Handmade | 365 Days Handmade

May 6, 2015
by FC5 Leave a comment

Day 125/365: The Afghan That’s Making Me Buy More Yarn

I know I said that I was only going to knit and crochet using yarn from the stash. I even took photos of said stash to remind myself of just how much yarn I own.

As you know, I started my latest afghan project with yarn that I picked out of the stash. Now I’m three skeins into it with three skeins left, and I realized that I have A Predicament.

This is what three skeins of crocheted Red Heart Soft Baby Steps yarn look like.

The length is perfectly appropriate for an adult-sized afghan, but as you can see from the photo, three skeins of yarn do not produce enough width to cover a lap. Three more skeins would add roughly double the width, but it still wouldn’t be wide enough to suit my taste. So I had two choices: Unravel the thing and start over with different dimensions, or buy more yarn.

I think you already know that I went with the second option.

Luckily, I was able to find more skeins of this particular colorway on eBay. Now I can only hope that the dye lots will match, or at least come close.

May 5, 2015
by FC5 Leave a comment

Day 124/365: The Day I Finally Got Some Medical Treatment

Remember at the end of March when I caught the flu and was sick during my entire four-day holiday weekend? All of the symptoms went away on their own except for a dry cough that lingered throughout April. I tried to treat it with cough drops and herbal tea and an asthma inhaler that was prescribed to me last year when I had the same problem. None of it worked; the cough persisted. Then, last week, my allergy symptoms started to kick in: itchy, watery eyes and a runny nose and the urge to sneeze with the frustrating inability to do so. Between the chronic dry cough and the allergies, I couldn’t hold off going to the doctor anymore. So last week Friday I called my doctor’s office in Ventura and made an appointment for this morning because I had the day off.

I got a prescription for antibiotics, a daytime cough suppressant pill, and a nighttime cough syrup, as well as a referral to an allergist. As soon as I got back to Morro Bay this afternoon, I took the first dose of antibiotics and cough suppressant, and now I feel sleepy enough to go to bed even though it’s only five minutes to 6 PM.

I didn’t have too long of a wait in the waiting room this morning, but I did manage to crochet a few more rows on the afghan. It’s coming along nicely, I think.

May 4, 2015
by FC5 2 Comments

Day 123/365: Rest Day

Yesterday was such a long, active day that Sean and I pretty much did nothing today. We walked downtown for lunch at a Thai restaurant, but aside from that, we just hung around at home and read and looked at things on the internet.

I decided to start a new project to break the pink monotony of my Bubblegum Pound of Love shell stitch afghan.

This yarn is Red Heart Soft Baby Steps, picked out of the yarn stash. It’s a much softer and thicker acrylic than the Lion Brand Pound of Love. The variegated colors are also a lot more interesting to look at– dark brown, tan, pink. I also love the name of this particular colorway: Cherry Cola. So far, it’s been the perfect choice of yarn and a pleasant crocheting experience for a lazy Sunday like this one.

May 3, 2015
by FC5 Leave a comment

Day 122/365: A Full Day

This morning I got up at 6 AM in Morro Bay and hit the road by 6:30 to drive the 150 miles back to the Ventura homestead. Then Sean and I went out to breakfast; we walked a mile down to the Golden Egg Café, ate, and walked home again. Then we got in the car and drove 70 more miles into Los Angeles to the Japanese American National Museum, where I’d arranged to meet my good friend Pat. We had lunch at Mr. Ramen in Little Tokyo, browsed at Kinokuniya (a very cool Japanese bookstore), and then Pat and I checked out the Hello Kitty exhibition which I’d seen once before and wrote about in Day 74. Sean opted to hang out at a coffee shop this time.

Afterwards, we walked with Pat to Union Station, where she was catching the train back to San Bernardino. By then it was 3:45 PM, and Sean had tickets for the L.A. Galaxy soccer game at 7 PM. So we did some food shopping at Marukai Market, ate some take-out sushi, hung out in the open plaza area at the Weller Court Shopping Center, and read our books until it was time to go to the game. Normally, I am not a huge sports fan and I don’t particularly enjoy being at a crowded sporting event. But Sean did go with me to the Hello Kitty exhibition the first time, so it was only fair that I go with him to the soccer game tonight.

He did buy me a cool L.A. Galaxy t-shirt, though. Because if there was one thing he saw at the Hello Kitty exhibition and totally understood, it was the Sanrio philosophy: “Small gift, big smile.”

May 2, 2015
by FC5 Leave a comment

Day 121/365: Why I Should Never Schedule Late Appointments on Friday Afternoons

I was hoping to go home early today, but at 3:00 PM I had (unwittingly) scheduled an appointment with a patient who turned out to be suffering from delusional disorder. He was convinced that a particular inmate (who, according to the statewide inmate locator, was not even housed at our facility) was tormenting him by sending electrical surges to his eyelids via satellite. It was not a laughing matter for him or for me, particularly since I spent an hour and a half completing my documentation afterwards.

Thankfully, it is the start of another three-day weekend.

May 1, 2015
by FC5 1 Comment

Day 120/365: Pink and Yellow Striped Socks, Delivered

You may recall that the last pair of socks I finished knitting was for a friend of mine. Today she sent me photos to show that the socks had arrived and that she was putting them to good use. At the time that I was knitting the socks, I purposely didn’t match up the stripes because I thought they would have a lot more personality with mismatched stripes. Seeing them on Kim’s feet, I think I made the right choice.

Pura vida, Kimito!

April 30, 2015
by FC5 2 Comments

Day 119/365: Mid-Week Blah

Today was a completely unremarkable day at work, which is really the best kind of day to have at a prison. On the other hand, that means I don’t have any interesting, amusing, or alarming stories to tell you for the daily blog entry. So I will leave you with a photo that I took this evening after I got home from work at almost 6 PM. The sun was still a couple hours away from setting.

Making slow but steady progress on my afghan. And that is our deck that will probably get painted this summer.

April 29, 2015
by FC5 Leave a comment

Day 118/365: The Start of Another Work Week

Last week while I was chatting with the sergeant in his office, I happened to notice a sheet of paper on his desk, printed with the black and white image of an inmate’s mug shot. What struck me about the photo was that the guy had several tattoos on his face, including a large swastika.

“Why do you have this guy’s photo printed up?” I asked, because I’m always nosy like that. “What did he do?”

“Oh, he’s a new arrival to the yard,” the sergeant said. “I have to call him in. I need to talk to him about a few things.”

I picked up the sheet of paper and looked at the name and ID number. On our yard, clinicians are assigned their patients by the last two digits of the inmate’s ID numbers. This particular inmate’s last two digits fell within my assigned caseload numbers.

“Oh, man,” I said. “He’s going to be on my caseload.”

I’ve interacted with a wide spectrum of personalities among the incarcerated population, from the most polite and mild-mannered guy to the one who stared at me across my desk with such a look of intense hatred that I immediately terminated our interview. I’ve been yelled at and assaulted (with no battery– thankfully, the correctional officer intervened when that particular inmate lunged at me). So I wasn’t afraid to meet this inmate with the swastika on his face; I just wasn’t looking forward to it.

Today when I arrived at work, it was my Monday and I had to catch up on emails. It was through one of those emails that I learned that the new arrival was no longer on my caseload. (Later, I found out more details from custody: The inmate had assaulted and severely battered another inmate on the yard, resulting in immediate transfer to Administrative Segregation, where he’d likely be put up for transfer.)

Sitting at my desk and looking at the email, I was happy with this turn of events for about a moment. Because right after I found out that I had one less patient on my caseload, I opened the next email and learned that I’d just been assigned another new arrival.

April 28, 2015
by FC5 Leave a comment

Day 117/365: Still Crocheting

I have been working on my pink Pound of Love Bubblegum crocheted afghan, and I’ll be honest: I am getting bored with it. Part of me was tempted to frog the whole afghan today. But I’m already several rows into it, and I know it will be very pretty when I’m done with it. I also know just the right person who would love to have the finished project. So I will keep going and not unravel what I’ve completed, but I might take a break and knit a sock or start a new afghan, just to keep things interesting.

April 27, 2015
by FC5 Leave a comment

Day 116/365: Crocheted Garnet Afghan, Completed

Back on Day 85, I posted photos of the garnet afghan I’d been crocheting. Then I got sidetracked with the flu and life and other projects, and I switched over to knitting socks for a while. Today I committed to finishing the afghan. It turned out to be a pretty decent size and heavier than I expected. It’s very soft and will definitely keep you warm and comfy on the couch.