When what makes us who we are no longer applies

Crystal Manning fabrics (with a Speckled center) from a few years (or more) ago. This will be appliqued onto a light pink t-shirt, once of these days.

Gotta fix a cup of Metamucil, then I'll be back to expound upon this ominous title.

Okay, so getting used to life without gluten, dairy products, and red meat and NO CHEATING on those edicts has been...fine. Kinda like using Draft2Digital is FINE. It is what it is, and you get what you get and you don't pitch a fit. My eldest granddaughter used to say that when she was little, but now at ten years old, I don't hear it from her much anymore, LOL.

I don't mind the Metamucil, although it will be a cold day in hell before my husband drinks it, as it figured heavily in the lives of his elderly parents. It wasn't anything my parents used, and it still tastes like watered down Tang, no big deal. I feel good, have lost six pounds, and my knees don't hurt, so if dairy was aggravating those joints, it's a trade-off worthy of, well, no cheese or ice cream or cow's milk in tea. Barista-style oat milk seems the best substitute, and I use almond milk for cereal, though now that it's getting chilly, I don't have a bowl of cold cereal very often. As for red meat? Ground pork works fine (there's that word again) for meatballs or in pad gra prow. I've never been a big meat eater anyway, so truly it's the dairy I miss.

But this post isn't merely about my dietary trials, hah! Last night I started stitching a hexie flower for my youngest granddaughter's new hexie shirt, pictured above. I basted hexagons and big triangles a couple of nights ago without causing my shoulder undue pain, then stitched the triangles into a hexagon for my eldest grandson's shirt, pictured below. Those papers were from Tales of Cloth, and I enjoyed it, as well as being grateful to do it without making the shoulder cranky.

My eldest grandson is long past hexie FLOWERS, but does like himself a hexie shirt. Hopefully he'll approve of these autumnal hues too.

Yet last night's English paper piecing efforts were lacking in joy. It felt rote, making me inwardly shiver, but not from the cooling evening temperatures because a storm from the south was coming in, and I was sitting under a quilt. Was it the thicker papers used for the hexagons, Dritz papers definitely heavier than Jodi Godfrey's. Was it I wanted instead to be crocheting? I've been making cowls for myself and others, and on a whim I made myself a hat. Not that I'm a hat person, but it is growing cooler outside, and on mornings when I feed the chickens a hat is welcome. I started a hat yesterday afternoon, but my left arm became sore due to tendonitis, and I didn't have a strap, so I quit after three rows. Oddly enough last night I didn't use the strap and crocheted maybe twenty rows because after about ten I found the hat was too small. LOLOL: It was NOT fine. It needed to be frogged, as knitters say, so I did, then crocheted all the yarn I had frogged, then I stared at the piles of basted hexagons, and threw my lot in with a craft that for seven years I have LOVED. I organized a flower, that for my youngest granddaughter, then began sewing, and while no real pain dogged me, a malaise lingered, and I didn't finish it. Instead I returned to crocheting that hat, and while it's not done either, I sure enjoyed making it far more than one little hexie flower.

I want to blame the papers, because I didn't have that sense in using the thinner, although larger triangles. What I don't want to consider is how while I was stitching those hexagons, I was thinking, "I'd rather be spending my precious sewing time on Kawandi quilting, or getting back to that hat." Are my EPP days coming to an end? I hope not, because I have seven or eight English paper pieced quilts to complete! But then, right before I got sick, I had no idea I'd be purging dairy from my diet. Sometimes life alters considerably, and we just have to take it and not pitch a freakin' fit!

Hat-in-progress....

When I returned to working on the hat, I pondered that I've been crocheting for thirty-seven years. (And I use the same hook as when I started, lol, an H from Boye, perfect when one is learning, also ideal for chunky yarns.) My mother-in-law taught me right before I had my first child, although I don't recall my MIL drinking Metamucil while she stayed with us, haha. So yeah, crocheting was my first hand craft, and after all this time, it still resonates. But English paper piecing? I don't know. Maybe a few of those seven or eight quilts won't be completed. When I lost enthusiasm for cross-stitching, I wrapped up nearly all the projects, other than the large one that I retrieved recently, but haven't touched after that initial reintroduction. But cross-stitching, even large pieces, are FAR LESS WORK than an EPP quilt, merely due to their size and that a quilt top still needs to be part of a sandwich for it to be finished. So yeah (again), I'm facing some interesting crossroads in the crafting, wholly uncertain which lane will I travel.

The first hat I made, with that beloved crochet hook, hehehe. This hat is a wee bit small for me, but my eldest daughter LOVED the colours, so maybe it would make her day.

Thankfully all this (be)moaning doesn't touch the writing, WHEW! I've been reading through the next installment of The Hawk, one chapter a morning, and enjoying it thoroughly. (Although when I write the next installment of The Enran Chronicles remains to be seen, ahem.)

I didn't sleep well last night, so an oat milk cup of black tea is calling my name. Or maybe I'll make a half-caff coffee. Then I'll work on that hat. Or perhaps I'll finish the hexie flower. Or I could pin the triangle hexagon onto its coordinating t-shirt, then applique that this evening. Maybe I'm bitching about nothing, so many lovely shinies and milk substitutes amid traumas for others. But this is the state of my world, getting older and wondering how to best slot all into their appropriate spaces. As I've said recently, if you get this far, thanks for listening. And have a truly beautiful day!