Check-In Post - July 13th 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: What do you like to listen to / watch while crafting?


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]

Made good progress on the first hearts and flowers design, now that I've fixed yesterday's mistake. Most of the cross stitch is done. Still got backstitch to do once the last bit of cross stitch is finished.


Also dealt with the annoying bramble, and finished sweeping the path.

[fadingfootsteps]

Mistakes suck but everything is progressing, so yay!

Banished the brambles too. But they'll be back....

[badly_knitted]

Only one bramble banished... there are plenty of others, but they're fruiting at present so I want to get some fruit in return for allowing them space.

Progress is fair, I'm content.

[wiseheart]

That is the least the frigging brambles can do in exchange!

[badly_knitted]

Precisely! They have to pay rent.

[spiralicious]

Well done on both!

[badly_knitted]

Thank you! I was very heroic!

[spiralicious]

Indeed!

[peaceful_sands]

Sounds like a productive day.

[badly_knitted]

It was, I was pleased with how much I got sorted.

[fadingfootsteps]

I am making another crane (white thread with silver foil instead of grey+silver) 3/5 pieces done during DnD/Masks session.

Unless I pause to finish the succulent cushion finally, the next project will probably be a white with iridescent foil crane.

(I may be on cranes for a while. I've got somewhere over 800M of thread to use up, not even counting the foil rolls I've been using (technically 60m apiece))

[badly_knitted]

Well, keep up with the cranes! Maybe you'll end up with a thousand of them! They sound like they'll be nicely sparkly.

[wiseheart]

Everyone needs a little sparkle in their lives. ;)

[fadingfootsteps]

glitter and gleam, a personalized flock of cranes for any situation! We got parties, disco balls, attempts to blind people, and MORE!

[fadingfootsteps]

Outta this all I doubt a thousand! Takes a little more than a meter a crane :P

Tbh I'm not sure how much it takes per crane. Measuring might be in order but it's not like, a priority.

W/ the thousand number though, maybe someday! Most of my yarn rolls end up funding a crane eventually, bc it gets rid of a lot of scrap and keeps me busy. With this thread this is gonna be quite a few... I think after the foil rolls is added it's like 1100m to kill? And I'll like, mix them up so that not all five pieces are the same color or arrangement from crane to crane to keep them interesting.

[badly_knitted]

Yes, quite a bit more, I should imagine!

Ooh, that will certainly add interest to the cranes! Each one different.

[spiralicious]

It sounds like you are going to end up with a lovely flock!

[peaceful_sands]

Sounds like you're doing well.

[wiseheart]

I've sewn together the other three cherry pit pillowcases in the flip side with running stitch. Then I turned them back to the right side, and tomorrow I'll start edging them with blanket stitch. That will most likely take me the rest of the week, but that's okay. I'm not in a great hurry with them.

[badly_knitted]

That's great progress, well done!

[spiralicious]

Wonderful progress!

[peaceful_sands]

You are doing well.

[spiralicious]

I don't think I've done any crafting since my last check in? Besides plotting and I have been keeping up with my daily journal, which is mostly doodles in a space confined to the size of an index card, approximately.

So basically, I was already in sleep deficit and falling asleep while knitting, but then my neighbor needed to go on an emergency trip cross country and I am now on chicken duty for 7 weeks. Which means getting up about 3 hours earlier than normal, everyday, for 7 weeks. And I cannot convince my body to go to sleep earlier. I see more napping and less knitting in my immediate future.

On the plus side, I get to keep all the eggs, which is 4 to 8 everyday.

An unrelated bright spot, I had to come up with 2 birthday cards with no warning today and was able to pull some nice cards from my stash of making cards every week with Lynne for the last 16 months.

[badly_knitted]

Doodling can be fun!

Oh no! Good luck with the napping. Getting up early sucks anyway, but three hours early every day for 7 weeks would kill me. Break out the power naps.

All the eggs will be nice though.

Yay! Birthday cards all ready and waiting to be used!

[spiralicious]

Doodling is fun and cathartic sometimes.

Thanks. I am at the point where not all naps are intentional. Only a month left to go.

The eggs are nice. The eggs are starting to be overwhelming. We get between 4 & 7 a day from the fully grown chickens. One of which lays an egg that is twice as big as a regular chicken egg fairly consistently. Yesterday, the three not quite grown chickens started laying eggs as well. Or quails have been breaking in to lay eggs.

Yes!

[badly_knitted]

I only nap unintentionally... Not fun when I nearly fall off the chair at my desk.

That is A LOT of eggs!

[spiralicious]

That just sounds dangerous.

So, so many eggs.

[badly_knitted]

Unfortunately I'm usually trying to finish something art my computer when my body decides to take an unscheduled nap =/

What are you doing with them all?

[spiralicious]

Oh no!

So far, we've been making more recipes with eggs in them for dinner. My mother has been eating a lot of egg sandwiches. She has also started occasionally making an egg themed breakfast for both of us. (She does not usually cook breakfast at all, as a rule.) And my dad has been getting a dozen eggs a week for a couple weeks. Inside our fridge looks like a weird game of Tetris though.

[badly_knitted]

I can only imagine! Fresh eggs though...

[spiralicious]

Yes, if only it were closer to baking season.

[badly_knitted]

Could you not bake and freeze some things?

[spiralicious]

That is pretty much what happened.

[badly_knitted]

Yay!

[peaceful_sands]

I hope you manage to get some decent sleep along the way. And great that you had some cards perfect for what you needed.

[spiralicious]

Thanks! I'm doing my best to get sleep where I can. Yeah, it was very handy.

[malurette]

Today I taught my brother how to sew a button on trousers, and I mended one of my shirts--two buttons and a small tear on the sleeve.

[badly_knitted]

Well done! More men and boys need to know how to sew, they shouldn't rely on their wives and mothers. My nephew has done all his own sewing since he was a boy.

[peaceful_sands]

Back when I was teaching, we would sew as a class - as they were young, it was very basic stitching but my expectation was always that it was something everyone could learn and 'enjoy' (take out the frustration of threading needles and threads getting tangled) but my thought was always behave as if everything I taught was just another thing to learn, no assumptions on 'girl' or 'boy' - from building with construction kits to sewing. It paid off when a few years later, I was helping another teacher run a lunchtime knitting club and some of the boys I taught a few years before turned up because they wanted to try it out and 'did it matter? was the club just for girls?' - absolutely not just for girls. I know the likelihood is most of them wouldn't have stuck with it beyond the end of the club, but you never know. To be honest, there were a lot of the girls who equally didn't know anyone who crafted as a past time outside - many of them never saw any of these skills modelled. Such a shame!

[badly_knitted]

It is an awful shame that crafting isn't more widespread and isn't taught much in schools. I've been making all sorts of things since I was little.

Knitting (and cross stitch) are definitely not just for girls. There have been some great male knitwear designers, and a lot of men cross stitch. (I have my fanfic characters knit, crochet, cross stitch etc., and they enjoy it).

[peaceful_sands]

Great that you got your shirts fixed and that your brother can do his own button fixing going forward - it's so simple a task but I have actually come across people who don't know how and have to pay to have buttons sewn back on.