Marrietta's Halloween

 After being Judge Ginsberg for quite awhile, Marietta decided to dress up for Halloween.  She has a new shawl and hat.  

The shawl is a shortened version of Skull shawl/Döskallesjal by kungen och majkis.  It doesn't show up that well on her, but she needed something to tone down the purple T.  I used a size 3 metal crochet hook and some very ancient, thrifted crochet thread.  it bled a lot when I soaked it.  

The hat is made of felt.  I followed How to Make a witch hat for any size doll on Lomi's Playground on You Tube.  Math was involved and it was also metric.  Minimal hand sewing was involved.  I had some black wire ribbon in stash and attempted a bow.  I used some left-over green scrubbie cotton.  It is a sorry decoration.  Hope I get more ideas later.  

After shopping for the proper pin, I found a cat pin in a drawer labelled Pins.  Thank Marie Kondo for that, lol.  I'd forgotten I had such a drawer.  I suspect this came from mom's stash.  

On the knitting scene, another Musselburgh is happening with a lovely blue yarn hand-dyed by Nanea of the now closed lys, Aloha Yarns.  I really miss that place and it's lovely vibe.  

Such an exciting life I lead.  

Random Thoughts in Time of Covid

 It ain't over yet.  Darn you Delta (not the airlines)

Life is in a little valley.  Thank goodness they aren't as deep as they used to be.  I owe it to age in which I have become better at drama mitigation.  

I'm struggling with Noom.  Like every other "diet", it's success or failure depends on me.  In Hawaii, there are so many ethnicities.  My barrier is the food diary.  Many foods I eat do not conveniently come up in the food list, so I either have to calculation everything in the recipe or "estimate".  My perfection issue causes guilt when I estimate.  One step into the valley.  

I have used up some brain cells wondering about that cotton ball that used to come in pill bottles.  They seemed to have disappeared one day, never to return.  From what I can glean from the Net, there were contamination issues, and since pills became more travel proof, cushioning was no longer needed.  I thought it was more recent, but seems like it was in the late '90s when drug companies abandoned cotton balls.  Of course by then, cotton balls were replaced with synthetic materials.  

Which reminds me of a story mom told about her dad growing up in Lahaina.  He used to pick the cotton from the bush and kept it in a jar in the bathroom for them to use.  I remember dad (a doctor) used to make his own "Q" tips with a cotton ball and stick.  He would break off the used tip and make a new one.  Now sanitary standards wouldn't allow this, but heck you can do it at home.  

I did not know there was a native cotton, ma'o.  I do know that a project to grow Sea Island cotton commercially on the side of  Punchbowl failed.  That's the plant growing in may yard.  I have not kept up with spinning.  The birds like it to put in their nests, which is better then plastic.  

Life is so exciting that I track packages like it's a job.  My shirt traveled through 7 states and made 4-5 stops in some of them.  It is more traveled then some people I know.  

I did what any Noro loving knitter does, when the going gets rough, knit some Noro.  

I can't imagine anyone I know who would wear these colors but I certainly enjoyed knitting them.  I had one partial skein of Taiyo #32 when I started the scarf and used up 2+ skeins for the scarf.  I used the partial skein for the hat and had one skein left.  Yarn math.  So another hat is underway.  At least the new yarn was on closeout at Webs.  

My life isn't really rough, just in a small valley.  I have much to be grateful for.