Pet Bandanas!

I have been on a creation kick lately. Spending some time with the materials and creating a whole new thing from them has been making me feel productive with my days. The latest obsession started off with some fabric found on clearance at Wally world. I picked it up because it was a great price and the patterns fit the general themes that my family tends to gravitate towards. It was not bought with a project in mind.

It wasn’t until one night when I was chatting with my Mom in her room that I decided what project my three one yard pieces would be used for. I saw one of Maggie’s bandanas that she had gotten from the groomer, and it sparked a thought. I definitely had the skills and materials to make the fabric I bought into bandanas.

(Side note: I would like to thank my maternal grandmother for all the time she spent teaching me and having lots of patience. She spent hours with us grandkids, teaching us how to use a sewing machine. Because of her, I have more skills to help with creative problem solving.)

It ended up being one of my sleepless nights, giving up on trying to sleep at three in the morning, that I started my production process. I got up, got dressed, and started gathering the needed tools to work on my project. Cutting mat, ruler, rotary cutter, sewing machine, thread, and of course the fabric, were all placed on the dining room table.

I did not imagine that I would be doing geometry at 3:30 in the morning, but it needed to be done to figure out how big of a square I needed to cut in order for the middle diagonal, or the hypotenuse, was long enough to fit around the necks of my dogs. The answer, a 19 in square creates a 26 in hypotenuse, which is plenty big. I even measured my dog’s necks just to be extra sure.

So by the time my Mom was up and getting ready for work at 6 am, I had already cut out 4 bandana triangles out of each of the three fabrics, and was getting ready to start hemming the sides so that they stayed pretty and the fabric didn’t fray. When lunch time rolled around, I had 12 dog bandanas sewed up and ready for wearing. It might have been the lack of sleep by this point, but that success started a bit of a frenzy.

The next day I started the process all over again, thankfully around 5 am instead of 3 am. This time I had a different animal in mind. Erza will pretty much wear anything for me, and I thought I would give it a go to try and make some bandanas that were her size. This meant more early morning geometry for me.

The first set wasn’t big enough. The second was! I managed to get it tied on Erza. So I started sewing that set of triangles together. Later that afternoon though, I noticed that the point of the bandana, the part that you are actually supposed to see, was disappearing in Erza’s scruff around her neck. Kind of pointless to put the bandana on her if your were not going to be able to see it. So I set to work again, this time with two fat quarters that I had picked up.

For a cat Erza’s size, I need to make 12 inch squares. This gives plenty of tie length and the design on the bandana can clearly be seen while she is wearing it. I also think it is pretty safe to say that she enjoys wearing them. She helps pick out which one she wants to wear, and gets a bit upset when I take them off, pawing at them as if asking for them back. What can I say, my girl likes to accessorize.

Since I am a girl who is obviously a bit obsessed with her cat, I went into production mode once I found the correct size for her. Remember that frenzy I mentioned earlier? Well, as of last week, I have sewn together 32 dog bandanas, and 33 cat ones, for a total of 65. Don’t worry, I have give the majority of them away for other animals to be able to wear as well. Ruby, my maternal grandparents’ dog, looks extra pretty when she wears a bandana that features red, living up to her name. My paternal grandparents’ golden retriever Luna, posed for the picture that they sent with her wearing one of the bandanas I gave them. She obviously was feeling pretty.

Some of the frenzy has died down, but Erza is currently laying on my calves wearing a bandana with print on it featuring Hocus Pocus characters and sayings in honor of Halloween. I do plan on making more for future holidays and seasons as well. Obviously Ezra will be the most spoiled, and I might have to get a second bin to supplement her current bandana storage plan. For now though, I am pretty content with the productivity that came from this.

Plant Babies

I am pretty proud to say that I have managed to keep a pineapple plant alive for ten whole months! Obviously I am the type of person that has to name her plants, so I have named her Penelope. I also have a snake plant named Genevieve. The snake plant came with a paper steak stuck in the pot that made it sound like she had already been named, so I just went with it. Penny and Gen have two very different set of needs, but they both live in my bedroom. I have had to create some contrast to try and give them both what they need to thrive.

Penny sits on top of a white cube cabinet near one of the windows. I have placed bamboo skewers around the main body of the plant, with cotton yarn to provide extra structure. Pineapples can be heavy fruit, so the skewers have helped the entire plant stand up straight. I also have a grow light shining on her. Since they are used to tropical environments, pineapples require quite a bit of sunshine. I live in Wisconsin, where it is currently cold and dreary looking outside. So the grow light helps me provide the much needed vitamin D that helps Penny stay strong.

Gen lives across the room, on top of a much shorter bookshelf. Snake plants prefer indirect sunlight. By being across the room from the two windows in my bedroom, Gen will not be scorched by any harsh rays that may manage to sneak in my windows. I personally think she likes the placement because the leaves are growing taller.

Due to a certain predator that lives in my room as well, AKA Erza the cat, I have chosen the spots for my plants to live very carefully. They are on top of furniture that Erza can’t access. She is very curious about the plants, obviously, but I have done my best to make sure that she knows that they are not chew toys, or something to be attacked. Thankfully, she has gotten the message and the plants don’t have to fear the micro panther. (Knock on wood!)

I have taken steps to try and track when I water the plants as well. A calendar on the wall features little water droplets that I have drawn on with blue marker, on the days that I have given them water. I don’t want to drown them, so I try and remember to check the soil beforehand, to see if they actually need it.

I get emotionally attached to these plants. I get excited when I see signs that they are healthy and growing. When one of them dies, I get sad for a little while. This attachment might be aided by the fact that I have taken to putting large googly eyes on the pot of the plant. That started mostly because it amuses me. It turned into something silly that made me smile for a moment when I saw it, and there needs to be more things like that in the world. Personally, I will always take pride in my plant babies and how well they are doing. I will enjoy them while they are around and do my best to take care of them.

Ultimately they bring me joy, and I find worth in the simple things that manage to accomplish making me smile. I hope you can find a small thing that makes you smile today.

Sleepless Nights

As someone who has chronic pain, I am pretty used to it waking me up in the middle of the night and poking at my nerves enough that there is no use in going back to sleep at that point. So I have had the “pleasure” of seeing what the world is like when the majority of the people around me are sleeping.

Obviously I have the mornings where I am annoyed by the fact that I am awake, we all do even if we wake up at a much more reasonable time. However, I do enjoy the quiet. There is no one around to bother me, other than the cats, while I write or draw. My ADHD feels quieter when there is no one else around to create the distractions that have become so easily available.

I try my best to not make too much noise myself. Since there are other people in my household and they are still trying to sleep, I don’t want my circumstances to affect them in any manner. So while almost silent activities are my only form of entertainment, the modern technology of my incredible headphones certainly come in handy. Most mornings though, I don’t use them.

Like I previously stated, I tend to work on my writing while the world around me sleeps. There is something about the stillness of the morning that makes the words come easier. I do have writer’s block occasionally, but while the outside noise is muted, I have less in the way of the ideas that end up creating things. Several passages in my book, Elementals: Spark, were at least inspired by, if not directly written during, the time when I am awake all by myself.

Later today, I will take a nap, and cross my fingers that I can get some of the missing energy back. For now though, I sit in the living room, waiting for the world to wake up and say good morning.

Yarn Crafting

This past week I learned how to crochet. My mom sat down with me and showed me the basic double stitch and I got started on a scarf. Several mistakes were made, and I have had to start over, and pull stitches out to fix the fact that I missed a loop earlier in the project. Overall though, I have found it to be an interesting challenge.

Growing up my grandma tried to teach me to crochet and it never stuck. I could create several very long chains but never got beyond that skill. Patience is not my strong suit and because of that, I would give up before really giving it a shot. At the time my ADHD was undiagnosed, so I was unaware of the reason why I didn’t have a very long attention span for things that frustrated me. Crocheting was just challenging enough at the time that I just gave up and tried other crafts.

When my mom sat down with me, she showed me one stitch, which happened to be the double stitch, and then let me move at my own pace. I know that I have other options for stiches, but at the time she only gave me the one. (Fun fact: When my mom taught my sister, she showed her the single stitch. When I asked why she showed me the double instead, she just said that it was the one that came to mind when she sat down with me.)

Almost every day I have sat down with my scarf project and completed a row or two. It has been nice to have something to do with my hands while I watch tv or listen to music. The yarn has become a fidget to keep my hands busy that isn’t electronic. Normally I would be scrolling through things on my phone while watching YouTube or streaming a tv show. Learning to at least do a simple stitch of crotchet has given me something else to keep that over active brain of mine busy, so I can simply enjoy being in the moment.

With all the benefits that I have found, I am still not positive that this new hobby will stick. Only time will tell…