Check-In Post - April 3rd 2025

[badly_knitted]

Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.

Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?

There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.


This Week's Question: Do you change crafts with the season or stick to the same crafts year round?


If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.

I now declare this Check-In OPEN!

Comments

[badly_knitted]

No knitting again today. Ex-neighbour stopped by to pick up the things she left with me, and then I did some digging and weeding in the garden, got some more roots out. Also did some writing. Now I'm tired but I have a post to write for a community I co-mod.

[wiseheart]

I know the feeling. When picowrimo is in session, I feel the pressure, too. Even though I greatly enjoy running the show.

[badly_knitted]

The post is done and posted! I enjoy writing them, but it's hard to get started.

[peaceful_sands]

Well done - now you can relax and enjoy the evening.

[badly_knitted]

I did some more writing instead of relaxing, but I think I'll do a jigsaw after I answer all my emails.

[peaceful_sands]

Sounds nice - what's the current jigsaw of?

[badly_knitted]

This one was a daft pink elephant and a grey bird under a rainbow. I like brightly coloured jigsaws at the moment and I've found a person who has hundreds of silly ones with birds, monsters, bugs, unicorns, and rainbows. =D

[nagi_schwarz]

Even if no knitting, you got loads done, so kudos to you!

[badly_knitted]

Thank you! Yes, it was a busy day.

[wiseheart]

I successfully baked two lovely sorts of Easter biscuits today. My baking mojo seems to have recovered, at least temporarily. I hope it won't abandon me again - I still have another two sorts to bake, plus something for us; a cake or a traybake.

No egg baskets today. No time for anything else.

[badly_knitted]

Oooh, yummy biscuits!

It wasn't your baking mojo that was the problem, it was a bad batch of flour.

[peaceful_sands]

Sounds very delicious- I hope those who get to try them and appreciate your efforts.

[nagi_schwarz]

Yay for baking mojo recovery! Easter biscuits sound delicious, no lie.

[althea_valara]

Stitch Club today, so my crafting got done early.

I brought along my Perfect Knit T-Shirt which has been hibernating for a while. I actually had pulled it out last night and did two rows on it. I did a row while at Stitch Club, then thought I'd better check the gauge I'm getting on it. Even with my new way of tensioning the yarn, which makes firmer stitches, I'm still at too loose a gauge, argh! It's supposed to be 22 stitches per 4"/10cm, and I'm getting 20. So I put that way to let it think about what it did, and I will frog and restart later with a smaller needle. Luckily I wasn't too far into it, maybe an inch and a half (I hadn't even joined in the round yet!) so not much to redo, but STILL. ARGH.

Instead I worked on the Mosaic Cardi, and got 2 rows done on it while having a lovely chat with one of the members I don't often sit next to, so that was nice.

I want to do more crafting now, but my team has a deadline at work tomorrow and we still have a LOT of work left, so I'm reluctantly going to go do some (I usually take Stitch Club Thursdays off of work, but since I set my own hours... I think it would be best if I did even an hour of work today.)

[peaceful_sands]

Shame about the gauge not working up right. Well done on your progress on the other project. Hopefully the extra work tonight will make tomorrow easier and then you can get back to your usual patterns.

[badly_knitted]

ARGH indeed! I hope you can get the tension you want on the next try. It's so frustrating when it won't go right. Well done on the cardi progress though, and good luck with work, hope you can make a good dent in what still needs doing.

[nagi_schwarz]

That perfect knit t-shirt sounds fascinating! And Stitch Club sound super fun. Also the Mosaic Cardi sounds really pretty!

[peaceful_sands]

I worked on the travel project today - several pages of sticking in photos and writing and labelling photos that don’t have any specific writing to go with them. I managed to get a turquoise pen and some other suitable colours today as hoped. Then I got my laptop out and have written about 800 words about the next stage of the journey- as I have a writing goal of 100,000 words for my current Mission 101, I am including these towards that.

This evening, it’s back to the cushion cover.

I mentioned the other day that I’d finished another painting kit - in case anyone would like to see a photo of it, I’ve posted one here . It’s a mountain landscape.

[badly_knitted]

The painting is beautiful! I could practically smell the pine trees!

Great progress on the travel project, and that's a good chunk of words towards your 100k goal.

Enjoy working on the cushion cover!

[peaceful_sands]

Thanks, glad you liked the painting - I have to say that although I've been a bit disappointed with the quality of the paint and how many are drying out before I've even opened them, the actual paintings are really quite good for someone like me - makes it look almost like I know what I'm doing!

I remember when I used to be able to write a lot more in a shorter space of time, but I think when I'm writing this kind of thing, I'm stopping to check facts and spellings of place names and researching some of the other information that I want to include to give a fuller picture, so 800 isn't a bad number - it took me quite a while to find the name of a particular place that I stopped on a train and looking at maps to work out that it wasn't either of the towns that I thought it might have been! That's the problem when you're travelling in a country where you don't speak the language and the script they use is different to ours so it was never just a matter of 'reading the signs' - lol.

I'm hoping this might nudge me back into a more disciplined approach to writing again so that I either finish a story for the unconventional courtship challenge or get to work on the book I decided I wanted to write (ha ha! It sounded like a good idea when I thought of it!)

[badly_knitted]

Sad about the paint quality, but the paintings are certainly impressive.

It does depend a lot on what you're writing. Anything tat requires research and checking information is bound to be slower going than something you can just write out of your own head. I well remember the headaches of dealing with journals titled in the Cyrillic alphabet when I worked in the university science library. Figuring out where to shelve them to keep them with all the other issues of the same journal... No just reading the title, it had to be deciphered first.

Hopefully your writing muses will resurface so you can get on with your challenge fic, or your book. Must admit, I don't have the patience to write a book, so I admire your ambition!

[nagi_schwarz]

The painting is gorgeous! Way to go! Also the travel project sounds lovely indeed. You can do it!

[yarnandglue]

Ooh, I love pens with colorful ink! Congratulations on all the writing too!

[nagi_schwarz]

I got the puzzle purse letters folded at least. Jury's out on whether I can decorate them tonight. But I did manage to get a bit of tatting done, so that's good. Also acquired some supplies to make recycled paper (with the hope that I can then stitch the paper into books). So. Small steps!

[badly_knitted]

Well done with the folding and the tatting.

Making recycled paper sounds interesting! Good luck with that.