The Problem....

is people expect other people to have identical experiences.

US Marine Corps expect people to think like them.

US Air Force expect people to think like them.

US Army expect people to think like them.

US Navy expect people to think like them.

US Coast Guard expect people to think like them.

US Civilians expect people to think like them.

...all the while forgetting that every last individuals experience is different, translated differently by that individual's experience.

Civilians can't understand military and military can't understand civilian because most of the time they BOTH are too stupid to remember that the life experiences are different.

That the goals are different.  That the past experiences temper how one sees the present.

Experience or lack there of, dictates how one is able to relate or understand.

And when one is used to someone normally getting it, it's a huge betrayal when even the one is using language that using the other can understand, they don't!

They don't get it.

You can't talk it out in the normal left-wing or right-wing methods.

Somebody has to shut the fuck up.

Someone has to humble themselves to the point of listening.

And when they don't, they can't get pissy and claim you're trying to be all "victimy".  ( Totally a word!)

You can hear someone all day long.

Whether or not you've listened shows through in how you treat that person.

Aye aye aye

Kinda stressing right now.

I have an order that I am working on that requires me to learn how to crochet cables.

....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have a small deadline on that order, plus two more jackets to design and make, a messenger bag, two cloches, two dolls to finish.

How am I dealing?

By probably going on a hike and exploring an alluvial fan that is near us.  Near being relative at about 15 minutes to get to.  (I love living so close to a national forest!)

Why?

Because I learned a long time ago, the hard way, that it's not okay to just beat yourself through to a deadline.  Yeah I'm going to be tired when I get back, but I've noticed when I've taken time to go outdoorsy things, my productivity is double what it would have been if I hadn't.

It's common sense.

Yeah, I was greatly refreshed from my time in Lake Havasu, but I don't feel fully recovered from this month yet.  That said, tomorrow is going to be a busy day of crocheting, sketching and sharing some pics of the fan.

Plus, the hot water heater in our apartment building is out.  This while it may not yield any prepping lessons or experience, it's applicable in that you have to get creative in order to stay comfortable and clean.

I really like sharing pictures of the places I'm getting to explore and I hope you guys are enjoying them too.  Hopefully for tomorrow as well, I will have Jacket One done and some really good pictures of that.

See ya tomorrow! =)

London Bridge is...

... is in Lake Havasu City, Arizona?

I kid you not!

This past weekend the Fiance was sent there on work.  I got to go with, and left the crocheting, the knitting and the work at home.  It was an actual honest to the Gods vacation.  ....though I spent most of Friday zonked out in the bed.

A little history for you first on Lake Havasu (the city's namesake):

Located behind Parker Dam on the Colorado river, a portion of the border of California and Arizona runs through this lake.  Created between 1934 and 1938, the area was previously home to the Mohave and there is evidence of Spanish mining operations on parts of the river here in this area.

Then there's this:

This, is the London Bridge of Lake Havasu Arizona.  This is the real deal.  This bridge formerly spanned the Thames River in London England from 1831 to 1967.  One hundred and thirty six!

 The actual bridge itself, is a normal reinforced concrete, it's the original masonry from the bridge that you see here in the pictures.

A man named Robert P. McCulloch bought the masonry from the City of London.  The blocks were transported to the United States to finish off the bridge in Lake Havasu City, completed in 1971.  The bridge links an Island .... it was a peninsula first actually and they dredged the canal that you can see in the pictures in order to make it an honest bridge.

 I'm not honestly sure if these are the original lamps.  The bridge had several of these and being the uber relaxed dummy that I was this past weekend.... I forgot to check to see the lamps still work.

*facepalm*

The bridge was the last project of engineer, John Rennie and completed by his son.  By 1962, the bridge was unable to keep up with the demands of modern traffic and sold to the city of London.

 Sadly many of the stones lost anywhere from 5.9 inches to 7.9 inches of their original size.

Many of these stones were still much larger than I or my fiance had been expecting.  It took a little over three years to reconstruct the bridge.

Even though the bridge was reduced in mass, the size of it is still impressive.

It was downright awesome being able to walk up to something like this, which is coming on it's 200th birthday in 2031.   Yes, we even sat underneath it and enjoyed a plain snow cone.

The entire trip was frikkin awesome.

Plus there was this little guy:

On the California Side of the Havasu and Colorado river, there are wild burros.

Ain't he cute?!

Oh that's frustrating...

So I get messages from time to time on Etsy from friends of friends being sent to me looking for a particular crocheted thing.

Most of the time, after they hear/see the price they almost always "Thank you for your reply."

Which among us crafters is code for "Why the fuck would I pay that when I can get it from Wal*Mart for 3.99?"

The item in question this time was a beautiful crocheted cloche with flower embellishment.  22-25 bucks.

That covers the materials (which would need to a bit finer of a yarn for the flowers and leaves) and barely covers my time.

This is one of the most... derogatory things that happens on a weekly basis for all crafters I think.  Someone asks us to make something and for how much and then what happens?  The above.

Something else that coincides with this response is almost always the fact that the person who does this, 95% of the time is the same kind of person who bitches about "American jobs being sent overseas".  Here's a newsflash for you oh stupid one, stop fucking taxing businesses out of existence.
Here's a little background for those of you who aren't familiar with how hand crafts like mine work.

We'll use a beanie, as an incredibly simple example.

The basic beanie, can be down with one thread or two.   With any of the stitches know as single, double or treble and hell all the ones in between.

It takes 1-3 skeins of yarn, depending on how nice of a yarn or color variety you want. These range in price from 3.14 for 236 yards of thread (215 meters) to 8.99 for 174 yards.

Then the average crafting time is anywhere from an hour and 45 minutes to five hours (this is dependent on skill level and experience level).  I average an hour and 45 minutes on simple beanies.

Now, let's just say that for a really nice cloche I decide to go with a finer thread for the flowers.  This finer thread costs 6.99 a skein, and I get two in two different colors.  Then one skein at 3.14 for the main hat.

Now that puts me at 17.12 already.  And I haven't even started working on the hat yet.

So we'll say there's four flowers.  Each flower takes me 45 minutes for a total of 3 hours.
The cloche takes me 2 hours to make.

So that's five hours for this hat.  Now at the higher quoted price of 24 dollars minus the 17.12 leaves 6.88.

Now divide 6.88 by 5.

That is 1.376 an hour.

We won't go into any of the other things I make.

I put five hours of time into a hat, and am only asking 24 bucks for it.

Do the crafting community a favor: If you aren't willing to pay for quality and for the investment of our time, don't even open a fucking conversation with us.

In case you're wondering what it would cost if I put in the 8.75 min wage just to give you a baseline:
43.75 and that's just the cost of the time.  Plus material and shipping... try 60 bucks at least.

Do me and the rest of the crafting community a favor: don't get snotty, snobby, condescending, arrogant, snide, rude or belligerent with me when I give you a very reasonable price, when I'm the one who knows how much time goes into my work, not you.  I know my work is going to last you for several years when that junk you buy from some chain store is going to worthless in less than a year.

Stop your bitching about sending jobs overseas when you won't even invest in small business here.

Guilty little pleasures.

Between designing new orders that are coming and actually sitting down and working on them, I have this tendency of plugging into the computer for one of two things: music or a small guilty pleasure of mine: Speculative History Theories.

Yes, I mean things like Ancient Aliens or America Unearthed.  

"Run that by me again Evie?"

Yeah, you read that right.

Growing up, I was always reading whatever I could get my hands on.  Even as a small child, I could tell: History was what those who wrote the textbooks, wanted it to say.  Oh sure you could get the whole picture, but you had to dig for it.  A lot of digging.

One of the best examples of Speculative History is all the weird shit that came out of World War II.  Many of the scientific advances that were made by Nazi Germany were light years ahead of the Allies. We won't go into the ethical or moral of how they got many of those advances, as that's enough information, craziness and straight up atrocities as to fill a library the size of the Library of Congress. And those are just the stories and pieces that aren't classified.  Take the Bismark for example.  We still have only an inkling as to what all technology was on that ship, as none of the tech has ever been recovered nor is the ship in a water condition that would allow for salvaging.

Even today there are massive complexes in areas formerly occupied by the Axis's armies... that we can't get to because the entrances were destroyed and any attempts to reach the known chambers would fail due to the surrounding geological instabilities that were caused when the retreating Nazi's destroyed the entrances.  We have no idea what might be in them.  This is speculative history at it's best and most fertile ground for the imagination.

Growing up I was always fascinated by archaeology and geology.  Even I as an amateur, am aware there are sites out there, that don't fit with the "official" timeline of the human history.  Whether or not the secrets hidden are relevant is besides the point, the point is that they are being hidden, so that the "story of the Earth" fits with whatever the academics want.  *shrugs* Well, if that's their teapot, fine but earthquakes can happen anywhere. ;-)

Back to why this is a guilty little pleasure.  Most of the theories are just that, theories.  Speculation on whats, whys, hows, and wheres.  Because for me, speculation is fun.  Now, I have my limits.  It has to be plausible speculation.  Conspiracy theories.... don't count because 99.999999999% of those aren't even plausible.

I have to admit as a geologist wanna-be, America Unearthed is my favorite so far. Scott (can't remember his last name right now to save my life) has been a good watch so far.  He admits when he's entertained by ideas, but there's not enough evidence to support it being even plausible.  He doesn't declare something ancient man made just to make ratings.  An example would be the recent seasons episode on Rockwall Texas and their namesake.  Which turned out to be an impressively rare geological phenomenon but it was still fascinating as to how the rock wall was formed.

So that's my bit here for the day, I'll see y'all tomorrow.  I have a crocheted jacket in the home stretch and about 6 more episodes of America Unearthed to help me get through.  =)

True Believers.... oye ve

I'm going to apologize first off because today's post is going to be a bit chaotic as I don't have the concept fully realized as yet, but I'll be attempting to iron that as we go.

True believers.

I think every last one of us just winced as an example (regardless of what the ideology point is) popped into our heads of someone we know or have encountered.

They range from these idiots who think Islam is harmless (SPIT!) to greenies to the really douchebag kind of gunnies to the fucktards like Westboro Baptist Church.

They fervently believe in something and hate all who would disagree with them let alone debate them let alone not just automatically agree with them because they are of "Thinking right and are saying the right things."

This doesn't just happen with Left-Wingers, it happens with Right-Wingers too.  It always happens with any topic (regardless of minor a topic might seem to you or me). There is a tendency among humans to become too obsessed with an idea(s).  Now this is not to say that being obsessed with an idea is a bad thing.  That kind comes across as determination, examples being like Tesla and giving us AC current for our power grids. (Thank you, you socialist psychopath by the way.  Seriously, the man was nuts.)

Being a "True Believer" is dangerous.  Jonestown or the Burning Times ring a bell anyone?

There's a saying among Pagans "Remember the Burning Times."  It's said to remember people of what happens when the line between believer and fanatic becomes blurred.  It's estimated millions were killed during these times as the Witch Hunts became an easy vehicle of revenge, theft and removing your enemies from your path.  "True Believers" or fanatics, merely became pawns of skilled manipulators, and because of it, more christians were killed than any other group.

Hence, "Remember the Burning Times."

As for Jonestown...well, you do realize that the saying "Drinking the Kool Aid" had its start here.  That idiot was an incredibly extreme case of what a personality cult looks like.  Believe it or not, it'll happen again.  There are hundreds of "True Believers" in almost every single cause, topic, politics or religion on this planet.

They will kill, maim, rape, and force their way into whatever they want.  ISIS is the prime example currently of this.  They aren't going to stop until they are exterminated or they win.

I've been seeing friends trying to say don't judge of all of Islam based on ISIS.  Um... you have to judge all of Islam by them.

Read the Koran.  Muslims are supposed to lie to you because you're an infidel.

And according to this idiot Claudette... she's not capable of staying on topic and isn't able to be coherent.

<<< is an example of a True Believer, who would kill herself if the people who she's allowed to become her masters, told her she entertained bad think, you should die now.

And to be clear, I'm with Chris and Joseph on this.  I need to send him a very BIG bottle of whisky.

The topic was a large fish kill that this stupid idiot was claiming was the cause.  The fish kill was actually caused by a massive fire.

She tried to say they don't release what it is that's in the frakking chemicals.... two-four people provided half a dozen links where several companies provided a FULL CHEMICAL DISCLOSURE OF THEIR FRAKKING SOLUTIONS.

They debated back and forth for a few hours, but this picture had the gold.

The in-coherency, the "offended by you and your facts" attitude, the inconsistency in position... marks of a true believer...

There's those who believe that there is a shadow organization controlling us from behind the scenes... There is actually a lot of people who you would normally think are more intelligent than this, who believe this.  It's ridiculous the number of organizations that have been outright invented as this shadowy figure.

*head desk*
*headdeskheaddesk*

Seriously, the number of people who are trying to blame something non-existent for their behavior and lack of being able to do anything on something that doesn't exist is... mind-boggling.

Now, I'll admit... if I'm not careful, I can easily slide into becoming too obsessed with learning information on (Yellowstone, Puma Punka, astronomy, geology, etc).  I've noted as long as I don't focus on one thing too much (crochet doesn't count) I can stay away and far away from that line of fanaticism into any one topic.

These "True Believers" become obsessed with one thing or the umbrella of set of ideals.  You know them, I know them, they are everywhere.

These people are just sick in the head.  Period.  They are unbalanced, they are sick, they exist everywhere with any topic or umbrella of topics.  They are fanatics.

Unfortunately depending on ideology, fanatics are tolerated because they are doing the dirty work commanded by their God.

For those who just pointed fingers at Christianity.... wrong.

Islam.

Now, just to be clear, there are Muslims who are good people.  They are at that point in their faith, that they have rejected the violent tenants of Islam.  They do exist. There are many who exist who serve in the Israeli army to protect their homeland against Islamic ragheads.

As per the tenants of Islam though... you can't be American and Muslim... so any Muslims who are loyal to the United States that live here... You're gonna need a new name for a little bit.

Check your ammo and guns...

It was only a matter of time.

Australia Thwarts Beheading Attempt

In due course, I give high praise to the people who didn't sit on their hands, heads buried in sand and fucking acted upon intel.

Trying to be the aware to a certain extent person that I am, when Stephanie messaged me this morning going "Hey, go google the threat level for today" I let my curiosity take over.

I found nothing.

NOTHING.

The color coded threat level (which is the simplest threat level breakdown that I'm aware of ever) is...not there.

Instead there's this bastard child: Current Threat Condition

.....what the actual fuck?

Now... I don't know about y'all, but I don't have a recollection of them announcing they weren't going to use the color codes anymore...

Also according to them there are no active threats.... oh horseshit!

I will bet every last inch of yarn I have that there is an active threat.  What, I couldn't tell you, but nothing?

Yeah right.

*Stitch, stitch, stitch....*

"Just keep stitching, just keep stitching."

There are many days and times were this is the only mantra that I have going through my head.  It certainly was last week.  Concept called mindful knitting or crocheting.

I had stumbled onto this on my own a few years back but a friend recently pointed it out to me online, and a rabbit hole later I'd found a lot of information on it.

Why mindfulness is great?

Pretty simple actually.

You're are preventing events of that day/moment from draining you of energy you need for other things.  You're removing the power an event or memory has over you, by focusing on the yarn and project in your hand.

We are all aware of the significance of last week (9/11).  Being the passionate woman that I am (Yes, I heard that chortle) I decided for my sanity (what little of it that's left) would be better spent knitting or crocheting last week. As I had two personal anniversaries that make me cringe still that week, one of them being my first wreck ever at 26 (yes, I was pretty lucky to go that long, but there were a lot of things I could have done to avoid that wreck. No one was killed or badly injured, but it still bothers me a LOT).

And as we all know, 9/11 brings out the idiots of various conspiracy theories and just plain bullshit of people who can't seem to grasp the manner.  I hate that entire bullshit.  I repeat, HATE that bullshit.  It's one of the disrespectful displays of arrogance, bubble syndrome and plain naivete.  It spits on the graves of those who were lost when people quibble over what happened.

I still have the image seared into my head of them showing what used to be a dozen floors squashed into a space less than, if I recall correctly, four feet thick.  I'm still stunned by the news from friends who lost folks, that they are still identifying remains even today.

Those two reasons are part of why I won't engage in the endless roundabouts of what happened.  It's rude to the dead and disrespectful to the people who survived the events and the folks that the victims left behind.  Then you have the repercussions of those events, that increased all who were affected.  Which is a whole other kit and kaboodle of worms that need thrown on fishing hooks and drowned while sitting on the banks of a lake or river, while sipping cold beer and enjoying those who are with you.

So I put my headphones in or talked to my fiance or we went and watched the sunsets.  I just kept stitching.  Mindfulness extends to not just knitting or crocheting.  You can apply it to washing dishes, walking dogs, reading books, sharpening tools, cleaning guns, sitting with a cup of coffee and just watching the sunrise or sunrise or a thunderstorm move, etc.  It's healthy.  It counter acts depression.

It lets you have a few moments of just you. Of sweet, lucid, calming sliver of time that is just you and the world.  It lets you step back and reevaluate what's going on.  Re-establishes your boundaries, your balance, your center.  It takes the edge of this rape victim's PTSD flashbacks. It shortens them. Makes me lucid faster.  Yeah, the project ends up a bit wet from crying (yeah, I just admitted that), but I'm out of it faster.  It lets me work off the anger over careless from people who should know better and it let me work off the hatred over ignorant dipshits who don't know what the fuck it is they are talking about.

I've received a lot of criticism in the past year or so, over an increasing reluctance to commit to "pet causes."  There's been a rash of "warm fuzzy" causes, that you do for less than a minute and you get to brag you did for a couple of days and then what?  That was shallow, fleeting and you're back at square one with...well, I can't classify what for you as I'm not you.  And yes, this me criticizing several things all lumped together.

When you decide to champion a cause, you need to do it every day, even if it's just for a few minutes of sharing relevant information or laying out plans for the next event, etc.  You need to actually champion it.  You need to wear it like a tattoo.

So in response to a rather snide cunt, who may or may not be female, I'll listing out my causes again for all to see.  I don't really care if they are you "flavor" nor do I give a flying fuck if they align with your politics.  These are my babies, that I want to help as much as I am able to help. Many times, all I can do is help spread the word they exist but at least I'm trying to stay consistent.

The Battle Buddy Foundation  

Hats for Our Veterans

Right now, that's because I can't find the others or even remember which folders I have them bookmarked into.  Hats is run by a sweet lady, and donates several dozen (I think this year they managed a couple hundred hats) to organizations that work with homeless vets.  It's not much, but a warm hat, scarf and gloves is better than nothing, which is what I otherwise have.

For TBBF, it's sharing as frequently as I can and spreading the word.

So there.  That's my ramblings for today.  Now if you'll excuse me....*stitch stitch stitch stitch stitch...*

And then this happened...

So unless you were under a rock on Friday and Saturday (and no that's not me being snarky about whatever living arrangements you might have currently) we had a CME.

A "Coronal Mass Eruption".  Basically, the sun farted on us.  Only these farts are electromagnetic farts.  Our magnetic field here on Earth, tends to shield us for the most part from the really bad stuff.   However, the CME tends to concentrate at the North and South Pole.  Then travels down to the surface and goes along the planet from, at an incredibly reduced strength. (I think I'm interpreting that right, but I know I'll get corrected on where I'm wrong, so no worries.)

On Saturday night, this intrepid adventurer was attempting to play in Google Hangouts her character within the Traveller universe.

......yeah....

The interference was making my ability to be able to be heard by the other players almost null and void at times.  Both the normal phone data and the Wifi I get to borrow from my neighbors, were spazzing out.

I got curious and starting writing down the times. The following is Pacific Standard Time.
(Fuck you LA!)
 (Date for this occurring for those of you reading this several months or whatever down the road was September 13th, 2014.)

• 7:56:45 PST, PM
• 7:57:15 PST, PM
• 8:03:15 PST, PM
• 8:16:35 PST, PM
• 8:31:25 PST, PM
• 8:35:25 PST, PM
• 8:37:15 PST, PM
• 8:56:45 PST, PM
• 8:57:15 PST, PM
• 9:03:15 PST, PM
• 9:05:45 PST, PM
• 9:14:10 PST, PM

Fascinating eh?

Those were the times when the "spikes" so to speak in the CME, actually fully impacted the various systems.

I pinged my friend the Cherry Bombe about it on Facebook, and she hooked me up with the following two links.

http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/drap/Global.png

http://www.solarham.net/

Now CME's are some interesting stuff.  If you haven't dug into them too much, allow to me to kick you head first into this rabbit hole.   Hehehehehehe

• Weather
• Wikipedia article
• NASA
• How Stuff Works

So that was my weekend in a nutshell.  How was yours?

Oh fuck... it's September....

I know, I kinda fell off the band wagon here this week, but Monday hit me with a nasty headache, then Tuesday (9/9) it hit me what month it was.

Fuck September.

First couple weeks of September have always sucked seriously for me.  9/11 anniversary, plus about two-three personal things that still make me miserable from time to time.

So... yeah.... I should be back on schedule next Monday, September 14th.

Because quite frankly sometimes the best way to do with shit, it's just not deal with people.  Quite frankly, there's only a few people I'd happy or willing to interact with around this time of the year...and right now it really sucks that I can't just grab my yarn, my car keys, gas and some snacks and go see them.

My fiance has been awesome in that he's been downright eager to go out and chill in places that are pretty close to wild.

So yeah, that's what's going on.

It's looking lazy...

It's been one of those weeks.  I despise weeks like that to be honest but when your muses don't wanna play, you just kinda roll with it and work on projects that don't require too much creative juice.

You can throw some podcasts on in the background and just veg crochet.  You ignore deadlines.  You ignore the phone.  You ignore the world.

The end result is a bit jarring. You're a lot calmer at the end of that day.  You're able to look at things much more objectively.  You're able to look at discussions and go... This ain't my circus.  Fuck these idiots.  I have better things to do.

Like figure out what's going into my Book of Shadows.  Usually a Wiccan, Witch, Pagan, etc will keep a large amount of collected information and things that they've actually tried in terms of spells and rituals in said book.  

I've been studying and practicing for about... 13 years now.  My book of shadows is... sad looking.  I don't have a lot in it right now, but that's because I've not really done a lot of this "formal magick."  Formal magick being used in reference to actually collecting spell and ritual components, doing the groundwork of divining the right time of the day/night and doing the quarter calls, invocations etc.  I call that formal work.  When was the last time I did a ritual?  About two years ago.  I did one to finally fully let go of the babies I had lost in my miscarriages.  Named, said good-bye to one at a time, and let go of.

Most of the magick I do, when I actually find it's needed, is informal.  It's "Oh shit, that's a lot of friends on facebook reporting they feel like shit, time to break out some light blue and white candles!"  and let them burn through the day.   It's "damnit, I didn't need to think about this past traumatic event, time for some purple."   It's "That's our neighbors arguing for the fifth time this week and it's only Tuesday, I'm smudging right now because I don't need that shit leaking in."

It's having fluorite and Tiger's Eye in my pocket that I can play with when I'm out in public and start feeling the anxiety coming on.  (Mine deals with too many people in one place, have had that problem since I was little, but it got worse as you can expect with the PTSD fully actualized.)  It's having animals get a lot closer to me than other humans just to say hi.  (Heh, the Fiance is still getting used to this.)

But I'm digressing, back to the Book of Shadows.  It's always evolving to be honest.  At least they should be.  As you're growing in your craft, your book should be growing and evolving to reflect the information you're learning and not just about magick, but also about yourself.

Mine is like I said, kinda empty.  Mostly because I've been journaling in a separate book for over twenty years.  What goes in the BOS is what I use in my magick frequently.  Mostly just to commit the information to memory more than to refer to, but it's still kinda....well, abnormal if you believe a chunk of the magick community.

Keeping true to yourself in magick is more important than keeping true to a set dogma taught via book or person.  Else, it just spins out of control and you will find spells going haywire, situations that were once peachy going sour, finances crumble, etc.

It's crunch time!

As I don't have anything off the top of my head that I'd like to rant about, talk about, etc. as I'm in the middle of a crunch time and quite possibly frogging one of the jackets (again!)  so a copy and paste from my notes on Jade Rose Zen on Facebook will just have to suffice.

"Hey everyone, wanted to give y'all a heads up.

The last day of this year that I'm willing to accept to orders for the Holiday seasons is November 16th.  There will be NO MORE ORDERS ACCEPTED AFTER THAT DATE FOR THIS YEAR.  

I'm establishing this policy because I got rushed with orders last year at the last minute and I ended up being late with a few of them.  I don't like being late, I don't like being surprised with stuff at the last minute which I'm sure you don't enjoy either.  

If you are interested in something for Christmas, start telling me now!!!!!

It takes some serious time to get everything made, because I'm working designs and ordering yarn many times for your orders.  

I've already one order that I managed to convince to let me start on it back in June (And boy am I glad they agreed!!!).   

So if you are interested in buying from for this coming winter gift giving season, LET ME KNOW NOW!  

It's okay if you are on budget, and need to put the money back, but please remember I do have a PayPal now and we can work payments if you need to.

This year (after including other current orders) I have room to start designing and settling on yarn:

• 1 Doctor Who scarf.  Full sized, or reduced, this one is the good yarn that is incredibly close to color but a bit more expensive.  Please see the Note, Product list, for pricing.
• 2 twin sized afghans
• 1 coat (I only have time left to work one right now, this might change, I'll update this note if I can take more orders)
• 12 Ma Cobb hats
• 6 dolls
• 12 baby afghans and hats
• 6 shawls
• Tote and Messenger bags - 4, Purses, sized neck to small - 10

I do not have room to take orders on the following:

• full, queen, King sized afghans

 Thank you kindly for being one of my clients, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you!"

You can still find me on Etsy - Jade Rose Zen until December 14th.  That's the last day I can ship things and (hopefully) still get them to folks on time.  After that I'm not having an open shop on Etsy.  I won't be uploading anything new there.

Now on Zibbet- Jade Rose Zen I am open there now, and will be for hopefully several years.  There is new inventory up there and will continue to uploaded through out the season.  On November 16th, the custom order option will be coming down until January 14th.  Between December 14th and January 14th... I'm taking a VACATION!

Older patterns (and the headaches they caused....)

"Good gods Evie... what is that???"

That, is what an older piece of a pattern that I'm trying to work from looks like.  My fellow crocheters will be recoiling in horror at the moment.

This confusing discombobulated mess, is from a pamphlet of crocheted table clothes.  The booklet is so old, I can't find a date anywhere on it.  This tells me at least the 40s or 50s, is the time period because I've noticed in a lot of the older publications that they didn't really think it was important to include dates.

Now, being the valiant and committed crocheter that I am (Yes, read that as stubborn and stop snorking...), I did attempt as per exhibit A, to your right to follow said instructions.

...

Yes, to you looks lovely my dears, but to me... I know better.  This is a part of the curse of knowing this... is nothing like the example picture, and that the person who made the example picture piece was a dirty rotten whore.

There's the concept called "Frogging".    No not frog hunting.  Basically means doing any stitch necessary to make it look right OR undoing the whole thing.   It's not a fun concept and one I try very hard to not need to do.

So, because I'd like to incorporate these concepts (many of which are Irish lace) into my work, I'm going to be working modernizing the language and terminologies used.  Along with fixing the mistakes.  This is going to probably be a year long if not multiple year project.

Worth it?

Oh totally!

I got nuthin today...

So here's a couple of cool videos for you.

And now to introduce you to an organization that is... well, spectacular.

Krochet Kids