So this arrived in the mail today:
Can’t chat too long– I have to go crochet!
Tag Archives: afghan
Day 132/365: Weightless Bubblegum!
When I got home from work this evening, I thought for sure my Red Heart Soft Baby Steps Cherry Cola yarn order would have been delivered. Sadly, I was wrong. There was no mail waiting for me in the mailbox. Even though I was a little bummed, the absence of mail was actually a good thing, because you know that if the yarn had arrived, I would have jumped the slow Pound of Love Bubblegum afghan ship and gotten back on board the Cherry Cola afghan speedboat.
Speaking of the Pound of Love Bubblegum afghan: I thought it would be an interesting experiment to weigh the remaining yarn on my digital food scale and see how much was left. This is what I got.
Day 131/365: Back to the Bubblegum
I’d been crocheting this Red Heart Soft Baby Steps Cherry Cola afghan, but just as I feared, I ran out of yarn. I was able to find more skeins on eBay, but my order hasn’t arrived yet. So I went back to the Lion Brand Pound of Love Bubblegum afghan. I made a little more progress today and added several more rows.
The other thing I did with this particular afghan was take the large unwieldy ball of pink yarn and run it through my Knit Picks ballwinder. So I went from this:
Pound of Love ball of yarn on 4.23.2015
To this:
Remaining half a Pound of Love?
Now it’s so much neater, and I don’t have to keep stopping to roll the ball over and unwind more yarn. I think I should be done with this project in a few days, if I keep going and not decide to start a new sock, which I am considering…
Day 128/365: One Way to Get Out and Stay Out
One of the better things about my job is working with inmate-patients consistently for a couple of years and seeing them make progress and develop insight and change and grow emotionally.
Back in 2013, a young new arrival was assigned to my caseload. He had been on parole and was back in prison on a new term. He was twenty-four years old and struggling with a lot of emotional issues. He had a lot of unresolved anger, and his primary coping skill was substance abuse. The combination of being pissed off at his girlfriend while drunk led to his offense and arrest.
At first, he had a hard time sharing anything personal with me because he thought that would be a sign of weakness and vulnerability. So when I saw him for his first few appointments, our conversations were short and superficial—nothing more than case management. Eventually, he began to feel more comfortable talking to me and confessed that he felt nervous and scared about being released into the community. He was constantly worried that he would mess up somehow and wind up back in prison, or that he would do something violent while still in prison so that he’d receive more time added to his existing sentence.
Once he was honest with his feelings, I was able to really start working with him on a deeper, more therapeutic level. I referred him to treatment groups for additional opportunities for psychoeducation and guidance. Gradually, he stopped being so anxious and started feeling more confident about himself and his ability to succeed.
Today was his last appointment with me. His release date is Monday the 11th, my day off. When he came in to see me this afternoon, I asked him how he was doing.
“I’m feeling excited this time,” he said. “I don’t have to come back unless I want to come back.”
Day 127/365: Afghan in Progress
I’ve been making more progress on the afghan. This Red Heart Soft Baby Steps yarn has been a pleasure to crochet, particularly because it’s a much softer acrylic than the Pound of Love stuff that I’d been using before. The problem is that I’ve got one more skein left, and then I’m out of yarn until my eBay order arrives. I hope that shows up soon, because I’m on a roll and I think I could get this lovely Cherry Cola afghan done in just a few days.
Day 126/365: The Art of Not Flashing Your Behind
At work, I carry a Personal Alarm Device (PAD) that will activate a loud alarm and flashing blue lights in our building, should I feel the need to push the button and alert officers that I need immediate assistance. Once (in my first year of working at the prison) I accidentally pushed the button, and about eleven officers came running down the corridor to make sure I was okay.
Usually, I keep the PAD in my coat pocket and take it everywhere I go. Today as I was crossing the plaza for my afternoon break, I put my hand in my pocket and accidentally bumped the PAD out, where it promptly fell to the ground.
Later, when I returned to the mental health building from my walk, I told the on-duty sergeant that I’d dropped my PAD in the plaza and I was afraid that I might have broken it. “Can we test it?” I asked. “To make sure it still works?”
This particular sergeant happened to be a buddy of mine who has spoken frankly with me on previous occasions regarding prison- and inmate-related issues. Today was no exception.
“When you dropped your alarm,” he said, “and there were inmates in the plaza. How did you pick it up?”
I knew what he was getting at. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Like this.” I demonstrated by leaning over to the side with bent knees and carefully picking up an imaginary PAD. After all, I’m not stupid.
There is an art to not flashing your rear end in prison.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
365 Days Handmade 