Blue and Red Hooded Baby Jacket

I am trying, once again. to make inroads into my small ball stash. Every time I make something I think that's some wool less but my stash doesn't seem to go down at all. I swear someone adds odd balls to it during the night. My friend Sylvia is one of the culprits. Every time I visit she adds a few more balls to my stash. I use these for her (and her friends) foster babies so I don't mind that bit.

The pattern today is another free pattern from Ravelry. Baby Hoodie by Bonny Jacobs. I had to alter the pattern as my version was coming out huge. That's the trouble with using US patterns I am still never sure quite what their wool weights mean. I managed to salvage it and it looks reasonably like the pattern except that I didn't have any multi colour that toned for the sleeves and I ran out of red wool for the hood so it had to be striped. Still that's the beauty of crochet. You can always salvage something by amendments. It was constructed in a strange way. I had to make the yoke and then the hood before I added the body and the sleeves. I suppose that was because the button placket stitches had to be incorporated into the body.Thankfully I had printed out this pattern whilst I still had a working printer. I really do miss not being able to do that at the moment. I will have to ask the family for a new printer for my Birthday in November. If I want something large then they all join together instead of several small presents.

My red wool came from Violet Green today. I would have preferred the wool to be variegated as it is for a shawl but after the episode with the hand dyed yarn that was patchy I decided to go with a commercially dyed yarn for safety. I sent them a note saying that I was disappointed with their other yarn but I can't be bothered to send it back as that would mean a long walk to the Post Office plus a long wait in the queue. I will just give it to Sylvia's daughter who does a bit of dyeing and see if she can re-dye it and use it up somehow. She also spins so perhaps she can twist it together to make it thicker.

I was asked this morning by an online friend who is in his 30's. Why is life so hard? I couldn't really answer him on that one. Life has thrown me some curve balls in my lifetime and sometimes, at the time, I have thought that life is a bit unfair. All in all though when I think of my Parents and Grandparents and their struggles with poverty, ill health and of course two world wars then I think that I shouldn't complain as much. Although I am in pain I do have modern medicines to help with that and the promise of modern surgery to make my life easier. The one thing that old age has taught me is to be thankful for what I do have and not be bitter about what I don't have. I don't have a lot of money but then I don't have the kind of lifestyle where a lot is required. I still have my faculties mentally (although some would argue about that one) and am able to immerse myself in doing something that I love which is crochet. Whilst I can still do that I am reasonably happy. Yes I would love to own a car, go on holidays abroad and stuff like that but to me they are luxuries and not the necessities that today's younger people seem to think that they are. My Parents and Grandparents had very little in the way of luxuries but yet I grew up surrounded by love and that, to me, is more important than any luxuries.

Today is a bit cold once again so the old knees are complaining. I am going to take a warm shower and then settle down in my new chair, if I can beat Buster to it, and have a relaxing day as per usual. I think I am half way to being a recluse Ha Ha. I do get to sit in the window and wave at my neighbours and I do have a lovely view of trees at the back when I am in my garden so it could be a lot worse.