There's more where that came from!

I thought I'd take a minute and add some follow up pictures to the crochet stuff I put up last week. I gave most of this stuff away, so I'm happy to have photographed my first baby steps in crochet.

Mr. Fight was super bummed that his Christmas present didn't show up before Christmas, even though I was a good girl and ordered it on December 4, so I made him a little gift. (He wanted a custom made football scarf from Germany. I guess 3 weeks to make and ship the scarf wasn't cutting it.) He requested a small bag, a "stash bag" one could say. These were totally easy to make. I found the pattern on Ravelry and it comes from Priscilla's Crochet. They are actually eyeglass cases:

This is the One Skein Scarf I made for my momma. The pattern is by Denise Cozzitorto and was published in Stitch'n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker:

This is what I made for my little brother. The pattern was a challenge, especially since I wasn't paying close enough attention to counting my stitches. I was watching TV with Mr. Fight and he kept talking and I wanted to say, "Can't you see I'm counting!!!!! I am crocheting on a deadline! I just learned how to do this! I am not a machine!" but I didn't. Instead the reaper is a little wonky. So be it.

It is from the book Creepy Cute Crochet, by Christen Haden:

And lastly, my work in progress. I am making a bag that is big enough to carry files in, a book, a crochet project, whatever. I found this "Easy Peasy Crocheted Bag" on Laughing Purple Goldfish's blog.

Cheers!

I love crochet!

Ok, so I mentioned that I was going to learn how to crochet, well, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! I am absloutly nuts about crochet! I freakin' love it.

The first thing I made was basically a raggity rectangle of single crochet that was all lopsided and missing many stitches. I tied it off and threw it in my bag as a reminder of my first crochet baby steps! Then I decided to try out a fresh ball of a yarn and a new stitch. I decided to try double crochet (love!) and I stitched about 14 rows with nice and soft (but nice and cheap) Caron Simply Soft. I then felt comfortable with that stitch and it was looking pretty good, with the same amount of stitches in each row, 14 rows later. Nice. It was on to triple crochet. I did about 7 rows of triple crochet and realized I preferred making the doubles better. However, at this point I had decided that this was to be a scarf, so I had to figure out some kind of plan. I decided to leave my 14 rows of double and 7 rows of triple and start switching back and forth between the two for the length of the scarf. So I did double-triple-double-triple until it was almost as long as I wanted. Then I finished her off with 7 rows of triple and 14 rows of double crochet to make it match the beginning. At this point I could have stopped but I was feeling like the scarf needed a little more "pizzazz". So I broke out the shell stitch with the black Simply Soft! Oh yeah! (Picture me saying that like Peggy Hill.)

Here it is on my desk:

There's no stopping me! Then I did a little circle to learn how to crochet with increasing and decreasing stitches:

Here's another: So I decided to put this to good use and make some Christmas presents for my family since I did take the Handmade pledge this year. (See link button in sidebar.)

I only have one thing left to make, and that's something for my father, which will be a scarf. I made stuff for my little brother and mom that I don't have pictures of yet, but I do have the scarf that I made for my sister. This is based on a design by Mermaiden on Ravelry.

When you roll it up IT LOOKS LIKE SUSHI! Bwahhhhhahahaha!

On the Homefront

Well, things could be better. I haven't posted anything yet about the shit storm that is my personal life, but here's a little taste. I work for peanuts and my husband has been out of work since March. I've been paying to keep up his health insurance since he has expensive medical issues, specifically crippling anxiety and depression (which is why he's currently out of work). I found out last week that Mr. Fight's health insurance got cancelled because I paid the bill too late. Well, I paid the bill too late because my husband doesn't have a job and I'm trying to keep us not homeless and I just did not have the money. Bummer. The real pisser is that all the stuff I have to pay for now without the insurance costs MORE than the money I didn't have to pay for the insurance. Grrr....

On the bright side, normally it's a chore to hide all the gaps in my husband's employment history when I update his resume, but at least this time the economy being in the toilet sort of helps cover his tracks. He's not like some low-life who doesn't want to work, he just has a hard time keeping jobs. He gets all worked up over something or another going on in his life or at home and he wants to call out of work because he's so overwhelmed with whatever. Then he's all freaked out that everyone at work is talking about what a loser he is for calling out, which makes him afraid to go back, so he calls out for a week or more, ultimately ending in him getting canned. That's pretty much the cycle. It's hard.

Right now he is looking for a job, but there is really nothing in the paper. He's been looking since August or so. After he got fired this last time in March, I told him to take some time, go to the doctor and try to get a little bit of control back in his life. He's been on every anxiety/depression medication I've ever heard of and none of it seems to help him. What happens is, he feels like shit so he goes to the doctor and they say, "Maybe we should try something else".

Then he has to take the new pills for however long it takes for them to kick in and for him to get used to them. Then he doesn't know how he feels because he can't tell if his body is still getting used to the pills, or the dose isn't right or the combination isn't right. All he knows is that he never feels good. It's not that he wants to feel happy all the time, it's just that he wants to feel not overwhelmed by feelings of being a total failure and obsessing over ever tiny thing that is going bad in his life. I can't imagine how hard it must be for him to be so miserable all the time. I mean, I'm certainly not happy with where I am in life and certainly thought I'd have made something better of myself, but I'm not so consumed by these thoughts that I just can't get up and function. I get up and go to work because someone has to.

He has some breakdown along the way where he can't "suck it up" and look at the big picture. The consequences of his actions aren't what's important to him in that moment, it's not doing whatever the next thing is he would have to do-like go to work or to a family party. He just wants to curl up in a little funk and not leave the house, see people, go to the store, anything. He goes on like this for months until someone (him or the doctor) finally says, "Maybe we should try something else."