Thoughts on a Sunday afternoon spent on the couch while wearing yoga pants and no bra.

I should do something.

But it’s Sunday.

Look at that messy utility room. I should clean it.

Why does Nate talk so much? Maybe he should read a book.

But the sun in shining and it’s November. Let him play outside a little longer.

I should clean that bathroom.

I should start a painting project.

Maybe we should have planned a family activity. After all, it’s sunny.

Oh man, I need to make a packing list for our Ohio trip. Have we found a hotel yet?

I should do something.

Nah, it’s Sunday.

on writing

So I published something.

I haven’t written much since. I haven’t exactly been idle, either. There’s been work, travel, family as well as the usual dishes, laundry, cooking.

But I haven’t had much to say.

There’s a lot of talk in the writing community about writing as a habit, a daily exercise. Which I think is great. For years, I have felt guilt for not having such a habit. I felt like a writing failure because I didn’t get up at 4am to do anything, much less crank out a daily quota of pages.

I do not write every day. It’s practically heresy, I know.

But here’s the thing: I still write. Sporadically. Occasionally. When I have to. When I want to.

I still think I should work on developing more of a habit, but there shouldn’t be guilt in that. My life is full and sometimes, that’s enough.

I got the biggest piece of my life published and it had nothing to do with a habit. It was because of luck, connections, and more luck. I did little to cause publication - somebody heard me speak and took a chance.

And as it happened, despite my lack of a respectable writing habit, I wrote something good, something that I was insanely proud of, something that left people awed.

I still thrill when I think about it.

My goals are to keep writing, in whatever way I can. I would like to submit a few essays to journals and contests, to see what else might be lucky. I’ve attempted to blog once a week with varying degrees of success.

I recently saw an old friend and she expressed surprise that I was still writing, all these years after college. She said mutual friends had stopped, found another calling. I almost laughed at her words, not because they were funny, but because stopping had never occurred to me. I’ll keep writing just as I keep taking showers or eating Rice Krispies: because it’s a part of me I can never do without.

 

Minecraft Creeper Crocheted Blanket

It may be a bit odd to write about brain cancer and crochet patterns in subsequent posts. I thought about not posting it, but it’s my space and since my life revolves around both, here we go.

Nate, at seven, is a fan of Minecraft like most kids he knows. When we moved, he wanted a Minecraft themed room and I searched Pinterest like a good suburban mom. Most of the ideas were insane and hello, he might change his mind in six months. I went the lazy route: I bought posters that can be easily changed with shifting interests. He bought a stuffed character with his birthday money and taped up pictures from a LEGO magazine. We declared success.

Earlier this year, I saw several versions of a granny square Minecraft blanket: here, here, and here.

I tried to follow this pattern, but ended up finding fewer shades of green than I would have liked, so I had to wing it a bit. I don’t have an exact pattern, but I can explain my method. Keep in mind, my creeper ended up being in the shape of a rectangle, not a square like most things in Minecraft. I stopped at 80 granny squares because I was sick of making them, but you easily add a row to each side to square it off (bringing your overall number of squares to 100).

Supplies:

1 skein Red Heart Super Saver Hunter Green

2 skeins Vanna’s Choice Fern

2 skeins Vanna’s Choice Dusty Green

2 skeins Vanna’s Choice Olive

3 skeins Vanna’s Choice Kelly Green (used two for squares, one for joining)

2 skeins Vanna’s Choice Linen

4 skeins Vanna’s Choice black

5.5mm hook

Finished size: approximately five feet by four feet

Instructions:

(Basic granny square: I did five rounds, with one chain stitch between clusters and two chain stitches on the corners.)

Make ten basic granny squares of each color except black. Make twenty squares from the black. Altogether, you should have 80 squares total. The Red Heart yarn made squares that were slightly bigger than the others, but it didn’t matter when I joined them together.

Lay out the squares in the design that you want. I didn’t want any specific green touching another of the same shade, so I made sure the placement was varied. Once I had my layout, I took a picture and then made piles of each horizontal row, keeping the squares in the order I wanted. That way, I just join them together quickly without constantly looking at my picture.

I used this joining method, which worked well. The joining yarn does show more than I would like, but that’s somewhat unavoidable due to so many colors. I joined the first two horizontal rows and just kept adding them that way until it was together only in horizontal seams. Then I went back and folded each seams vertically, joining the same way.

Next, I sewed in all the yarn ends. I thought I would go crazy sewing in each square as I was making them and I’m glad I waited to do them all at once.

The border was just two rows of a granny pattern. On the last round, I added a picot stitch between the second and third stitch of each cluster. It added the illusion of a third round without needing another skein of black yarn.

I blocked it by spraying it lightly in my shower with the showerhead (giant spray bottle!) and pinning it to the desired measurements to my carpet. I always run a fan pointed toward the ground on my projects and it seems to work nicely.

Overall, I’m very pleased with the result. It required far too much materials and man hours in my opinion, but I’m glad I finished it and I know my son will love it.