Last time I checked in with my new crochet hobby, I had made the woobles bat and penguin and started the blanket that never ends. So let’s check in. I gave everyone a fuck ton of Woobles for Christmas. This included my besties K and K2. I figured K is killer at crafts, so she’d be good with an intermediate kit — also it was a purple dragon and what is more K than that? So, I was wrong. The dragon is kinda hard. And the tutorials assume you know the basics. So fun twist, I ordered a bunch of easy yarn and now all three of us are going through the Penguin tutorial together. I think K has finished her potato and K2 and I are about to start closing ours up. K has the itch though and she sent us a text tonight with her progress on the dragon.
So what have I made? Well, I got a Michael’s gift card for Christmas. So I was like yeah, I’m making a big ass dragon. I got the code for the tutorial from K. We went to Michael’s and I picked up some velvet yarn. I dont love it itself — but the colors were just spectacular. I wont work with it again because it is MESSY A F. It’s also overly heavy and I actually like the feel of the baby blanket yarn better. But I made the dragon! I took three skeins of dark purple and one of gold. Here he is:
I like working with the bigger yarns way better than the tiny stuff. It’s fun seeing your project build faster. Also the fuzzy yarn is so forgiving in how visible the stitches are. This one was a PAIN though. I am not intermediate as much as I want to tell myself I am. And this one just had so many steps. So many. And I ran out of yarn (originally only bought two skeins of purple) and had to wait for more to come in the mail because no local Michaels had it in stock. Even though the one across town told me they did and I drove all the way over there — they couldn’t find it. Fuck that Michaels. FUCK THEM.
Anyway, damn it was a lot of steps. I got through about 8ish rows before I realized that the recommended hook size of 19 was far too big. So I went back and got a size 10 hook. Then frogged it and started over, Here’s an action shot:
So I felt so accomplished when I finished the body and head. I figured I was close to my dragon! I added the ears which are freaking adorable. I added horns. I took a break. Then I added a tail. But fuck — I sewed that shit on so damn crooked. But it was on there now. So I just rolled with it, like his tail is swooping. It looks better this way — totally my end goal all along. I added the spikes but they just looked so wrong. So I frogged them and redid them 3 times before deciding that’s just how they looked. Then I had to wait on my mail ordered yarn.
In the mean time, I added wire to the spikes. This velvet yarn is heavy so they weren’t standing up by themselves very well. When the third purple skein got here, I could do my wings! I got those done, Wired up the top ridge and jammed those babies in. The great news was that I had enough gold and purple left to wrap all the edges that had wire so it’s completely hidden. It looks fucking AMAZING! I’m so proud of my dragon! I had to rearrange my office shelves to accommodate him.
I thought his colors were very regal, but K2 can’t see anything but peanut butter and jelly. So his name is Lord Concord (like grape jelly).
So did I finish my Christmas blanket? Oh fuck no. I did travel with it over Christmas and worked on it the entire travel time and on and off while I was at my in-laws. Flying is much more pleasant when focusing on a craft. Really. And even the flight attendants were interested in what I was making. See: Here’s my bald ass crocheting at the airport on a layover:
So this blanket is going to take fucking forever. I’m going to TRY to budget time so that it’s done for next Christmas but that might even be tight. It’s supposed to be six rows of 15 repeats. That should be a 60″ x 40″ blanket. I was working on the 12th repeat this weekend and measured… I’m at 80″. Fuck.
So I wrapped up my 12th repeat and started the second strip. But my strips are also barely over 5 inches wide so 6 would only give me a 30″ blanket. Ugh. So I’m looking at at least 8 strips. Yes, I ordered more yarn so I should have enough. This blanket will never end. I’ve decided I will try to hold to a rough schedule of how much I need to have done each month or quarter or so and sprinkle in projects I’m more excited about. Having a row finished though is very exciting!
It’s so soft. Also, it’s funny to see my evolution into settling in to being comfortable with this yarn. My first three color rows were actually so bad that I cut them off and redid them. It had to be done. Then at maybe the 3rd repeat, I decided to hold the yarn with my fingers and crochet super slow so it wouldn’t be stretching and wiggling all over the place (it’s super thin and moves like crazy). You can really see where the row gets really thin there because my stitches were too tight. Then I got better and settled into a good rhythm. I’m doing really well now with my tension. I’m using a tension regulator that I made though. Got the tutorial off Youtube. You can actually see it on my finger in the airport photo — it’s a white crocheted ring.
I’m going to leave the rest of the imperfections of row one in there. It’s my first big project so it’s a good showing of how I evolved. I’m going to try to keep them in order when I stitch it all together.
So next up: I have the Woobles kit for the pig — plus the tiny wings kit so I can make him a pig with wings! I can’t wait to finish up the penguin I’m doing with K and K2. I’m going to make him a tiny bowler hat and pair him with the other penguin with the flying ace hat — they’re going to be Wilbur and Orville! I also bought a pattern for Lumalee and some Mario mushrooms off Etsy. I want to make it in the baby yarn like the grey bat, but I can only find very muted colors for baby blankets. So I’m waiting until I find a good yarn to buy for that.
Today was a great day! This morning, I wrapped Christmas presents. Then this evening K2 came over to do gingerbread houses! We baked cookies, and decorated gingerbread houses while watching three cheesy Christmas movies on Netflix.
My family usually does a gingerbread party every year. This year there’s all sorts of drama in my family. I set a rock hard boundary, and well, might have been disowned? I don’t know. It’s for the best. It needed to be done. I want to talk to my SIL and see what everyone’s saying but NO — the point was to get OUT. So I must resist. But I still wanted to do gingerbread. K2 to the rescue!
We decided to get house kits. I got the Gingerbread Mansion from Target for $20. Cookies were required. I made keto cookies for me. They melted into a pan of solid raw cookie dough. I also made chocolate chip for K2 and Husband. Those worked out. We decided to put on a Christmas movie. So We set up in the living room so we could watch the movie while we worked!
Yep, I’m in my PJs. I didn’t get dressed today. I put out a plastic table cloth for easy clean up and K2 queued up the movies.
The first movie was Lindsey Lohan. She was a rich spoiled chick. Then she went skiing with her shallow finance and fell off the mountain. She got amnesia and ended up in a tiny town. She ended up being taken in to stay at the inn owned by a single dad who was about to lose everything. Yep, she fell in love. So did he. Go figure.
Then there was the Christmas Bitch movie. The lead guy was not attractive so it was kinda weird. They had a great relationship until Christmas. She HATES Christmas and he’s obsessed with Christmas. He believes Santa is real. He plans a week of activities for her and her daughter — oh yeah, single parent again. Bitch couldn’t even make it a week. She got into a big hissy fit and dumped him over loving Christmas. Like, WTF? You can’t let him have a damn week of holiday cheer? They’ve been together for months but fuck that! They ended up staying together even though they still disagree on if Santa is real. So ummmm… That one sucked.
Both of the previous movies with the single parents, the kid’s Christmas wish to Santa was for them to get together. Yall stay away from single parents during Christmas! Don’t fall for it!
Third movies a charm! Apparently, she had seen that one before. It was great! A journalist who writes a column about her terrible dating life falls in love with an online match. She hasn’t met him, but after two weeks she’s in love and she flies in to surprise him and meet him. Oh no, he used a fake picture! He’s just an asian guy! Boooooo! But she goes to the bar and see his friend, the picture he used. He promises to help her get with the hot guy if she pretends to be his girlfriend for the holiday because his family is so happy for him. She has nothing in common with the cute guy, but lies about everything anyway. Also, lets ignore that she fell in love with the guy over the phone and he’s still that guy, just asian? Which is bad? She comes around in the end and realizes that she loves him. It sounds stupid but it was actually a GREAT movie. It was hilarious. Let’s ignore how lame she was with the “weird” and quirky opinions that Die Hard is a Christmas movie (really, that whole thing is so old — everyone knows about this). Also, her favorite book was Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” WHAT? He’s heard of it? No way! One of the most famous children’s poetry book to exist? CRAZY! But no no no, it was still a good movie. The writers just really slacked off there.
K2 is like my favorite person to watch moves with. So we watched movies and glued candy to gingerbread. Yes glued. This aint Martha Stewart. No ones eating these things. Hot glue it together. Why yall making life difficult?
This is only the second gingerbread house she’s ever made but she did damn good. Like there was so much candy on that thing. No skimping. I went all out and tried my hardest. I actually like the back better than the front of mine, but whatever, It’s awesome and I love it.
We had a great time. And gingerbread tip of the year: I had the idea to wrap the cheap cardboard that comes with these premade houses with wrapping paper. I actually used a green gift bag. I’m a genius.
And of course, I took a fuck ton of photos of my house because I worked hard on that shit.
Where have I been for over a month? Crocheting. Stressing and crocheting. And sure, crocheting actually sounds like something I’d do. However, until like last month, I didn’t even know the difference between crocheting and knitting. I knew there was a difference, but not exactly what and which was which. Then Facebook got me.
How? Ads. Facebook kills me with ads. It’s like “you want this?” And I do. So, I don’t know how long ago, it started showing me The Woobles. The Woobles intrigued me. Not only is it a craft — it’s all in one. It includes EVERYTHING you need. So you can try out crochet without buying anything but this one kit. Look at this:
Yes, when the Halloween collection came out and I saw pumpkins and bats, I caved. That picture is for Luna the bat. It comes with beginner “easy” yarn that HAS ALREADY BEEN STARTED FOR YOU, all the colors you need, the stuffing, eyes, and crochet needle. But it also has step by step videos. In the reviews on Amazon, one of the only negative ones was that they videos were too slow and aimed at kindergartners. Bitch, some of us are LEARNING. We need crochet kindergarten.
It took until about row four before I even figured out the “yarn under” thing. Well, the second row four. I had to unravel the first attempt. But I did it! I created a bat! I MADE THIS. I had also ordered the mini pumpkin kit so I made that shit too. I was hooked (no pun intended). I wanted to do more, but all I knew how to make was that bat. But I had some yarn from a previous craft! So I bought a hook sized for the chenille baby blanket yarn and made en even BIGGER bat (stuffing from an old pillow). Holy shit, I’m amazing.
So then, I was like… I like this. I’ve been crocheting every evening while watching the old 90’s TV show “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” It’s simple to follow and doesn’t require a lot of attention. It’s also a cheesy throw back I enjoy. And I’ve been loving it. It’s relaxing. Instead of feeling like I’m wasting my evenings (and therefore my life) away aimlessly clicking on Reddit and waiting to retire — I’m enjoying my evenings. I’m making things again. So I ordered a kit to make a blanket, because what am I gonna do with all these bats?
Then I got antsy and made the penguin kit with his tiny aviator hat. Yall, these tiny kits (the pumpkin and the hat) are only $5 each. SO WORTH IT. Look how stinking cute he is! I’m so fucking good at this! I LOVE CROCHET. Look how fucking adorable that penguin with his hat is! He’s got stubby little wings yall! And a hat! Husband likes him so much it’s on his desk.
Then I started the blanket because I’m gonna knock this right on out.
Yeah… no. This shit is hard. One, that easy yarn TRICKED ME. It was so easy! I thought the chenille yarn was super hard because I couldn’t see my stitches, but I was wrong. This “afghan yarn” is 2 ply and slippery as FUCK. The stitches are sliding all over the place. And it barely holds together. It’s so hard to not stab right through it every stitch. So it’s slooooowwwwww going.
I’m not gonna lie. I thought about giving up on this shit. But NO. I’m gonna finish. This is my first big project and dammit, I’m gonna do it. And yes, I’m gonna fix that first dark green row because jesus, that’s terrible.
I’ve got the five color sequence done two and a half times now. I’ve figured out the yarn — that being that it’s going to stretch out and pull everywhere, just go with it. I’m not having to look at the pattern. And I can see why the pattern is the way it is. It took about 6 rows before the chevrons really started to stand out. I also thought the single crochet rows were worthless (each color is 4 rows) — but now I see. By doing the single crochet row and back stitching everything, the single row ends up completely on the back of the blanket and invisible from the front. This leaves only the two double crochet stitch rows showing on the front. It also makes them look like they’ve overlapping like fish scales. Nice. And this yarn may suck to work with, but god damn is it soft.
So yeah, Woobles. 100% recommend that shit. They were even on Shark Tank! Sure, if you already have the stuff to knit or crochet, it’s over priced. The people saying that already have hooks and shit and know yarn is cheap. But if you just wanna give it a go, this lets you do a whole project with everything. Even the little plastic eye balls! An yeah, I can look up stitches on youtube, but this is the stitches plus a slow step by step guide.
Everybody’s getting Woobles for Christmas!
Here’s my old lady ass crocheting with my cat. I love it!
This is a post about gingerbread houses. And Mom. And Jack. And how Mom got her groove back through gingerbread. Just go with it.
So back in 2006, I had just moved into my own place on Golf Road. Lovely shitty apartment of my own. $545 a month. Just me and Jack. And mom visited a lot. I worked at the police department as a dispatcher and was less than a year away from starting my career (though 5 years from graduating — not the point). It was Christmas! My first Christmas in my OWN place. This called for something special. This called for … a gingerbread house!
So mom came to visit and help me make my very own gingerbread house. There were issues. We couldn’t find any gingerbread mix. So it was really a sugar cookie house. It counts, OK? It had windows! Mom showed me how to crush up jolly ranchers and melt them to make stained glass windows! We had a peppermint roof and a full length chocolate chip chimney. I cut up gum drops and made a wreath. It was glorious. This was before cheap battery-powered lights, but if we had had those, it would have glowed gloriously through my translucent blue and purple sugar windows.
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Then the next few years we’d always do something special for Christmas. Usually treats. Like chocolate dipped Oreos, or chocolate covered Ritz Crackers with peanut butter, or those fancy treats where you melt a Rolo on top of a pretzel and smush it with a peanut M&M — or if you’re going somewhere fancy — a half a pecan. Sometimes we even did gingerbread cookies and decorated them with icing.
Then, in 2009, I was feeling adventurous. I was in a much nicer apartment with a guest room and dating a cute guy who would become my husband. It was time for another gingerbread house. We had to outdo our previous effort. This had to be magnificent. We would do something with more grandeur. We would make a church.
How does one make a gingerbread church? Well, you just make the front and back taller so the roof is steeper and put a steeple on top. We’re not on the Food Network here, aint nobody got time to make templates and stuff. But don’t you worry, we got this. It would have even more jolly rancher windows! More icing! The M&Ms would be Christmas colors to look like Christmas lights! And best of all: Shingles. We would use Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal and put individual shingles on that shit. Boo-yeah!
Now, I would like to say, we kept improving on our gingerbread game. We got so good we could do competitions! But we didn’t. The church was actually the pinnacle of my gingerbread greatness. Sad, I know. But that’s not where the story ends. Those were merely flights-of-fancy in the gingerbread game of my own. Mom would take gingerbread houses and flip the script.
So take a step back. I moved away from my text-book codependent family in 2003 and got a shit ton of therapy. In my evolution of self, I turned from my father. Fuck that asshole. No, not God, my real father. THAT asshole. Sometimes the pendulum has to swing really far to right itself. Now my beloved mother had been beaten down by that motherfucker for decades. And you can be damn straight I turned my pot-stirring self to getting her to realize it. And she was really coming around by the time she kicked the bucket. I think she might have had the gumption to skip Christmas by the time she died. I’m sad I never got to see that and sneak her a wink and a high five. OK, back to the early 2000s:
So dad always controlled every holiday. Though they divorced when I was two, dad always controlled everything. Holidays were at his house. We’d go over the weekend before and scrub it clean cause he’s kinda a hoarder. Mom would make every single dish and we’d go over to dads and pretend to be happy. Even after he got a girlfriend — who thankfully took over the cleaning part. Mom would still cook for a week and haul it all over to that bastards house so he could have his happy family holiday (yes, with his girlfriend and my step brother — the kid he had while he was still married to my mother). Every Thanksgiving and every Christmas — even Easter.
At some point, she started making extra to “hide.” Is it hiding if you make it yourself, in your own house, and just don’t take it over? Not really, but in my codependent family it was rebellion. I think this started when the girlfriend would start making to-go meals for her friends and for my step brother (the affair child). We stopped having leftovers left. Mom stopped having food to eat off of for the next week after she’d spent all week cooking for everyone. No more turkey casserole! You know, where you shred the turkey and mix it with the dressing and cream-of-chicken soup? None. So mom started making extra dressings and extra mac & cheese and keeping it at her house. Come 2014 something had changed.
Now I’m not sure what triggered the change. And I wouldn’t dare say “something snapped” — nay, something clicked into place is what happened. Maybe that was after dad started putting rules on presents — how much we could spend, and then one year declaring we weren’t allowed to give gifts at all (yeah no, fuck him — yall know I didn’t listen to his shit). But 2014 was a new era. In 2014, mom decided to have her own Christmas.
Now don’t get me wrong, it was still a secret. It didn’t replace dads Christmas. Mom would just have her own Christmas on a different weekend with only her own children and we’d ACTUALLY be happy for real. There were kinks. Bitch sister banned pictures so there are no photographic memories to look back on with my blessed mother. Because god-forbid dad find out and get his wittle-feewings-huwt. So I’m a bit bitter that moms gone and I can’t go back and look at those non-existent-photos, but it happened. And I have the gingerbread houses to prove it. Recently, I took an internet deep dive to find them.
2014 was a learning year. What would we do for moms Christmas? She’d make a big meal but what should we do? Gingerbread houses! But we’re not going to be all difficult about it. This was before gingerbread house kits were a thing, mind you. Mom decided we’d make cardboard houses and decorate them! And we’d use hot glue and caulk because ain’t nobody eating these anyway. So we made cardboard houses in advance. And even one Pringles can which became a rocket of sorts. Then, when the night came, we exchanged presents and ate food and laughed and made merry in my sisters tiny house where mom lived. And after dinner, we gingerbreaded! We had tons of cheap candies and graham crackers, pretzels and cereals, all sorts of shit to glue to your box house!
I chose the biggest box house because I’m ambitious. I did not anticipate the sheer amount of time it would take to cover such a large house with graham crackers, cookies, and smarties. Much less how much time it would take me to caulk to entire roof and lay it with pretzels. It was all I could do to get a Twizzler door and butterscotch windows before the night was over. But it was a wonderful Christmas party! And mom was beaming.
I returned home with my house and eventually, I had to spiff that shit up. I had run out of time! So one night while my husband was playing D&D at the table with friends, I sat in the living room with hot glue gun and made that shit SPIFFY. Look at this. M&M Christmas lights! Lined windows! My signature gumdrop wreath — and Christmas tree Peeps. Fuck Yeah. Much better.
Oh now we had a tradition. And the next year, we found gingerbread house kits! 2015 brought a cookie roof and a ice-cream-cone tree (pretty sure mom made me that). We even started saving all the leftover candies because, again, nobody is eating this stuff. And we got better. Caulk is great for cookies and cereal, but don’t use it on the sugar candy — it melts it. Like, it never dries and the candy melts off it. Some kind of chemical reaction. I don’t know. Eventually we gave up on caulk anyway.
In 2016, I bought a whole stash of PREBUILT gingerbread houses. All we had to do was decorate. I went with a Chex roof.
By 2017, gingerbread house kits were becoming a thing. Not only were they easy to find, they started making weird shit. Mom bought me this sweet Mario castle kit! For some reason it didn’t come with a roof or second-story walls. But I’m an engineer so I hot-glued some wooden-skewer beams for supports and filled in with graham crackers. Fuck yeah. Add some Peep trees. Magnificent.
I should also point out that it started to become clear that this tradition was spreading in the family. And by family, I mean Jack. It became very clear that he was sneaking on the counter at night to eat the icing and marshmallows. I let him have at it. It was Christmas, after all. It was pretty evident on that red mushroom though.
In 2018, I brought back my cereal shingle technique. Notice the Mario-Coins saved from the previous year.
In 2019 mom really went all out. Sister had moved into a bigger house so we could set up in the downstairs game room. Multiple tables were set up and everyone was gifted an adorable little spruce tree in a gingerbread box. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t remember this year much. I had some pretty bad brain trauma and I probably barely made it there. That might also explain why the hell there is so damn much icing on the roof. Not my best showing.
2020 was one hell of a year. The party almost didn’t happen because — well, Covid. My husband wasn’t about to leave our house and he really didn’t want anyone here. But I begged and God was on my side. Everyone promised to quarantine and come up here for the party so I wouldn’t have to travel (I was still recovering). God really made that year special for us. Everyone came up. And everyone spent the night! It was so much fun. We had a full house. And mom had got us all matching PJs! We took one of the family’s most cherished photos that night. A family photo with us in our matching PJs and mom up front. Who knew it would be the last family photo we ever took? We didn’t even hardly have any family photos — maybe just my wedding photos, actually. I’m still so sad my sweet husband took the photo because that means he’s not in it. If only I had thought to ask CB to take one with him in it…
Well, we didn’t actually do houses that year. We decorated cookies to make things easier. J had bought an ugly sweater cookie kit and me and mom baked hand-cut gingerbread cookies before everyone got up here. I think it was December 19th? Just a week before she died on Christmas day. Fucking Covid.
The next year, 2021, not everyone was in much of a celebrating mood. But my sister-in-law and brother agreed to host. I found these spiffy fondant penguins at Target. My sisters didn’t come. But we kept the tradition alive. Hey, I even did a damn fine showing with a frosted miniwheats roof. And that was the last Christmas with my precious Jack. And damned if he didn’t go after that house in those dark mid-night hours. He nearly ate a whole damned Peep tree! And look how his tongue sanded down the wreath candies and the fondant door. And is that a Super-Mario star I spy from years before atop the tree?
This year, 2022 was a little better. My sisters still weren’t feeling the joy so I said I would host. And I bought us all fun kits from Publix! I honestly didn’t expect my sisters to come, but last minute they did! Not only did they come, but they stopped at the store and picked up their own gingerbread kits to make! Since I didn’t expect my sisters and I’ve been insanely depressed about Jack, I invited K2 to join us. She made her first gingerbread house in the form of a Publix. I made a moose lodge with a pretzel roof. Apparently, my husband doubted my pretzel roof. SHAME on you, husband! My pretzel roof is fantastic — I mean, there’s a lot of glue strands but whatever.
It’s not very traditional Christmas-look, but it’s there. I wasn’t feeling it as much this year without Jack. Last year we didn’t have mom, but it was still a tradition for me to make a house for Jack to eat in “secret.” This year was harder for me without mom and without Jack. But we kept the tradition alive. We KEEP the tradition alive. Long live mom and her rebellious Chirstmas parties!
