Snowmen and Trees

I am slowly (but surely) playing catch-up with some oldish photos which've been sitting in our camera. I've just started learning about our new photo-editing software so I expect that my photos will look a bit weird as I try different things and figure out how to balance color and brightness and such. 

There are many, many others I took longer ago while my photo-editing system was in limbo which I'm going to let go of because they go too far back to have any relevance now. A few of those projects still made it to the blog because I happened to also take some back-up shots with my cellphone. But some simply didn't, and that's OK. Life is more than just photos and projects we did or didn't document - some are meant to be enjoyed in the moment and not recorded, is how I see it.  

Anyway, here are some wooden things I painted over this past holiday season. The first is more of these familiar Christmas trees, which have become a sort of Advent tradition in recent years (see here) and here ). I love how it's meditative and forces me to slow down in the midst of the busyness and focus on the smallness of the details, the symmetry and to wait for the different layers of paint and varnish to dry before I can add the next one.

Last fall, I facilitated a grief support group which was a lovely healing experience for me (and for the participants also, I hope). As we headed toward Thanksgiving and Christmas, some of us expressed apprehension about the coming holidays and the uncertainties therein. Like not knowing if we we would even put up a Christmas tree, for instance - grief is fraught with tension: while we have the desire (or the desire for the desire) for it, we often don't have the wherewithal to do something that's previously brought us joy or comfort. 

So I thought I'd paint these little Christmas trees for the participants so they might have a symbolic tree of sorts to observe the season, if celebrating wasn't quite accessible that year.

I took photos because with each year's batch, new designs emerge among which I discover new favorites even as I'm giving them away.

With the photos, I'll have records I can return to in subsequent years to recreate them if I want.

Here's another wooden project: snowmen. 

I must've had these blanks forever, and although I began painting them a couple of Christmasses ago, I finished them only this January. Initially, I intended them to be just regular snowmen, with generic scarves and hats and lump-of-coal buttons but they eventually became my family, and I've tried to capture the activities and hobbies with which each member identifies at this moment in time.

Like a snapshot, but 3D, you know? I did a similar thing with Kate over a decade ago, when she was in her princess phase and I'd wanted to remember all her  dress-up personas.

This is Emily with her lavender sprigs and Goldfish crackers.

her trusty trombone,

her books and paint brushes.

This is Jenna who plays the piano, 

flute, 

and bakes up a storm. Anyone want to guess what the TS is on her red scarf?

This is Kate (and Bunny), 

her goggles and Shrek-ear crocs, buttons-of-cheese,

and her alto sax. 

This is my husband who loves photography, baseball, growing his native plants

grilling, 

and our cat Milo who loves being outside as much as he does.

Finally, this is me, with pineapple tart buttons, saddle-stitched hat and my two defining crocheted projects - the scarf I miraculously finished 

and the infernal millstone stitch afghan that I fear I never will. 

Here it is, incidentally - it hasn't grown much since I took that photo a year ago.

And here's our other cat Maisy, who follows me around constantly.

It feels strange posting about Christmas trees and snowmen this late into the new year . . .  then again, maybe not snowmen, since this is Minnesota after all and the snow is ours for keeps till who knows when. Hope you're getting some good sunshine where you are, and seeing the occasional bird or two. Be well, friends!

Baskets

Remember those crocheted baskets I was telling you about some months ago? The ones about which I was slightly obsessed, and the photos of which I promised to share but then misplaced because we're in a state of limbo regarding how to get them off the camera, edited and organized?

I found the photos! 

Elation!

(We still don't have a satisfactory solution for the managing photos, but whatever. Life must go on.) 

It began when, after finishing oodles of washcloths and an entire, wearable scarf, I beheld the leftover yarn and wondered what one might do with it all. Might they be given to the cats? (No - dangerous). Might they be amassed in a bag and turned into stuffing for softies? (No - too much like metaphorical intestines, thus icky). Might they be made into tiny amigurumi animals? (No - no patience). Might they languish in a tub in my sewing room, like my fabric scraps, waiting for my kids to have children of their own so that in the distant future, I might host a Let's Make Yarn Pictures crafting retreat with grandma? 

No. No. No.

So I asked the internet. And the internet suggested this tutorial. I'd never done crochet-in-the-round before, only rows and C2C, so I thought I'd try it. Plus, it's a circle, which is my favorite shape, so.

This was my first basket. It was essentially a bucket with a flat base and vertical walls, made with 4-6 strands of worsted-weight yarn (or the equivalent thickness of other gauge yarns together). It was fun to combine different colors of narrow yarn to make the distinct bands.

The handle, though, I thought was a bit squishy to get an adult's hand through.

So I made another basket. 

And added more stitches to the handles so the hand opening would be larger. I felt quite clever.

Until I realized that the arch, while gorgeously curvy in 2D, actually bowed outward.

See.

Which, had it been one's to make protruding handles originally, would have been a success, except I'd been going for a woven-carryall look, and sticky-out handles were Bad News.

Then I analyzed it and decided that this was because the two rows of the handle had identical numbers of stitches. And everyone who's done middle school geometry knows that those two rows have different radii of curvature, which means their circumferential arcs cannot be the same length. Which is fancy for "upper row must have more stitches than than lower row".

 

So I made a third basket. Full disclosure: by now, I had run out of yarn scraps that looked good together, so I had to go shopping for new yarn, which I knew would eventually produce even more leftovers, the irony of which didn't escape me, but I was obsessed and obsessed people have no common sense, only an inordinate fear of making things the color of vomit.

This was much better, I thought.

I made sure the upper row in the handle had more stitches than the lower,

to ensure the handle lay flat along the same plane as the wall of the basket.

Being on a roll, I made a fourth basket.

And justified it with needing to use up this ribbon yarn I'd bought years ago for no reason other than being pretty. 

Finally, I got bored making the same kind of basket and thought I'd try one with a curved bowl-shaped base. The rounds were crocheted as spirals, not distinct circles. I wasn't sure if that was why the thing seemed to be slightly skewed.

Regardless, I do love how cauldron-like it is.

Here's a different kind of handle - made separately and then attached to each side.

And now I'm done with baskets. They were a lot of fun to make, and I learned so much, but they were hard on one's hands because of the thickness of the combined yarn strand. As feared, I ended up with even more yarn (and leftovers) than before. But are we surprised, really? Have you seen my fabric stash? Or cardboard hoard?