W.I.P. Wednesday - Virus Blanket 2

I have finished up one yarn cake of six in making this blanket.  I tell you, the designer is incredible.  It amazes me that someone can make up a pattern like this in their brain.  I can follow pretty much any pattern you put out there but I have a hard time coming up with an original idea.  I really have to give pattern designers the proper shout out!!

So...after one yarn cake - it is already 24" x 24" - that is pretty big...not sure I will need 6 cakes, BUT I do know that as it gets bigger, you need more yarn for each round so the size will slow down a bit.  My last one was 60" square so that is what I am hoping for with this one too.  The yarn is similar weight and it is the same brand so I expect about the same size.  We shall see.

Ice Cream Cozies

As mentioned in my previous post, my friend, Susan has been in town and Susan loves ice cream.  One night, while she was eating from the pint, I noticed her holding the pint with a dishtowel so I pulled out some scrap  yarn and made her an ice cream cozy.  

I found  a super easy pattern on THIS BLOG, that appears that the writer abandoned after only 10 posts, which is interesting since just a couple posts after the pattern post, she goes on about how her blog is going to be great and she's going to let loose on it...well, that didn't last...not sure why she abandoned it after only 10 posts.  I found another blog of her's, that she had prior to the one linked above and she abandoned it after 5 posts.  She seemed to have been a new mom, so probably life was just very busy...maybe she had more kids in the past 12 years since she last posted.  At any rate, I hope she is doing well.

Side Note:  I understand if people lose interest in blogging or no longer have the time, but I really wish they'd just add a final posts that says they are going to stop blogging for now...they don't even really have to give a reason, but it makes me sad when I have been following a blog (not this one, but many others) and they just stop for no apparent reason and you never read another post from them again.  If I ever decide to stop blogging, I will at least give a final goodbye post.  Not that I have many that even read or see my blog, but still...I would want to give it a proper ending.

I digress.  Anyway...here are is the Ice Cream Cozy I made her, using Peaches & Creme Cotton Yarn in Psychedelic.

 

She and one of her roommates often eat ice cream and watch TV together in the evening.  His favorite color is green so I made him one too, so she could take it back to him. This one was made with Sugar 'n Cream cotton yarn in Hot Green (which is one of my favorite colors of cotton yarn)

 

 Each one took less than 10 minutes to crochet - fun and quick project and a good way to use up small scraps of cotton yarn.

 

W.I.P. Wednesday - Virus Blanket # 2

 It has been a while since I've posted one of these.  

I heard that several Michael's stores had the older version of a Cricut Maker on clearance at a ridiculous price of like $24.00 (several photos have been posted on Facebook) so I had to pop in my local Michael's just in case...no luck - as I expected. 

However, my friend Susan was with me and fell in love with some yarn we saw.  On top of that it was sale!  She asked that if she bought it, would I crochet an afghan for her and I thought...I get to crochet and I don't have to buy the yarn - that is a big fat YES!

I showed her different patterns and she liked the Virus Blanket Pattern (so called because the pattern went viral when it was released).  I'm a lucky girl because I printed the pattern after it was first released and she released it for free.  Now it is $6. It is worth every penny though.  Jonna Martinez is a brilliant designer!

So I estimated, based on the other Virus Blanket I crocheted, that we would need 6 Caron Cakes.

The yarn is called Caron Cakes Cinnamon Swirls - I loved every color they had but she really, really loved this one.

 

 

So....I started the blanket and have finished the first 10 row...so far, it am liking it.  I really love this pattern too.  I need to preserve it in a sheet protector for safe keeping!

 

 

Geneaology - Found Document

 My mom always told me that her mom had some babies that didn't live.  She even took me to the cemetery in New Hope, FL where there are some baby graves buried next to my great grand parents and they are unmarked but sectioned off.  

I knew that there were at least 2 boys.  My mom has 5 sisters but never had a living brother.

I typically use Ancestry for most of my research but recently took a look at FamilySearch.org and there I found out a couple of things

1) One of the baby boy's my grandmother had was born in 1933 and died 26 Nov 1933 and his name was Charles E. Mims.  I don't know exactly when he was born or how long he lived but my mom did tell me that her mother said one of them lived about 10 days so I am thinking this must have been Charles. My mom told me that she recalls my grandmother telling her his name was "Ervin" so I assume that is what the "E" stood for.

My grandmother told my mom that when he was a few days old, he became yellow (we are guessing he probably was jaundiced).  My grandfather had to walk over 5 miles to go to the doctor (no phones, no cars) and by the time they made it back to the house, the baby had died. Remember, back in 1933, there wasn't much treatment for things like this...plus, he may have had something more severe, like a non-functioning liver.  

I know I had jaundice as a baby and was treated for it but that was 30 years after Charles was born.

2) Another boy was born a year earlier on 30 Oct 1932 and died 31 Oct 1932.  I know this because I found his death certificate.

Now, I am not sure why, but seeing this death certificate made me cry.  I mean really cry! This baby boy, who could have grown up to be my uncle died and didn't even live a whole day.  He didn't even have a name. Then a year later, my grandmother lost another son.  I don't know if either of them were premature, but I can't imagine carrying a baby for months and then losing them as soon as they came into the world.  

I know it happens and sadly, isn't uncommon.  But knowing that my grandparents had 2 children die within about a year, it is just heartbreaking.

I wonder what they would have been like, I bet they looked like my grandpa.  It makes me sad that the first baby boy didn't even have a name.  I'd like to give him one, I think he name might have been John, named after both my grandfather's father and my grandmother's brother.  

Before the 2 boys were born and died, my grandmother had a still born baby girl.  Later on, in the late 1940s, she had a miscarriage.  Soon afterwards, she became very, very ill and her brother, John, took her to the hospital in Opp, AL.  There, they discovered, she actually had been pregnant with twins...she miscarried both but one was still attached.  She nearly died.  She was in the hospital for a few weeks.

My mom told me that she must have had another still born child or miscarriage but she doesn't know when it was.  My grandfather always said they had 12 children....6 that lived and 6 that didn't.  

How awful and sad, I can't imagine how hard that had to have been on my grandmother!  She had it so hard.  My mom's oldest sister said, she had to plow the fields with mules and she was sometimes 8-9 months pregnant at the time and she'd work so hard she had blood in her shoes.  

Apparently, after Charles died, a nurse told my grandmother that she had a "dead liver" and that if she got pregnant again, she needed to take some kind of medicine.  My mom doesn't have the details really on this - exactly what was wrong with my grandmother's liver or what medicine she took, but my grandma said it worked because she had 6 babies that lived after that.  

I knew my grandma was a strong woman, but by golly, how did she manage to live through all this? I can't imagine how hard that was for her. 

Genealogy with a Twist

 As I've mentioned many times, I started working on my family tree and getting into Geneaology somewhere around 2013 or so - 10 years ago - wow!!

I have a friend, that I have known since I was about 12, she is like part of the family and really we consider her a sister and my parents always thought of her as another daughter.

She asked me to work on  her family tree a bit and while I haven't spent a lot of time working on hers, I did make some headway.

Well, one day, while working on her tree, the name  "Rebecca Schrader" popped up and and I thought...boy that name sounds familiar - I think I have someone on my tree with that name....so I checked and sure enough I did...not only that, it was the SAME Rebecca Schrader!!!

I just realized that my friend and I were actually related - somehow.  I never really mapped out the trees to make the connection, but I have now done that.  We are actually 6th cousins.  How cool is that??  

We have the same 5th Great Grandparents.  She knows we are related but I haven't told her how yet and I haven't shown her the connection below.  I'm going to laminate it and give it to her the next time I see her.  

It just makes you wonder how many people you know that you might be related to.  Well, I guess we are all related through Adam and Eve, but I can't trace back that far 😀

I know the image is small, you can click on it to enlarge a bit

February 2023 Book Review

 

I read 3 books last month...one of which was actually a re-read.  I had read "The Guardians" years before but my sister recently read for the first time and pass the book along to me.  I couldn't remember for sure that I had read it so I started it and a few chapters in, I realized I HAD read it before.  But, I couldn't quite remember the entire story or how it ended so decided to finish it.

I also read "Sleeping Dogs Lie" - which was a short novella and "How to Sell A Haunted House"

"Sleeping Dogs Lie" was a short little murder mystery. 

I chose to review "How to Sell a Haunted House" this month.

First, I want to start off by saying that I have never even heard of this author before, but the title got my attention.  Had I known this was a "horror" book and not really a "ghost" book, I wouldn't have read it.  I do not like horror. 

The book started out really good.  A single woman living in California with her young daughter, who left Charleston, NC behind.  Her parents still lived in the family home and her brother is also still living in Charleston.  She got along ok with her parents but she always felt they favored her brother and she and her brother did not get along at all and barely spoke to each other.

She gets a call that her parent were both killed in a car accident.  Her mom had been taking her dad to the hospital because he had some kind of fall and they were in a crash along the way and both died.

She goes back to NC for the funeral and to help settle the estate.  Creepy things happen in the house.  Her mom was a doll collector and made puppets her entire life, which she used in Christian puppet shows.  She could feel the eyes of the dolls/puppets upon her.

When she arrives at the house, the TV is on, she finds her mom's purse and her dad's cane in the living room and thinks that is odd but thought...well, they rushed to the hospital, I guess they left in such a hurry they forgot to turn off the TV and left some things behind.

She goes upstairs and checks out her old room and hears the TV again. She knows she turned it off, she goes downstairs and unplugs it and notices that a couple of the dolls seem to have moved.  But she chalks it up to her imagination.

After the funeral a day later, she returns to the house and finds the TV on again.  She accuses her brother of turning it on but he swears he hadn't been in the house since before their parents died. The dolls, appear to have moved again.

So far...so good....

THEN, it gets really stupid, really fast....come to find out, her mom's favorite clown puppet named Pupkin, comes to life and long story short...it conjures up an imaginary blue 8-legged dog from their childhood, makes the dog real, has it attack her, possesses the brother (while saying "Mark gone, Pupkin now"), etc. etc.  There is a gruesome arm amputation with a circular saw involved and even after the puppet eventually seems to be destroyed for good..guess what?? 

Nope, her daughter had her other grandmother make her an exact replica even though she'd never seen the puppet before.  Now the daughter has the puppet on her hand and is possessed by the thing.  The puppet talks through the person that has it on their hand and talks in a baby voice and says sadistic poems and things like “Pupkin here! Pupkin here! Everybody laugh! Everybody cheer!” and "Ca Ca Wee Wee" 

At first we are to believe Pupkin, the clown puppet, is possessed, then we are told it isn't possessed, it is cursed, then we are told, it isn't cursed, it is haunted by a ghost.  I won't say who the ghost, so I don't spoil it, but it is reveled later and I saw it coming and knew it from almost the start.

I found myself rolling my eyes and groaning so much throughout this book.  The thing is, it started out so good and the story about the family relationships was good and I stuck with it because I ultimately wanted to see the dog-gone puppet destroyed for good.  I honestly thought it might have a little twist at the end with Pupkin resurfacing at the very end somehow, but thank goodness that didn't happen.

If you like movies like "Child's Play" and enjoy all the other Chucky movies, you will probably like this but if you are like me and find those kind of stories dumb, then stay away from this one.

Project Life - February 2023

 Here are my Project Life pages for February 2023.

(Click on photos to enlarge)

 

 

 

February 2023 Check-In

 

It feels like February just flew by. But, it is a shorter month after all.

So...currently in the news...the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial.  What are your thoughts?  Personally, I felt justice was done.  The thing that sealed it for me was when he was saying that he was never at the dog kennels, where his wife and son were murdered, but video evidence showed he was there minutes before the murders and he then admitted that was his voice on the video.  If he was there minutes before the murders and he claimed he didn't commit them, then he would have SEEN the murderer. He claimed that he saw no one, there is only one explanation, he is the murderer. 

How can someone kill his wife and son in cold blood like that?  Of course he was doing it for the money, apparently.  After hearing his testimony, I wonder if the guy ever told a truth in his life?  Seems like every word he has ever spoken has been a lie.  

I do feel a bit for his remaining son. He has lost his entire family in the span of a year. I don't know his source of income, but assume he was being supported by his dad (by his dad's stolen money).  He has lost everything and pretty much everyone in his life.  

Well...on to better subjects.  So...how's my year going?

Bible/Prayer Time: Good - I am 2 days behind in my daily reading, but will get caught up today. Praying faithfully each day for those I know are in need of prayer.

Crafty Time: OK - I am keeping up with Project Life and also working on a special Project Life album called "52 Weeks of Me".  My daily Project Life is current but the 52 Weeks of me is a couple of weeks behind because I'm kind of stuck on what to include on one of the weeks.

Healthy Time: I'll let you know next month.  I'm doing well with eating, but still need to add exercise.  I've been having some bad muscle aches, especially in my arms and shoulders...not sure what is going on there and if you pray, I could use some prayers about that.

Project Time: Not sure if this is considered a project but I made a genealogy link between me and my BFF.  It turns out we are 6th cousins.  I'll post more about that on another day.

This month I completed 3 books, saw BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, Kevn Kinney and the Amy Ray Band.  I finished watching (or I guess you can say re-watching) "Drop Dead Diva" - I remembered it didn't end the way I really wanted it to end.  I am sure it ended the way most people wanted it to, but it isn't what I wanted.  I don't want to say how I wanted it to end so I don't spoil it for anyone that hasn't seen the series.  The new show "Alert" ended and it was good, lots of twist and turns, but rumor is it won't be renewed for Season 2.  

Grey's Anatomy, Young Sheldon and Ghost are all back, as is La Brea.  I also heard La Brea may not be back next season.  That is too bad, it is a good show.

My immediate family and my kitty cats all seem good and healthy - thank you God!  We started a new semi-monthly program at church, called "The Avenue".  We've only met once so far but it seems like something I will enjoy.  

Hope anyone that is reading this is doing well and that you are moving along with your annual goals.