I finally, finally finished my Coast Ripple afghan. I actually completed the border a few days ago, but only got around to taking a decent photo today because the sun finally came out.
It had been overcast and gray around here the last few days, which was actually okay with me. I had this nice large blanket to keep me warm.
I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been working on this afghan. It seems like months. All those hours have paid off, though. Today I finished the last row of the body and started the border. The end of this project is near, and I couldn’t be happier.
Can you believe that I have not yet started any new projects in 2016? I’ve been doggedly sticking to this Coast Ripple blanket, following the pattern’s sequence of colors exactly and crocheting a few stitches and a few rows at a time. I’m trying to tame my crafter’s attention deficit disorder (which I know is technically not a real thing and I shouldn’t be throwing that diagnosis around– bad psychologist!– but still). Anyway, this whole afghan has been an exercise in commitment.
Right now it’s almost 6 feet long with about ten more rows to go and a border to add. I asked Sean (who is 6’1″) to get in the photo so that I could show some sense of scale.
My personal blanket model.
Also, I thought that a picture with an actual person in it would look a lot better than the first photo that I took.
See? Not as cool a photo. Also– those tail ends!
I’m hoping to get this thing finished by the end of the week. After all, I have been working on this thing all year.
My cough went away, my energy returned, and today we were finally able to take my Christmas gift out for a spin on the Black Hill Trail.
It was a lot of fun.
I even forgot that I was wearing a dorky bike helmet.
It was good to get some healthy outdoor exercise again.
Maybe tomorrow we’ll hit the bike park at sunrise while the teenagers are still in bed and all the little kids are still waiting for mom and dad.
A week ago today, it was newly 2016 and I could barely walk up the stairs in my house without getting winded. I’d come down with a viral infection the day after Christmas, and there was pretty much nothing for me to do except rest and wait it out. I had hoped to finish the Coastal Ripples afghan by New Year’s Day, but the virus had me so tired that I only managed to crochet a few rows in the last two weeks of 2015.
I went back to work on Wednesday the 6th. It poured rain for most of the day, so there weren’t that many inmates out on the yard and my first day back at the prison turned out to be relatively uneventful. The rest of the week was just as rainy and unremarkable (which is the way you want your work day at a prison to be, anyway). The low amount of stress was exactly what I needed to start getting back on track for 2016.
That sky pretty much tells you what the last couple of weeks in Morro Bay have been like.
I decided I won’t be posting an entry a day this time around. I challenged myself to do that last year and it was certainly an exercise in creativity, but there were days when I was really stretched thin and posting a blog entry was just one more thing to check off the list. I don’t want to feel like keeping this blog is a chore that I have to do. So this year I’m focusing more on quality rather than quantity– fewer posts, but with no bullshit phoning-it-in filler content.
Back in December of 2014, when I started seriously thinking about creating a new blog and was trying to come up with a name for it, I kept getting stuck on “365 Days Handmade…” Handmade what? Socks? Sweaters? Afghans? Napkins? Quilts? Table runners? I knew I wanted to emphasize the idea of making things by hand, of being creative and doing something creative every day. The problem was that I didn’t want to narrow it down to just one thing.
I asked Sean what he thought, and he said, “Why don’t you just call it 365 Days Handmade? Because every day is what you make of it. Three hundred sixty-five days, handmade.”
So there you have it, the philosophy behind my blog. I kept meaning to explain how 365 Days Handmade came to be, and it only took me 374 days to get around to it.
Happy 2016!
365 Days Handmade 