It’s been quite a week.

I’m feeling a bit out of touch as I write this post even though it’s only been about 48 hours since I wrote my last post. I’ve been somewhat away from my blog for the last day and half, not that you’d notice.

I’ve been doing what I want to do since the start of the week – work on my crochet project – and as of yesterday, I finally finished it – my very own throw pillow.

I’ve been working on this for the last few weeks, spending night after night making each of the 32 motifs (16 on each side). At first, progress was very slow, only managing a maximum of 2 per night. Then I changed tactic. Instead of working on them one by one, I worked on one color at a time, like an assembly line – repeating the same task over and over. At that pace, I got 4-6 done every other night.

The last 2 days were spent joining the squares and working on the edging and finishing touches. It took lots of time and concentration because of vague instructions. I had to try and guess the type of stitch used to join the squares by squinting at the blurry picture of the finished product. I tried to rush but when I rushed, I’d end up making mistakes and had to take it apart and redoing the whole thing. Crochet is like meditation, nice and slow is the way to go.

Anyway, even though this was a 4-day workweek (well, it was more like 3.5), I was busy through all of it. Customers were panicking, like any good old procrastinator, waiting until the last minute to email and call in. In the midst of it all, I was trying to do as much as I could so I would have a smaller pile of work waiting for me when I return.

This was another cold week with a wind chill warning of temperatures dipping into the sub-zero Fahrenheits. After watching the weather report, I was glad I didn’t live in my neighboring states like Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, where temperatures went down to -20-degrees-Fahrenheit.

Despite being so freaking cold outside, I still went to the park for a walk. Donning on my homemade scarf for the first time after making it 2 years ago and my homemade wool hat, I was warm enough even though the temperature was around 19-degrees-Fahrenheit, with wind chill, probably around 10-degrees.

I felt I needed to get away momentarily from mom and her loud YouTube videos. She likes to watch her videos on the highest volume possible (I don’t know why). If I want to watch something and hear what it says, I’ll have to put in my noise-cancelling earbuds.

Anyway, there was no one at the park that day. It was completely quiet. The sky was also void of planes and for the first time in days, the sun was shining accompanied by blue skies. I could feel my mood buoy with every step. There’s nothing like gray cloudy skies that can drag a person down.

I hope now that my crochet project is done, I will be able to concentrate on the things I want to do during my week off from work next week. I have several things planned (perhaps too ambitious?) like taking another crack at getting myself certified in Quickbooks Online Advanced, write some short stories, and possibly start working on the A-Z Blogging Challenge in April 2023 (too soon?).

For now, I’ll sign off and wish everyone a Merry Christmas.