ow.

What a couple of days it’s been!  My car needs a really expensive fix (about half of what the whole car costs, so I don’t know what’s gonna happen there).  In the meantime I’m driving Dad’s truck, but the first day I drove it it sat in the sun too long and the glue holding the rearview mirror on gave out.  Mirror swinging wildly by a cord, today I drove it to the shop to get it fixed.  I was planning on eating afterwards — they said it would be an hour.  It was 2 hours, and I was quite hungry and had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair.  Standing up to go pay, my foot which had been asleep without me noticing completely gave out.  I fell but caught myself against the wall and limped in pain to the cashier desk, wherupon I connected the cashier with my dad via tellephone and had to be led to sit down — my vision went black.  Someone had to drive me and my Dad’s truck home.  Now I can’t really walk at all.  Thank goodness Chris is home from his job and could look at it — he used to be an athletic trainer and so quickly identified what was wrong.  It’s a bad sprain from rolling my ankle.  It doesn’t hurt much unless I try to walk, which is a problem since I had to call my boss and tell him I couldn’t be there tonight and might not be able to go tomorrow.  It’s my right foot so I probably won’t be able to drive, much less stand for hours on end.  What scared me was the blacking out part, because I never actually fainted but my vision was gone, I was dizzy, and broke into a sweat.  Possibly low blood sugar.  Possibly low blood pressure.  Possibly shock from the pain.  It’s happened before but not this bad.  Not sure, but I do know that I was incredibly embarrassed and I NEED to go to work tomorrow.

Wanna see my foot?  Some people think feet are gross anyway, so if you do, look away!

foot1

Extra gross, right?  It’s not usually all swollen and multi-colored.  Actually I like my feet when they are normal looking, but this foot is just sad.  In real life it actually looks a bit worse than this, but you get the general idea.

Chris immediately wrapped it in an Ace bandage and put an ice pack on it and elevated it to the arm of the couch I’m currently lounging on.  Now it looks like this:

foot2

Now I’m all wrapped up in my cozy blanket (the ta-dah moment of which can be seen here).  It cheers me up and I’m not all tensed and panicky anymore (I freaked out because I was home alone for a bit and was scared I’d black out and not be able to get help).

I may take a nap.  I feel so much better now that Chris is here.  I literally don’t have anybody else that I know of who lives in this town that could help in an emergency.

On the bright side, I’ll have plenty of time to work on the CAL now, and I’m sure glad I went to the laundromat and walked the dog yesterday evening.  Maybe I can even convince Chris to cook me dinner.  He’s taking such good care of me!

Just wanted to let you all into my exciting few hours.  I’ll admit it’s very overwhelming (because there’s tons of other stressful stuff going on at the moment too) but to be honest typing it out gets me to relax a bit more about it.

I’ll talk to you again soon, I expect.  Take care, and don’t let your legs fall asleep and catch you unawares!

CAL: week 10

Hey everyone!  Ready for this week’s CAL installment?  Let’s get started, and don’t forget we’re using US terms!

Last week we left off with row 70:

cal88

rows 71-74

Repeat the mirrored chevron pattern.  Click here for the original instructions.  Here’s all 4 rows:

cal89

row 75

With new color, hdc across.

row 76

With new color, dc across.

row 77

With new color, hdc across.

row 78

With new color, dc across.  Here’s what it’ll look like:

cal90

And that’s all for this week!  I managed to get a full shot of my blanket, although the color got a bit washed out:

cal91

I hope everyone is still enjoying the CAL, and I hope you’re keeping up with weaving in your ends!  😉

The pictures you’re all posting on facebook and Ravelry are great — it’s so cool to see everyone progressing!  The links to those are in the right-hand sidebar, as are some new buttons/links that will take you to each individual week.  It was requested by a participant and I agree that it should make things easier on you all.

Oh and one of the participants also set up a Ravelry pattern page (thank you!) so you can add it to your projects easily.  Click here for that.  I must apologize to the creator of the page — I had to take down the original picture because that’s not my picture (it is our inspiration picture but it belongs to this blog and I didn’t want it to seem like I was claiming that that picture was mine).  I really appreciate you making the page though — it was a big help!

That should be all for this week.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

sewing and a belated link

Hey everyone!  I have a bit of a different post for you today.  I’ve been doing some sewing and wanted to share it with you.

As you can guess, working on a food truck is very hot.  Working outside the food truck for hours in the sun is also very hot.  Appropriate attire is a bit tough to figure out — if you wear a shirt you’ll need an undershirt to keep your sweat from showing through, which works but also makes you a bit hotter.  Dresses are ideal for standing outside (inside the truck you need to stick with the shirts), but there is the problem of wind.  I was nearly discommoded by a strong breeze a couple of weeks ago, but I caught the skirt before it flew up.  Here’s the dress, which as you can see is a bit short, meaning the problem is likely to happen often:

sewing dress

That close call reminded me of something I’d heard a long time ago about sewing things into the hem of a dress to weigh it down just a bit and keep it from blowing up.  The best options I could think of were cheap chain necklaces or small fishing weights.  The fishing weights were really cheap, so I went with those:

sewing weights

They actually don’t weigh very much (although heavier options are available), but since the fabric is so thin I didn’t want to weigh it down too much and make it look weird.  I went to my handy dandy sewing box, which my mom used to use:

sewing box

Using navy thread, I hand-sewed a fishing weight every 5 inches along the hem of the dress:

sewing done

Testing it out today revealed that the fishing weights do indeed help with breezes, but are still not effective against stronger gusts of wind.  I’m debating on getting another pack (they’re only about $1.50) and sewing more in.  It took such a long time though, working with such tiny things and making sure that they were securely attached, that I’m not up to doing more right now.

The second thing I wanted to mention today is a bit belated.  Over a week ago, Rachel from The Little Room of Rachell made a guest post on another blog about how to crochet if you are left-handed.  Being right handed myself, I never really thought of how troublesome it would be to try to learn as a leftie from right-handed instructions (which pretty much everything is), but now I see that it would definitely be nice to have some instruction.  I just wanted to link to her post so you can see it, if you haven’t already.  The post is on the blog Slugs on the Refrigerator; click here for the post!  I had actually never seen that blog before, so I subscribed immediately — it looks great!

That’s all for today, thanks for stopping by!  The next CAL post is already scheduled, so get ready for Saturday!

CAL: week 9

Can you believe we’re already at week 9?  It doesn’t seem like that long!  Are you ready for week 9?  Let’s get started, and remember that we’re using US terms!

Last week, we left off after finishing row 62:

cal86

row 63

With new color, hdc across.

row 64

With new color, dc across.

rows 65-67

Another set of granny stripe rows!  Click here for the original detailed pattern.  Here it is so far:

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row 68

With new color, dc across.

row 69

With new color, hdc across.

row 70

With new color, dc across.  Here’s all of this week’s rows:

cal88

I couldn’t get a picture of the whole blanket that looked blog-worthy due to bad lighting, and I’ve started next week’s rows already, so I’m sorry there’s not a picture of the whole blanket this week.  Hopefully next week I can get a good one!

Thanks to everyone who’s been sharing the CAL (we’re still getting new participants, which is great) and posting their progress on the facebook/Ravelry pages.  It’s really neat to see everyone’s progress!

That’s all for this week, thanks for stopping by!

CAL: week 8

Hello everyone!  I’m getting my post done at 12:01 anyway, despite thinking I’d be a little late.  I hope you guys are ready! And remember, we’re using US terms!

Last week we finished with row 54:

cal84

 

row 55

With new color, hdc across.

rows 56-58

Using another color that you have a lot of, repeat the three rows of the bobble pattern.  If you need a refresher, check back to week 4 for the instructions.

row 59

With new color, hdc across.

row 60

With new color, dc across.

row 61

With new color, hdc across.

row 62

With new color, dc across.

Here’s all of these rows in a close-up:

cal85

And here is the whole blanket:

cal86

It’s getting harder and harder to photograph the whole thing!  And I do apologize for not having photos for each row; I mean to, but I really get going and I forget to stop and take them!  I’ll try harder to remember next time, haha.  However, if I’m crocheting at night, there’s not really a point as the lighting is so poor and makes for very oddly colored photos.

We’re still getting new participants who are working very diligently to catch up.  Welcome, newcomers!  If anyone has questions, feel free to ask.  You might like to peruse my post “how the CAL will work” for the basics.  All of the CAL posts can be found (in reverse order) in the CAL category, which can be located in the top menu bar of this site or by clicking on the button in the sidebar on the right hand side of the page.  Also, we’d love to see your pictures on the facebook page, the Ravelry group, or with the hashtag #nyaccal on Instagram — it’s so cool to see everyone’s blankets progressing!

Also, a huge thank you to everyone who’s shared this CAL on their own blogs, on forums, on facebook, or any other way you’ve spread the word.  I really appreciate it and I know that without you sharing this, we would not have nearly so many participants!

That’s all for this week’s CAL post.  I hope you all are still enjoying both the process of making the blanket and the way it’s turning out!