I Like Thursday ~ Good Morning and Good Night

 

In the early morning, you can find me enjoying my coffee 

and adding more stitches to my current project.

The question this week for 

I Like Thursday @ Not Afraid of Color

is "Are you a Morning Person or Night Owl?"

In truth, I can be either or both.

Many a midnight in the past, I would be sitting at my sewing machine

while Mr Scrapatch was working a late shift.

Now I can still occasionally be up stitching

long after Mr. Scrapatch has gone to bed for the night

as he is an early to work man these days

and gets up and feeds the kitties before me.

When he leaves for work, the kitties are napping

and the sun shines in or the rain taps at the windows

and I am stitching. 

Here are a few of the new rows in my Mystery Spring Crochet Along:

Jacob's Ladder

This is my favorite stitch in this crochet along so far.

The last time I laid out the work in progress,

it measured over 4 feet long.

Here are a few of the most recent additions.

The Strawberry row is really cute.

The stitch above it is another rainbow stitch,

this one is a Mosaic Crochet Stitch.

Nutmeg loves this and wants to claim it as her own.

So when the row of the day was a Cat Stitch,

I changed the color to orange just for her. 

My stitching lasted into the afternoon today

as it called for the Drunken Granny Stitch.

My fingers could almost make Granny Squares in my sleep,

so they kept making regular granny clusters

and I had to pull them out and start again a few times.

By the afternoon, it was time to relax with a bit of 

Bailey's in my afternoon iced coffee to get in the spirit of the stitch.

Now here it is night and I am updating my blog a wee bit late this week.

Good Morning and Goodnight to all my Thursday blogging friends!

I Like Thursday ~ Beaches

 

The question for us today for 

I Like Thursday @ Not Afraid of Color

is  "Amusement Park or Day at the Beach?"

I am a beach person. 

Coast to Coast.

Above is the Atlantic ...  in Maine.

Below is the Pacific ... 

... at Huntington Beach, California.

I feel that I am lucky to have put my toes in the ocean

 on both the east and the west coast.

In my younger days, I could walk the sands for hours,

end to end and back again on any beach, anywhere, 

any time of day or year,

knowing I have never put my toes in exactly the same place.

The beach is ever changing.

The tides are ever flowing.

Each moment is unique,

a once in a lifetime experience ... and, yet, eternal.

It is a return to winter here today.

The kitties and I are snug and warm inside,

stitching our crochet,

and dreaming of the beach.

May your Thursday be happy, my friends. 

I Like Thursday ~ My Kitties

 

Maestro, 12 weeks, and me.

The prompt for today for

I Like Thursday @ Not Afraid of Color

is 

 "If you could choose any baby animal to be your pet, 

what would you pick and why?"

I would choose a kitten,

as I have done so over and over in my life.

My pet does not have to be a baby animal.

They are all my babies.

Why?

For the unconditional love,

on both sides.

I Like Thursday ~ Jasmine Crochet Stitch

 

Today my purple flowers are made of yarn.

I am late adding my post for

I Like Thursday @ Not Afraid of Color

because I have spent all day making these

 five rows of crochet stitches.

This is the Jasmine stitch.

This is the most labor intensive

 and yarn consuming crochet stitch

crossing my hook in recent memories.

I like learning new things,

making new friends in the crochet along,

playing with the pretty yarns.

The first cluster row stitch was the most difficult,

in part because it had to be adapted to this row stitch along.

This stitch is normally starts with clusters instead of a chain.

I think I may have made a scarf with it many years ago,

but do not recall it being this tricky.

Maybe my fingers were just younger and more able.

 It was the young and able fingers of this 

Spring Crochet Along

 designer who did the adaptions.

Her excellent instruction video

may be found at 

Any Day Crochet on TikTok

There the trick to holding the loop of the working thread

as it feeds through the cluster can be learned.

For two rows, there were 19 loops on the hook for each cluster stitch.

I tried this stitch last night and could not get it started.

This morning I started with my morning coffee

and kept at it all day,

with occasional necessary rests for my hands.

My finished Jasmine Stitch row is far from perfect

but I am feeling very happy and accomplished tonight.

My Wordless Wednesday photo showed some of my crocuses,

the first flowers of spring in my yard.

Yesterday it was cold and gray and they were closed up tight.

Here are some more of my crocuses.

It was sunny today but very windy and bitterly cold.

My crocuses were closed up tight.

Hopefully it will be warmer soon so they may spring open.

Happy Spring to all,

whatever your weather or season of the year.

Wordless Wednesday