The Moments That Take Your Breath Away

My latest completed cross-stitch project contains a quote; "Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away."

I've had a lot of those moments in my life, but they have mostly stolen the breath from my lungs in heartbreak, sadness, devastation.  And then I woke up this morning and the birds were singing outside my window.  A fresh breeze was blowing.  My sweet animals were snuggled up to me, warm and soft and full of love.  I felt like I could breathe; it was startling because for the last year and a half most mornings found me waking in a panic.  What horrible thing had happened overnight or was about to happen now?  How would I possibly handle this day?

I think I am starting to find both peace in the decision we were forced to make and in life again.  Peace is something that has been sorely lacking in my life, and while I am sure that is true for pretty much all parents, even being able to carve out a few moments of it in the morning on waking was impossible for me.  The crushing weight of anxiety on my chest had become so much the norm for me that at first I had no idea how to handle it when it was gone.

I stitched this mostly at night, while I was sick, during February and March.  I had made a New Year's resolution this year to try to make time for the things that I used to love.  I hadn't been doing any crafting, almost no reading, no walking, not spending time with my husband, had neglected my friends to the point where they would have had the right to never speak to me again.  I was trying to find a way to recapture the happy person that I was, and at the same time was battling a bronchitis so serious that I couldn't do much most days other than curl up on the sofa.

I have always felt that, in some ways, needlework captures the mood you create it from.  Sometimes it's hope, with bright careful stitching.  Sometimes it's worry, with the stitches pulled tight and twisted.  This time it was sorrow, fear, anxiety... but I still think it's beautiful.  It's who I was when I stitched it, and I did find hope eventually.  And this morning I had a wondrous, breathtaking moment of peace, and perhaps that means there will be more to come.

Classic Canadian Toque

This pattern came to be when my husband requested that we make these for two very special gift recipients this year. Every year, I make the bulk of our gifts for other people, and he gets involved by choosing the projects and the yarn/materials. I choose the patterns - or create them in this case! - and complete the work. I know, it seems a little one-sided, but I can have a bit of a perfectionist streak, so it's probably better this way.

My husband chose a beautiful boucle yarn from Bernat for these hats, and I couldn't find a pattern that had everything I wanted in it, including a pom-pom for the top, earflaps with braids and tassels, and classic styling. Rather than keep searching, I decided to wing it. The results were fantastic, and following is the pattern. This works up in less than an hour and a half, including all the finishing bits, so definitely qualifies as a quick Christmas gift craft!

Bernat Soft Boucle Yarn
Size L crochet hook

Boy do my bangs need a trim!

While this pattern only uses one skein of yarn, you do need to hold two strands together while working, so it's helpful to have two skeins. Plus, it's an excuse to make two hats. If you only want to use one, divide it into two balls before beginning work.

Hold two strands together throughout.

1. Chain three and join with a slip stitch to form a ring.

2. Chain one. SC ten times in the ring. Join with a slip stitch to the first SC.

3. Chain one. Two SC in each SC around. Join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 20 SC.

4. Chain one. One SC in each SC around. Join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 20 SC

5. Chain one. One SC in the next stitch and two SC in the next. Repeat around, and join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 30 SC

6. Chain one. One SC in each SC around. Join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 30 SC.

7. Chain one. SC in the next four SC. Two SC in the next SC. Repeat around, and join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 36 SC

8. Chain one. SC in each SC around and join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 36SC

9. Chain one. SC in the next five SC. Two SC in the next SC. Repeat around, and join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 42 SC

But even if I can't see through my bangs, I know it's a smokin hat.

10. Chain one. SC in each SC around. Join with a slip stitch to the first SC - 42 SC.

11 - 17. Repeat row 10.

18. Chain one. SC in each of the next 10 SC. Chain one and turn.

19 - 20. SC in each SC. Chain one and turn.

21. SC two together. SC in the next six SC. SC two together, chain one and turn. 8 sc

22. SC in each SC. Chain one and turn.

23. SC two together. SC in the next four SC. SC two together, chain one and turn. 6 SC

24. SC in each SC. Chain one and turn.

25. SC two together. SC in the next two SC. SC two together, chain one and turn. 4 SC.

26. SC in each SC. Chain one and turn.

27. SC two together two times. Chain one and turn.

28. SC two together. Finish off.

29. Return to the last row of the hat, and skip 16 sc from the edge of the first earflap. Join yarn with a slip stitch to the next SC, chain one, and SC in the next ten SC. Repeat 19 - 28 to create second earflap.

30. Cut 30 24" lengths of yarn. Divide into two sets of 15 lengths each.

Enough pictures!  Put down the camera, honey.

31. Thread 15 lengths through the bottom stitch of one earflap. Pull through so the ends are even and the lengths are all folded in half. Divide into three groups of ten strands each and braid to within 2 - 3" of the bottoms of the strand. Seperate 4 strands of yarn, wrap snugly around the braid several times, pulling the ends through the wrap and pulling tight to secure. Repeat with the other earflap, and trim the ends of the yarn braids to be even.

32. Create a pom pom as demonstrated in the video below, and sew to the top of the cap.

Needlework 1: Starting Threads

In which you get to see a tiny shot of a Christmas present I'm making for my husband.  There's a much better shot in the next video in this series, which I made tonight and should be posted in a few days.  I'm worried about finishing it in time but I think he's going to love it.  No telling him what it is, now!  He's been banned from watching the videos already!

Learn to Crochet 2

Learn to Crochet 1

Writing Through Hard Times

One of my intentions on starting this blog, was to talk about what it's really like to be a writer who creates internet content.  I haven't done that in a while.

I think that everyone knows that someone out there creates the web pages they surf every day.  I don't think they give much thought to how that's done, or who the (wo)man behind the curtain might be. When you get a newsletter in your email box from a retailer, do you think about who composed it?  When you do a quick google search to figure out how to baste a turkey when it's tented with foil, do you also research the credentials of the person who wrote the article?

There's a problem on the internet today, and that is the proliferation of bad and incorrect content.  It's something google has tried to address with their new Panda system for search engine optimization.  This algorithm not only rates the page that is returned in a search result, but evaluates how many ads are on the page, as well as the quality of content on other random pages on the site.  This has led to some interesting results.

One of the primary websites that I write for through Demand Media Studios is eHow.  When eHow started out on the web, it had a bad reputation for poorly researched and poorly written content.  It was similar to sites like Associated Content, where anyone can set themselves up as a writer, write whatever they like, and generate a stream of income based on ad clicks from their pages.  It resulted in a huge number of pages that were complete garbage. When Demand Media Studios took over, they did so replete with trained writers and editors who would fact-check and correct basic writing issues, with the intention of creating a better type of content for readers.  It seemed to work, until Panda came along.

What Panda has done in general is to make pages such as eHow and Mahalo fall in their rankings. The problem with this is, of course, when it comes to Demand Media Studios, they are making less money.  That means they can spend less to create new content.  So how do they fix this?

Well, for Demand, it meant rolling out a program called First Look, which allowed the highest rated writers on their site a first chance to grab the few titles they are still releasing.  Over the last few months, the titles have gone from a tidal wave, to a river, to a trickle, to a dry desert where everyone sits and clicks F5 all day hoping that the mirage on the horizon is real, and eventually a title will show up to be claimed.

I'm lucky.  I'm in the small percent that made it into First Look.  I want to feel proud about this, but I'm conflicted.  Other writers are getting evicted from their homes, are unable to feed their children, are having vehicles repossessed.  Granted, I got a little late on a couple of bills when the titles dried up, but it was nothing serious, and now that I'm finding titles again, I'm able to catch up.  Others are so depressed about their financial situations that they are hinting about suicide on the Demand forums.  They might just be drama queens.  But might is the operative word, and it's a little scary to think that those ten titles I grabbed fresh off the title editor's desk might have made the difference in someone else losing their home.  Or their struggle with depression and their life.

I deal with guilt now, whenever I write a title.  I also deal with a huge amount of fear.  If my scores drop below a 4.0, I'll be booted from the First Look program.  Titles are graded on a five point scale, and many copy editors have admitted to never giving out a five, because they think an article would have to be perfect to earn that, and no article is ever perfect (it's actually supposed to indicate "excellent" while a four is to indicate "above average", a three "average", a two "below average" and a one "poor").  My heart races as I go over every article.  Did I leave an extra space after a period there?  Did I use a serial comma here?  And if I did, will the editor like it or not?  While Demand requires that we write in AP style, not all editors actually edit in AP style.  More than once I have had editors add serial commas and mark down my score because I didn't use them when AP style dictates that they not be used.

There are also some scary, vindictive copy editors out there.  From the stories on the forum, I am not the only one who has run into them.  Rather than risk a rejection when I get a rewrite from one of them, I let the article expire.  This happened recently, and it hurt my heart to let a title go when there are so few out there for the grasping and I need the money.  Still, a rejection hurts your scorecard more than an abandoned rewrite does, and that is also a part of your grade; the number of articles accepted immediately, the number of rewrites, the number of abandoned rewrites, and the rejections.  I'm lucky enough to have never had a rejection, but my abandoned rewrite percentage hovers at about 5% because of my fear of them.

I try not to talk about editors much, because I'm worried that they'll read it and edit me more harshly in the future because of it. Demand is terribly unbalanced that way, because writers never know the identity of their editors.  They can see our names - and occasionally an editor will use my name in the notes, which is both nice and scary at the same time.  They post on the same forum, so I'm careful with my words, though I have made a comment or two about how to address craft type articles so as to get them through (write like you're addressing a first grade art class, for instance) that might have been misinterpreted.  Fear.  Suspicion. It's everywhere at DMS now.

Does this lead to better writing?  I don't know.  For me, it leads to obsessive researching and writing that almost makes the pay for the articles not worth the hours I spend crafting them.

DMS is starting to move into a new direction, with experts instead of just writers.  How that is going to pan out is yet to be seen, though I'm working on setting up the kinds of resources I need now, to be in place so I can apply for an expert position.  This blog is a part of that, as is my brand-spanking-new Twitter account, and my facebook fan page.  If you are a fan of this blog and you twitter or facebook, I would appreciate your support. My twitter username is CraftyDivaKat, and I go by the same on facebook, with the page located here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crafty-Diva-Kat/180386195377438?ref=ts&sk=wall

Also, if you have any requests for videos or how-to articles on some of the things that I do, including crochet, needlework, knitting, scrapbooking, altered books and more, please let me know with a comment here, a post on the facebook page, or a tweet.  I'm starting a series of basic crochet instruction videos soon, including eventually a tutorial on making fishnets out of stretchy sock yarn, something I've had many requests to teach.  I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Amazed by Life

Last night, plagued by insomnia, I was poking around on Facebook, and on a lark, did a search for someone I used to know many, many years ago.  Faced with a page of results, I clicked on I think what was the third one down at random, and it said Hometown: Colorado Springs, CO.  Wow, well that was the home town of the person I used to know, so I sent off a tentative message asking if he was the someone I thought he might be, someone I met in Central America when we were both teenagers.

Believe it or not, it was.  Some force in the universe must have been guiding my mouse.  I'm absolutely in shock and awe.  I know I shouldn't be.  I've found other friends from my high school era on Facebook.  Heck, I've found friends from grammar school there, too.  This, though, it really shocked and surprised me in a beautiful way.  Sometimes life offers you the most amazing little surprises.

I've had a rough time the end of this winter.  I had a bloody awful migraine that had me in bed for four days at the beginning of the month, the worst one I've had in ages.  To top it off, I was severely affected - really, disabled, by the seasonal affective depression that hasn't bothered me since we left Grande Prairie.  It's the lack of winter sunshine, I think.  We don't get much in our new place, and it's been so cold that I haven't been spending much time outdoors.  I cried when it snowed again this week, because I was so devastated that spring hadn't quite sprung.  I created a pink and silver necklace to try to inspire happy, spring thoughts, and it did work to a degree.  But now I have an old friend to catch up with, and a Shakespeare comedy with two lovely people tomorrow night to top it off.  Things are surely looking up.

More books!

Okay, I've given up on making it to fifty by my birthday, but I'm still making progress on the year's goal.

31. The devil in the white city : murder, magic, and madness at the fair that changed America Larson, Erik

32. Left neglected Genova, Lisa

33. Trial by fire : a novel of suspense Jance, Judith A.

34. What the night knows : a novel Koontz, Dean

35. The strain  del Toro, Guillermo 

The Devil in the White City was a great read, and I would recommend it highly to anyone interested in Chicago's history, architecture, or serial killers - or all three!  It chronicles the planning and building of the grounds of the World's Fair Columbian Exhibition, with a side plot telling the tale of a con man and murderer who was active in Chicago at that time.  I love history, and this book weaves together stories from historical documents and the author's imagination seamlessly.

The Strain was an interesting read as well - vampires as they should be: scary, mean, ruthless killers (as opposed to sappy, virginal, emo teen stalkers).  This was the first in a trilogy, and I picked it up because it's penned by the same man who wrote the script for Pan's Labyrinth, one of my all-time favourite movies.  It's well-written and interesting, and very very scary.  I'll definitely be reading the next in the trilogy soon.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes....

Life has so many twists and turns.  Today, Mahalo fired all their guides.  Okay, maybe fired is a little harsh: they are "restructuring" and all guides have to write a little treatise on what their areas of expertise are.  Then, there'll be a month long pause in content creation, while the bosses decide who is worth keeping and who isn't.  I have a feeling that most people are going to fall into the "not worth keeping" area, partially because I think many, many of the pages on Mahalo are written poorly.  They are trying to shift toward hiring area experts instead of quality writers, which I think is a step halfway in the right direction.  Many of the pages suffer from poor grammar and style, which is partially because they don't pay the kind of compensation necessary to have a stable of highly qualified writers.  They also have such narrowly defined pages that it can be difficult to write quality copy that fits the minimum word requirement and fulfills the title of the page.

I'm not too worried.  I panicked, at first, then realized I still have DMS to write for, where I get paid more anyway.  And if Mahalo doesn't keep me, it'll be their loss I suppose. Funny that I preferred them when the pay was less.

For my petition to keep my job, I have to write about two areas of expertise and explain why I'm an expert.  I'm considering Education and Hobbies for my two, though Food and Drink might be a good option as well, since they seem to produce quite a few cooking pages.  My problem with that is, while I love to cook and have plenty of personal experience in the area, I don't have any education in that area, nor do I have proof that I'm an area "expert".  For Hobbies, I can point to classes I've taught and workshops I've participated in, things of that nature.  On the other hand, I don't think I've seen a single hobby page up in the queue since I started there.  They must be highly searched areas, since DMS has many many hobby type pages, several of which I've written for them, and DMS creates titles based on search engine stats.  Hmm.

Speaking of hobbies, I've been working more on my own designs.  I designed a scarf for my dad for his birthday in January, which I neglected to take a picture of (maybe I'll have to convince him to take one of him modeling it), and of course the laptop bag I recently posted.  I've also finished a cotton summer sweater which turned out beautifully and which I will hopefully eventually photograph as well.  It was inspired by a halter design I saw, though I changed nearly everything about it, including the material used to make it.

Front View

My latest design is a nice little short-sleeved shrug.  I had some lovely grey yarn, though not a lot of it, very soft and pretty and perfectly suited to a lightweight spring/summer shrug.  I searched and searched for a pattern, but nothing fit the idea I had in my head, so I went ahead and designed one myself.  I love that ruffles have come back into fashion with such a flourish - I'm a girly girl at heart and the recent push for ruffles and rosettes makes me happy.  That's what inspired the lettuce edge ruffle border on the shrug.

Rear View

While these pictures don't exactly do the item justice (it looks much better on) I hope that the subtle stripes on the back and the sideways garter stitch on the sleeves shows up a little bit.  The back was worked top to bottom in knit and purl stripes, while for the sleeves, I picked up stitches along the edge and worked them in sideways garter stitch for a different look.  The bottoms of the sleeves are finished with two rows of single crochet, as I find unfinished knit edges to be a little... well, unfinished looking.  The ruffle edge is also done in single crochet.  Mixing styles with both knit and crochet brings the best of both worlds to garments, in my opinion.  I need some tips for photographing things better, though, if anyone has some to share!I'm going to use the leftover yarn from this project to either trim a matching scarf or make a rosette for my hair.  Maybe both.  We'll see.

I'm thinking my next project might include granny squares.  They have a lot of nostalgia for me.  Maybe pinks and greens for a spring scarf, done in sport weight, a shiny yarn like luster sheen.  Or possibly crochet cotton, wagon wheel granny squares for another spring and summer shrug or sweater.  It's hard to decide!  I still haven't finished that teal tank sweater, and really, really ought to. The pattern stitch is small and complicated, and making a garment mostly in single crochet on a tiny hook takes a long, long time.  And lots of sport weight yarn, too.

When you can't work...

In an unexpected twist, I actually didn't work much the end of last week.  I did manage to produce about double my Q & A requirements, and spent a bunch of time staring at the screen and trying to think of more questions.  While travelling with Richard on Thursday, I spent a nice chunk of time trying to research stuff in a library where the internet flitted on and off about every five to seven minutes.  I got so enraged that I gave up on it and read instead.  It was stormy in the mountains, so I don't blame the library per se.  I did give Richard lots of dirty looks while he worked though.  "Why is the network more important than MY internet?? Fix my internet!" were the topics of secret brain waves I was sending him as I glared over the top edge of my laptop screen.  It didn't seem to affect him, though, which is probably a good thing.  If he'd stuck around to fix the internet we might have been stuck there overnight in the storm, instead of going home to internets and hungry kitty cats.

We were given notice that the software was being upgraded on Mahalo, and that no further pages could be updated or created until Monday.  Huh.  We were never told if that meant we wouldn't get in trouble for not meeting our minimums, but since they carved four days out of our work week, I'm guessing we weren't.  I was initially asked if I'd be interested in beta testing the new software, which I was actually kind of excited about.  You see, I've told my husband now and again that I think being a beta tester would be fun.  "No," he repeatedly assures me, "It's nothing but an annoying headache.  You have to do repetitive behaviour until stuff breaks."  I of course, light up at the idea of getting to break stuff.  Not my stuff, of course, but someone elses stuff!  This must be the sort of thing that annoys programmers like him, people like me who can't make it but delight in the idea of destroying his work.

Alas, I was never called on to test, and am spending the morning waiting to be told when I'll be able to start work for this week.  The one problem in a situation like this is that you don't get paid when you're off doing fun stuff instead of being productive.  I did get in a bunch of fun stuff though, like making half of a bright turquoise summer tank sweater out of sport weight yarn that I'm looking forward to wearing this summer.  If I finish it by then.

I never understood how people could get bored if they didn't work.  When I wasn't working I was never, ever bored.  I have so many interests and hobbies and things I want to learn and books I want to read and ideas and theories I want to test out that I'll never be able to get it all done in my lifetime.  It's just impossible.  Even if I never worked again I couldn't do it.  I'd need at least three or four lifetimes.  Maybe five if I throw in all the languages I want to learn.  And of course there are new books I want to read coming out all the time, so maybe it'd be impossible for me ever to "finish" everything I want to do.  I'm resigned to it, have accepted it, but it doesn't mean I can't try. 

I have so much on the go that sometimes I fear one thing won't be finished before I start another.  I'm one of those annoying scrapbooking people, but I'm perpetually around a year behind.  Right now, due to a burst of productivity sometime in October or so, I'm only about 9 months behind, but it's starting to catch up on me again.  I have an altered book about love on the go as well.  It hasn't been worked on much since summer.  Then there's the cross stitch, I'm currently working on two huge projects - a dragonfly scroll for the bedroom and a Theresa Wentzler mermaid.  Not sure where that will go, but probably in the bedroom.  I'm resolved to frame it immediately though.  I used to let stuff languish unframed and unadmired in drawers, before I learned that was a ticket to losing them and ever appreciating them.

I have finished a couple of things lately though.  One is a bag for my laptop, to make traveling with Richard easier.  I bought this bulky, pink yarn over a year ago intending it for a tote that never happened.  The problem with buying yarn on the internet is that sometimes it's just not what you thought it was.  I thought this was a soft pinky-orange blend.  When it arrived, neon and with bits of green, I was appalled, but I kinda like it as a quirky laptop bag.  I worked it up in one day, just kind of going with the flow and designing as I went. It works well enough - the strap is stretchy so I can sling it crosswise across my body (and if I don't, I can deal with the laptop banging my knees!).  It's just so bright.  I worry taking it into libraries that librarians will start shushing it.