Salt Dough Ancient Greece - Complete!

After being inspired by our friends' completed maps, My Girl pulled out the paints and finished her own.

We are all very pleased with the result!

Here's a link to the first post about the map experience, for those of you who missed it.

Finished

On Saturday I finished.

It's been a long process, and in working through it I'm sure that I made 60 blocks instead of the 30 that are in the final product. Lots of pulling out. Lots or remaking. Lots of trying again.

But now I am finished.

Following a Pattern

Months ago I saw a pattern I liked for an afghan. I looked around for yarn to use for it, but was uninspired, so the pattern sat unused for some time.

After a while, the company that the pattern came from was having a 'free shipping' promotion on online purchases, so I went ahead and bought the yarn that way. When it arrived in the mail, I began to crochet.

That's when things got complicated.

The afghan is made up of 30 units (called 'blocks', which are actually rectangles), using 3 different patterns. That sounds easy enough, and I thought that doing 30 small pieces would be a lot more manageable than doing one huge one.

But I was wrong.

You see, when you do 10 pieces of the same pattern, they should all be the same size. And mine aren't. Some are quite close, others (2 or 3) are almost perfect. But there's a fair bit of variation over the 10 pieces.

AND...

...when you have 3 different patterns to follow, the resulting blocks should be the same size as well. But I've had to do so much fiddling to get my single crochet blocks to be the same as the double crochet blocks, first by making my stitches looser or tighter, then by increasing or decreasing the number of stitches in each row... And still they aren't the same.

It makes me very nervous to try the third pattern which is more complicated, because changing the number of stitches in a row will change the pattern and it'll require a fair bit of figuring to determine what will work. And because I also know that, no matter how perfectly my adjustments work out on paper, when I actually crochet them, they'll be no more consistent than my first two styles have been.

Sigh.

But I'm still trying. I'm crocheting piece after piece. I'm pulling out rows, sometimes too many to count, sometimes a whole block's worth (I'm sure I've actually crocheted enough blocks to make the afghan, even though I only have 12 pieces sitting in front of me now).

These blocks have taken on a life of their own for me. I want each of them to be perfect, to match the others in size and shape and texture, but they all come out differently. Some are nice, others are filled with flaws. Some I have to pull out and start over.

In the end, though, once each block is pieced together with all the others, the result will have its own beauty, will look like no one else's, and will be completely mine.

Sounds a bit like the days my Lord has given me.

Pottery Comes Home

During the summer My Girl and I made pottery at a sweet friend's home. She kept the unfinished work at her home until she had an opportunity to fire and glaze them, and then she brought them to a meeting that we shared this past week. What light on My Girl's face as she shows her treasure to everyone who comes to our little home. Despite our inexperience, our pieces turned out quite nicely, thanks mostly to the hands of my friend. This friend is a skilled artist, and I am so thankful for the patient and gentle way she led us through the process of making this covered dish and a candle holder.

Crochet an Afghan this Fall

This lovely afghan pattern was in my inbox yesterday. I think I'm going to try it, although I'll have to substitute yarn as the one recommended isn't available in my adorable small town.

My Mom has made tons of afghans over the years, including a lovely one that sits on my living room armchair waiting to be curled up in. Now it's my turn to try my hand at it and make a companion curl-up-afghan for the upcoming cool weather evenings. (Maybe I'll have to make three so we won't be fighting over them - the one we have from Mom gets nabbed by the first person on the couch, and the rest of us do without - or share, but you know how smooth that can be!)

Pottery

Invited by a Friend to try our hands at the wheel, we take our turns. Hard clay centred, secured. The first shaping progresses slowly while the wheel spins.

My Girl at the wheel with our Friend

Instructions pass from mouth to hands, hands which resist remembering. Cool clay wet with drops released from above begins to yield to the pressure of hands and the unrelenting spinning force.

My Girl shaping the clay

My Girl's friend forming the candle holder while our Friend drips water from above.

"You have only one hand in pottery", she tells us. "One hand guides, the other does the work." That is foreign to these hands. They are unaccustomed to such an arrangement. While they are familiar with cooperation, coordination, this unity is something new.

Pressing in my thumbs to form the bowl.
We hope to receive the kiln-fired creations when we see our Friend again in September. It's a time for waiting with anticipation!

Thank you, dear Friend, for this experience in creation.