Productivity Report!
Dec. 10th, 2021 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetI've been trying to take it a bit easy, since I've noticed that I've been extra stressed at work lately and haven't quite been able to pinpoint why. I thought that my recent habit of trying to wring productivity out of whatever day off I have right before my next work day might be impacting it, so I decided to do my best not to stress about it the past few days and see where that got me. I think I'm doing a bit better, but I'm pretty sure I also ended up being more productive than might have been wise, so 😅
Nevertheless, it's nice to sometimes see my accomplishments lined up and take some measure of pride in them being done.
Despite not having a lot of items, this got rather long, so I'm putting it under a cut:
* For my new followers (hello!), my dad plays Santa for some places around town. Usually on Saturday afternoons, but I think he picked up an extra short gig recently? Anyway, he lost his red mask (because no way does Santa want to give any kids the gift of Covid for Christmas), and I put together two new ones for him. I very conveniently had some dark red fabric already cut and pinned from last year, so I had the new masks ready to go in a jiffy. It did make me want to make more masks, though!
(Side note: I have a good pile of cut-and-pinned mask fabric stashed in one of my many reusable bags. Last year, during a stint as a temp checker, I had a lot of free time and wanted to make up some cloth masks for teachers and stuff. I would spend my time folding rectangles of cloth into shape, then taping the ends closed with painter's tape to hold it in place, since pins were not entirely practical for hauling a big stack of them around. And then I just kinda let them sit in the bag until two nights ago 😅 I have other things to make, but it did remind me that I need to check my elastic supply and so forth.)
* Speaking of cloth, I picked up some fat quarters and a couple of yards of jersey from a local secondhand store that has a dedicated craft section, as well as some lace trim. I'm planning to turn them into play mats, with one side slightly patterned cotton and the other plain jersey with the lace trim to evoke wave foam. I also got a bunch of decent sized plastic containers (maybe quart size, in volume?) and pulled the labels off of those. The current plan is to pack the plastic containers with one ocean play mat, one crocheted octopus, and three coupons for ten percent off one other of my items each (rounded up to the next dollar) in each, then price them around $15 USD. The ultimate idea is that someone can put together their own aquatic play set, pick out their favorite octopus, dolphin, stingray, and one other ocean-y thing I haven't quite figured out yet; maybe a turtle? But I've also got mermaids now, even if I do need to do some pattern tweaking, and I sure won't complain if the buyer decides they'd rather use 10% off on a griffin or a dragon.
* On the subject of crocheted mermaids! I've got the pattern tweaked now so I'm satisfied with it, I just need to give the latest one actual hair. It's... still a work in progress, sigh. The previous one I made (seen here establishing diplomatic ties with the Queen of Perach) has what I think of as "Barbie hair", in that I basically made a full line around the circumference of her scalp, and then filled in plugs in the middle. If you sort through it, you can definitely see bald spots 😞 I picked up a skein of black "Homespun" yarn a while back, since the texture has great promise for mimicking Afro-texture hair, but finding a good way to attach it to the current mermaid's head still eludes me. I had pretty much decided to jut give up on anything complicated and crochet a small cap for a very short 'fro, but trying it on the mermaid, I'm worried it just makes her head look like an acorn! I definitely have more tweaking to do. In the future, I'm definitely also planning to crochet at least a few rounds on the top of any given mermaid's head in the color of their hair, to hopefully further circumvent the "bald spot" problem. It's that or put everyone's hair in ponytails, braids, and buns, and I have doubts about my abilities to properly portray Black hairstyles in the medium of yarn. More research certainly couldn't hurt, though!
* On a subject I don't have a good segue for, I have successfully performed my "every two months" mattress turning, and changed the sheets! I am very pleased with myself. The trick I tried a little while back to keep my fitted sheet from bunching up from me being a very restless sleeper (thanks, ADHD) worked out pretty well, so I made sure to do it from the get-go this time around: I got an extra set of sheet straps/sheet garters, and gartered the middle of the fitted sheet to either side of an extra pillowcase under the mattress. Voila, much less sleeping on bunched up fabric! It's a bit of a hassle to wrangle, but has so far been very worth it.
* I made dinner last night. Spaghetti and meatballs, with the meatballs from a package (frozen). I used red sauce and my brand new birthday present immersion blender, and successfully managed to get all of the lumps out, yay! Lumps are definitely a major reason why I dislike red sauce, but Dad prefers red sauce to white sauce, and if I'm making my food available to my family members, I feel like it's polite to take their tastes into account. Unfortunately, even the absence of lumps didn't make the red sauce as palatable as I'd have liked, so I may be switching back to white sauce in the near future, but at least now I can say that I tried!
* I sorted and folded the majority of my laundry, some of which had been sitting in baskets since the last time I washed any, thus making my laundry total closer to four loads than three. All my pants and shirts are taken care of, as are my towels, and all that's left is my socks and underthings. I'm not too worried about them getting wrinkled, though.
And that's about it, I think! I definitely still have stuff to do (first and foremost, I need to get to work on the present I'm planning for my baby nibling's first birthday in about ten days), but for tonight, what I need is to settle in for bed. I volunteered to come in for a few extra hours of work tomorrow, followed by an anime con staff meeting, and maybe I'll try and catch some Pokémon while other people are talking.
Nevertheless, it's nice to sometimes see my accomplishments lined up and take some measure of pride in them being done.
Despite not having a lot of items, this got rather long, so I'm putting it under a cut:
* For my new followers (hello!), my dad plays Santa for some places around town. Usually on Saturday afternoons, but I think he picked up an extra short gig recently? Anyway, he lost his red mask (because no way does Santa want to give any kids the gift of Covid for Christmas), and I put together two new ones for him. I very conveniently had some dark red fabric already cut and pinned from last year, so I had the new masks ready to go in a jiffy. It did make me want to make more masks, though!
(Side note: I have a good pile of cut-and-pinned mask fabric stashed in one of my many reusable bags. Last year, during a stint as a temp checker, I had a lot of free time and wanted to make up some cloth masks for teachers and stuff. I would spend my time folding rectangles of cloth into shape, then taping the ends closed with painter's tape to hold it in place, since pins were not entirely practical for hauling a big stack of them around. And then I just kinda let them sit in the bag until two nights ago 😅 I have other things to make, but it did remind me that I need to check my elastic supply and so forth.)
* Speaking of cloth, I picked up some fat quarters and a couple of yards of jersey from a local secondhand store that has a dedicated craft section, as well as some lace trim. I'm planning to turn them into play mats, with one side slightly patterned cotton and the other plain jersey with the lace trim to evoke wave foam. I also got a bunch of decent sized plastic containers (maybe quart size, in volume?) and pulled the labels off of those. The current plan is to pack the plastic containers with one ocean play mat, one crocheted octopus, and three coupons for ten percent off one other of my items each (rounded up to the next dollar) in each, then price them around $15 USD. The ultimate idea is that someone can put together their own aquatic play set, pick out their favorite octopus, dolphin, stingray, and one other ocean-y thing I haven't quite figured out yet; maybe a turtle? But I've also got mermaids now, even if I do need to do some pattern tweaking, and I sure won't complain if the buyer decides they'd rather use 10% off on a griffin or a dragon.
* On the subject of crocheted mermaids! I've got the pattern tweaked now so I'm satisfied with it, I just need to give the latest one actual hair. It's... still a work in progress, sigh. The previous one I made (seen here establishing diplomatic ties with the Queen of Perach) has what I think of as "Barbie hair", in that I basically made a full line around the circumference of her scalp, and then filled in plugs in the middle. If you sort through it, you can definitely see bald spots 😞 I picked up a skein of black "Homespun" yarn a while back, since the texture has great promise for mimicking Afro-texture hair, but finding a good way to attach it to the current mermaid's head still eludes me. I had pretty much decided to jut give up on anything complicated and crochet a small cap for a very short 'fro, but trying it on the mermaid, I'm worried it just makes her head look like an acorn! I definitely have more tweaking to do. In the future, I'm definitely also planning to crochet at least a few rounds on the top of any given mermaid's head in the color of their hair, to hopefully further circumvent the "bald spot" problem. It's that or put everyone's hair in ponytails, braids, and buns, and I have doubts about my abilities to properly portray Black hairstyles in the medium of yarn. More research certainly couldn't hurt, though!
* On a subject I don't have a good segue for, I have successfully performed my "every two months" mattress turning, and changed the sheets! I am very pleased with myself. The trick I tried a little while back to keep my fitted sheet from bunching up from me being a very restless sleeper (thanks, ADHD) worked out pretty well, so I made sure to do it from the get-go this time around: I got an extra set of sheet straps/sheet garters, and gartered the middle of the fitted sheet to either side of an extra pillowcase under the mattress. Voila, much less sleeping on bunched up fabric! It's a bit of a hassle to wrangle, but has so far been very worth it.
* I made dinner last night. Spaghetti and meatballs, with the meatballs from a package (frozen). I used red sauce and my brand new birthday present immersion blender, and successfully managed to get all of the lumps out, yay! Lumps are definitely a major reason why I dislike red sauce, but Dad prefers red sauce to white sauce, and if I'm making my food available to my family members, I feel like it's polite to take their tastes into account. Unfortunately, even the absence of lumps didn't make the red sauce as palatable as I'd have liked, so I may be switching back to white sauce in the near future, but at least now I can say that I tried!
* I sorted and folded the majority of my laundry, some of which had been sitting in baskets since the last time I washed any, thus making my laundry total closer to four loads than three. All my pants and shirts are taken care of, as are my towels, and all that's left is my socks and underthings. I'm not too worried about them getting wrinkled, though.
And that's about it, I think! I definitely still have stuff to do (first and foremost, I need to get to work on the present I'm planning for my baby nibling's first birthday in about ten days), but for tonight, what I need is to settle in for bed. I volunteered to come in for a few extra hours of work tomorrow, followed by an anime con staff meeting, and maybe I'll try and catch some Pokémon while other people are talking.
