It has been a week that was. A couple of them in fact. But I’ve tried to maintain equipoise by keeping hands and mind occupied as much as possible. To that end I have several bits of progress to report.

First is the start of yet another sampler. I’m not sure if this one will be adapted as another tribute to The Resident Male’s literary output, it will remain un-themed and completed with patterns picked at random, or if it will end up bearing a motto. I didn’t even decide which direction was up or down until the latest band was begun. The yarn-crazed kittens, being directional, made that determination for me. For now, I can only present progress. Two bands finished. The kittens are the third.

Keep an eye on those cats. They will resurface by the end of this post.

I also embarked on a project to send a holiday preparation care package to Elder Offspring and Companion, who have moved cross country, and are not going to be able to make it back here to share the family celebration. To that end, I’m selecting some of the tree ornaments we have made over the years, and am augmenting that with some additional crocheted snowflakes, including the holiday stocking for Companion I knit in late summer that matches the one I did about 28 years ago for Offspring, and making a really silly scrap fabric garland.

The crochet snowflake patterns came from a variety of sources, and to be truthful, I didn’t take notes. About half came from the book below, the rest were free patterns I found via Internet search. I had aimed for 12 but there are 13 here. One of these was especially wonky, so I felt guilty and made an extra to compensate. As for the oddnesses among them (yes, there are lots of errors), I plead distraction. I did these (and the garland) entirely while team-playing Skyrim with the Resident Male. He mans the controller, we cooperatively navigate the puzzles. Occasionally I appear to have lost my place in the pattern, but kept going anyway.

The no-sew garland consisted of taking strips of scrap low-fray fabric – in this case fleece remnants left over from a charitable project at a former workplace – and knotting them onto a sturdy cotton cord. Lots of scissor work reducing the scrap squares to strips, and a bit tedious to do, but there was no waste. The fabric odds and ends I saved from the dumpster have a new and decorative life.

I’ve also re-upped to serve as a volunteer indexer for the Antique Pattern Library. No pix for that, just lots of paging through and taking notes. It’s going slowly due to too many other things in process, plus overcoming the deep ennui brought on by the current political climate. But it is moving along.

Last but not least is fulfilling a promise. Several people were interested in working up their own version of the Persist mini-sampler I did back in 2017, and that I recently salvaged for re-use as an on-line avatar image. Since I had never charted it up in the first place, it took a bit of work to retro-engineer. Here is the thing in its original form:

Those kittens? They now run across the bottom of the sampler, below the tumbling voided flower panel, inside the snail border. It seemed a fitting tribute to current events, and the piece really needed better vertical balance. There are other tweaks made to the alphabet, spacing and other bits. I consider the new version to be vastly improved over the 2017 version.

As usual, I share this for your personal use only. And I request it be Good-Deed-Ware. If you download it consider me paid back if you do something nice for someone else. A work of small kindness or empathy. Reach out to someone who needs cheering up or companionship. Volunteer to do something to aid your community. Every little bit counts, and right now counts more than ever.

In any case, click here to download a PDF containing the three-part chart above plus commentary.

I have also added this chart to the Embroidery Patterns tab elsewhere on this site.