Much better gingko leaves

Gingko biloba

More Zentangle

Zentangle and the Dunning-Kruger effect

I'm between "I'm never going to understand this" and "It's starting to make sense"

A practice page

Shells and plumes

"Apacore"

Zentangle - The Newest Fad Around Here

Laurie Dobson taught the ladies' group at church how to do this learnable, structured doodle art. I'm still learning. Rhonda Grundy was kind enough to bring me the tools I left behind at the class.

"C" 8-15-19

Is this creative? Only in a sense. You can come up with your own "tangles" and that's creative. The arrangement of them on the page (like none of these here) can require some artistic thought. These are pretty much random.

See these online resources
Zentangle.com

TanglePatterns.com

Day-Timer DIY make your own daytimer cover

DIY! Do it yourself. Here's how to make a cover for your compact Day-Timer (daytimer) wirebound  filler notebooks, the 3 x 5 inch size. Day-Timer is a popular brand of day planner or daybook. I used them back in the pre-phone days, and recently realized that you can do things with a little notebook that you can't with a phone, so I shelled out for a year's worth of wirebound filler notebooks, 2 pages per day. I wouldn't call this a hack; it's just a do-it-yourself cover.

The Day-Timer company wants an arm and a leg for a leather cover and not much less for a "bonded" leather one. They don't sell cheapo vinyl ones any more. THIS design costs less than $2 and will protect your notebook and fit in your pocket or purse.

The cover sewed together. Large rectangle, narrow rectangle,
large rectangle with slightly smaller pocket

How the pocket works

Day-Timer filler in cover

1. Get a sheet of 7 squares/inch needlepoint plastic mesh from Joann.
2. Cut two pieces 35 x 23 squares, making sure to leave the edge on. See enlarged picture to the right below. Scissors work.
3. Cut a piece 35 x 20 squares.
4. Sew the smaller piece (35 x 20) to the edge, top, and bottom of one of the large pieces for a pocket.
5. Cut a piece 35 x 3 squares.
6. Sew the edges so that the narrow piece is the spine and the other two pieces are the cover. Make sure the inner (open) edge of the pocket is toward the spine.
7. Slip the back cover of the notebook into the pocket.
8. Decorate as desired. You could do actual needlepoint on this (there is enough space vertically) or sew beads on especially if you use 10 to the inch mesh.

Cut so that the edge is smooth.

New pictures of 2008(?) "Delft" shawl and others using same pattern

This is the first shawl I made. I call it the "Delft" shawl.

• I used James G. Davis's "Easy Breezy Filet Square" pattern (Ravelry link), then available free online. This is a quite open pattern. The shawl is nicely warm without being hot. This is one of the projects shown on Ravelry for the pattern.
• It is in Red Heart Super Saver, which I do not use any more because it is rough.
• It is 15 blocks in white and three shades of blue, every block different. I don't know why I tackled such a difficult project. 
• I don't remember how I joined the yarn colors - didn't know the Russian join then. 
• Or how I sewed the blocks together - probably just a whip stitch instead of the much more more satisfactory mattress stitch.

For comparison, see fourth picture below for a shawl I did in spring 2019 using the same filet block pattern in multicolor.

(Top) Hanging on the fence in the back yard, with the fence color showing through the open stitches at the joins, and (middle) the 2007 or 2008 large me holding it in the parents' living room. (Below) A truer color image of the squares laid out but not joined yet.

And then there's

The multicolored shawl from 2019. It does not have the wide joinings like the other but I think it looks good anyway.

Here is a shawl ("the stained glass shawl) in progress with the same pattern:

Closeup of squares:

An old project, from 2014 or 2015

Bargello wall hanging in flame colors. I will finish it one of these days. The bargello part is done.

Thoughts about the Internet

These things have apparently dropped out of the collective memory of mankind:

• Red Label Liquid Paper - I think there was one reference in some antique document. Here is an image. Somebody was selling it on Amazon.
• old-fashioned Skrip ink with the little well on the inside of the bottle; actually, you can get these on eBay as vintage pieces - for decor? - but they are not available elsewhere.
• pin-up lamps (there are plenty of sconce lamps you screw into the wall but none that you hang on a nail). These are really nonexistent.
• pillowcase tubing by the yard - people don't know what this is.
• Localites, a sect of people believing that no church is valid except theirs because Paul wrote to "the" church in Corinth, "the" church in Rome, etc.; so there should be only one church per city and theirs is it.
• "Plasticstarch," a kind of starch for your shirts and dresses that held its starchiness through numerous washings.

Rule 34 says: If something exists, there is porn of it. Not so! There is no porn out there featuring geological charts (pre-Cambrian, Cretaceous, Tertiary, Pleistocene, etc.).

Bruges crochet: a subtype

This kind uses a shell stitch as the spine instead of a set of dc's. Here is a photo of a piece from a  doily design called Victoriana which I first found in a Dover book. You can see the pattern where it is for sale at vintageknitcrochet.net. I did just a swatch of it to learn how. Maybe I will design something using it that will be nice and fancy. Notice in the first picture how it resembles a bobbin lace net ground.

I have now done a test swatch and can report truthfully that doing it back and forth with a turn at each end and straight braid (see second photo) is dull as heck, and tedious. With some curves and loops it would be more interesting. I will fetch out the old Magic Crochet magazine with the ***** (very difficult) pattern in it and see if it inspires anything.

See last pictures for examples of "real" Bruges crochet. That is even more tedious. I guess it is supposed to look like some kind of tape lace, which itself is supposed to look like something else, some kind of bobbin pattern.

Variant Bruges (open spine, same as above commercial picture) by me.

"Real" Bruges by me. Extremely tedious.

Shaded blues, 2-strand, V-stitch

Done as of 5-22-19. Turned in June 20, '19, to church. Note one end has narrower stripes. It would have been 8 feet long if I'd continued the same size stripes and ended with white.

Two probably ten year old shawls at my mother's house

The pink one's edge just kept getting wider and wider. I don't remember why we hung on to the yellow one. Both are done in Lion Brand's "Delicate Web" pattern, which is exactly the same as Engineered Crochet's 10101.

Easy breezy shawl

The "Easy Breezy Filet Square" (thank you, James G. Davis) Done! Here 'tis.

Closeup of one of the squares

The first shawl I made. I used this pattern and a very ambitious color scheme, with Red Heart yarn because I didn't know any better then.

Banded shawl continued

Dark-colored wide bands separated by neon variegated stripes. The mulberry stripe at the top is narrower than the other wide bands because I ran out of steam. The colors are Caron Simply Soft Violet, Paints Rainbow Bright (neon), Autumn Red, neon, Chocolate, neon, Dark Sage, neon, Dark County Blue, neon, Purple. It is about 5' 5" long and wraps comfortably around an adult.
The stitch is Sarah of Engineered Crochet's 01010 throughout.

What are "prayer shawls," anyway? Some answers.

I make "prayer shawls" for the church (First Congregational UCC).

What are they? They are hand-knitted or crocheted shawls about 3 x 6 or 7 feet ( 1 x 2 m) - big enough to wrap around a grown person - done in any pattern the knitter or crocheter prefers, with any soft, comfortable yarn. I like Caron Simply Soft but most people in the group use Homespun.

What do they have to do with prayer? That's pretty much just a name. They are not for putting on when you pray, nor are they prayed over - although some prayer shawl groups do that.

What are they used for? For people who have a crisis or a celebration (a birth, illness, or bereavement, for instance) to wrap up in and realize that someone knows about them and is thinking about them.

Who makes them? Some ladies from the church. Men are also welcome, but they rarely have the skills. Several of these ladies meet twice a month, but most of the work is done at home.

When are they given away? After being washed and dried, the shawls are packed in clear plastic zip-up bags with a paper printed with a blessing. The pastoral minister keeps them on hand. She knows about the events in people's lives and is in charge of distributing the shawls. We used to do this, but it was hit and miss knowing about who needed one.

Where do they go? See above. Once they are given away, they are out of our hands and the recipients are free to use them, stash them, give them away, or even sell them at a garage sale if they want.

Why do we make them? They help people understand that they are not forgotten, that someone is thinking about them while they are dealing with whatever it is. The recipients often send us a note saying how much they appreciate receiving a shawl and thanking us. Many others don't ever contact us, but we hear back from the pastoral minister what their reaction was - and it is always positive. We've never had a curmudgeon snarl at us for high-handedly deciding that they needed a shawl.

Dark with light stripes between

This one's going to have about 8 or 9 inch stripes in dark colors separated by 2-inch stripes of variegated neon colors. So far I have purple, bright stripe, dark country blue, bright stripe, dark sage green, bright stripe, chocolate brown. Coming up: deep red, mulberry, purple, dark blue. All done in 01010 shell stitch by Sarah of Engineered Crochet.

This is supposed to be rotated left but I can't make it do it.