particularly this year: "While yoga is and remains a good workout for many, it was originally crafted to allow our souls to experience embodiment."

When exchanging casual conversation about goals for the year, I find it easier to share something like 'I want to learn to crochet left-handed' than 'I want to embrace the experience of my soul's embodiment,' even though they're really one and the same.

I've been doing the woobles crochet advent calendar, which has been A JOURNEY. (WHY are none of my spheres spherical?!?) But also fun, because it's not like they NEED to be spherical.

And any time there's a project I don't feel like doing, I just use the yarn to make something else! I DO WHAT I WANT, THOR. (Can we still use that one? I feel like it's one of those 'it's an older meme, but it checks out' situations, even though it's now over ten years old. HOW?!?)

[PS: Fun crochet fact, I was seeing a lot of chatter about yarn over vs yarn under, so I watched some youtube videos about it. (Seriously, internet videos have made learning stuff so much easier!) And the woobles teaches yarn over/yarn over, but as I was skeptically squinting at the yarn under/yarn over video, I was like 'isn't that the same thing???' Anyway, no, it's not, but that's what I was doing. Now I think it's possible my stitches are some weird amalgamation of yo/yo and yu/yo, which is VERY LIKEKLY one of the reasons my spheres aren't spherical. Ah well, it's the joy of the learning process!]

*Two days of work this week, two days next week, and then I will have officially made it through another work year.

*Today's advent craft is using yarn and a fork to make flowers -- I have my doubts, but I'm curious enough to give it a try.

*What in the world is the weather doing? No one knows, certainly not me. (Love that I looked out the window to check as soon as I got up, which of course did not work since it was still night time and I couldn't see anything.)

Today's advent calendar craft involves a LOT of additional elements you're supposed to provide on your own. The little box includes exactly two things: a ribbon, and a packet of glitter. Since I'm not particularly interested in finding a small glass jar and a sprig of outdoor greenery and constructing my very own 'tree in a jar covered with glittery snow,' I'm making the executive decision to skip this one.

But I still want to do something! In the spirit of 'this is a very messy craft involving glitter,' I've decided to add some glitter to a previous craft (the 'elf boot,' aka 'fancy stocking'). I'll see about involving the ribbon as well!

(PS: Twenty-four days of crafts is a lot of days! I've got this, though! I've finished Day 12, so I'm halfway there!)

*I skipped the Day 7 craft (for now!) because it starts with a toilet paper roll, and sure, I *could* have planned ahead, but I did not! So I did the Day 8 craft yesterday instead, which involved bending wire into a heart shape to make an ornament, and was both fun and relatively easy.

*So far the washcloth teddy bear takes the prize for 'least realistic finished project photo' -- the picture provided doesn't quite seem to match up with what the directions tell you to do, and it shows a bow with red yarn instead of the ribbon provided. (HOWEVER! You could easily grab some red yarn from another project. And I don't think the photo bear is outside the realm of skills required by other projects, I just think it doesn't match the directions.)

*On the other end of the spectrum, the 'bend a star from wire' wins a prize for MOST realistic depiction of how well a regular person could probably bend a star shape out of wire (not that well, honestly).

*I am enjoying the fact that each finished project photo in the read-along instruction book includes the word 'SUPER!' pasted over it in a word bubble. Thanks, calendar! It is super!

*I still don't have a toilet paper roll, so I guess I'll see what Day 9's project is. I think we're back to cutting shapes out of felt for this one!