Check-In Post - Nov 21st 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 (courtesy of ysabetwordsmith): When learning a new art or craft, do you prefer level-grinding the basics, skipping ahead to the cool techniques, or a mix of both?


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]

Laundry, dishes, writing... Where did the day go? No crafting happened. Oh well.

[darkcedars]

My yesterday was swallowed up by chores. I did read some though.

[badly_knitted]

Sometimes it happens. I was writing rather than reading, though.

[wiseheart]

Sounds depressingly familiar. 🙁

[badly_knitted]

I have more time for crafting in summer when there's more daylight and I don't have the fire to deal with. Winter just sucks.

[darkcedars]

Two rainy days, so not painting on the house. I'm getting nervous about finishing. Probably will be fine. I'm at the halfway point on the last side.

I've made most of the background of the second to last trivet today.

[badly_knitted]

Fingers crossed that you can finish the painting in the next few days

Well done on the trivet progress.

[darkcedars]

Thanksgiving is this coming week so that will be in my way too, lol.

[badly_knitted]

How inconvenient!

[wiseheart]

Good luck with your painting! Stupid weather! 😡

[darkcedars]

It's taking me two working days to finish a section in front of the scaffolding - one for repairs, one for paint - so even though we did need rain two days of it makes me shake my fist.

[badly_knitted]

That's frustrating. Hopefully it'll stop so you can finish.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Today is raining, so I'll be writing.

Yesterday I managed to plant 16 pots of native grasses that I started from seed earlier this year, but then it got too hot and dry to plant. Some pots had evidently died, but others had surprisingly robust rootballs and a few even had wisps of green still at the crown. Switchgrass, sideoats grama, and river oats.

My Follow Friday theme was Knitting.

My hobby post was Quilting.

I finally got back to the Idea Store to scout it in more depth.

>> When learning a new art or craft, do you prefer level-grinding the basics, skipping ahead to the cool techniques, or a mix of both? <<

I tend to poke around in search of techniques I can use immediately, to see if it's fun enough to keep doing. These are usually but not always basics. A quirk of some crafts is they have different things that people may or may or may not be good at doing. Take embroidery, some people hate French knots but I've seen a lady make sheep, flowers, and most of the rest of a piece with them. If I decide that I want to stick with a craft, I am likely to look up a list of basic skills and experiment with those to see if I think I can reasonably master them. If so, I'll put some effort into getting good at them.

For crafts where I am more likely to be a fan or patron than a producer, I may look at the higher stuff. I can recognize many historic crafts from dabbling in them, and with something like quilting or embroidery, I know many of the patterns because it is just fun to look at them and recognize ones I know. I can make both of those, but they're time-consuming enough that I don't do it often. Also, this tells me when to be impressed, like the recent miniature log cabin quilt whose square were maybe an inch and a half, with individual strips maybe 1/8" wide.

Re: Thoughts

[badly_knitted]

Well, at least the rain should suit your newly planted grasses, give them a bit of a boost to start getting them established in their new spots.

I don't mind French knots, most of the time they turn out pretty well, but I wouldn't want to make an entire project of them.

It's important to try things to see if you're going to like them, but the basics aren't always enough for people to make up their minds, since they can be a bit boring compared to the more advanced techniques, so it can be a good idea to experiment with both before deciding whether or not to invest money in supplies. I find garter stich in knitting (knit every row) incredibly tedious, so once I knew how to cast on, and do both knit and purl stitches, I went straight to the most complicated pattern I could find to see if I would enjoy knitting. I did. Still think garter stitch is horrible though.

That miniature quilt sounds amazing!

Re: Thoughts

[darkcedars]

Glad you could plant the grass before a rainy day! Much easier. May they all flourish.

[wiseheart]

Two more batches of cookies done. I am up to twelve different sorts.

[darkcedars]

Amazing cookie progress as per usual. I'm going to need to make a batch before my in-laws get here on the 8th.

[badly_knitted]

Woooo! Great progress!