Staying Home and Keeping Busy - Jigsaw Puzzles!

It seems that staying home during the pandemic, everybody has rediscovered jigsaw puzzles!  Facebook is full of posts with pictures of completed jigsaw puzzles. 

My mom LOVED jigsaw puzzles.  We'd get one out and work it on the dining room table.  We didn't eat in there most of the time, so it was a great place for puzzling!  When I vacation with my sister, we often take a puzzle to work on.  One infamous night, we got a puzzle out at 10:00 at night, "just to find the edge pieces," and we finished it around 3:30 in the morning.  There must be something terribly wrong with us.

Here's the infamous 1,000-piece puzzle that kept us up all night on vacation.
It looks likes it's been framed, but we worked it on a bamboo and glass table.

I've been wanting to work a puzzle, but...we have cats - naughty cats.  That's why taking puzzles on vacation is a great idea - the cats stay home!  I needed a cat-free zone at home in order to get a puzzle out and not have the pieces turn into cat toys that disappear under furniture and down heating vents.  I ruminated on the problem and finally figured out where I could set up a couple of antique side tables that, pushed together, are the perfect size for working jigsaw puzzles! 

I also have one of those puzzle organizer/storage caddies with a large area for working the puzzle and trays for sorting pieces.  If you have to move the puzzle or put it away temporarily, everything goes inside the caddy, the puzzle stays assembled, and nothing gets lost.  Then, when you're ready to work on it some more, you open it up, and there everything is, ready for you to resume the puzzle!

So I dug out my puzzle caddy (it's a really fancy one - HA! - made of corrugated cardboard) and found an empty puzzle box next to it.  I put it on the tables and opened it up, and found A PUZZLE!  Maybe a little more than half assembled.  It is TOUGH.  I've found an average of 5 pieces each evening this week.  At least I'm actually finding pieces.  The first night I worked on it I almost despaired of finding ANY pieces.  You'd think it would be easy to distinguish between the different colors of the trees.  You'd be wrong.  No wonder I put it away for a while! 

But by golly, I WILL get the whole thing put together.  All 1,000 pieces of it.

Here it is, in all its glory.  You can kind of get an idea of what the puzzle caddy is like.

My Big Feet - Again!

The stay home orders have given a lot of us extra time to do things we'd normally put off.  Some people are writing.  Some people are decluttering.  Some people are painting walls.  Some people are painting paintings.  Some people are sewing.  Some people are crocheting.  Some people are knitting.

I have a not-so-secret vice - buying sock yarn.  I LOVE knitting socks.  Socks are interesting to knit and super portable, plus, when you're finished, you get to wear them!  I don't know that I'll ever have the time to knit up all the sock yarn in my stash, though.

Crazy stripes and interesting colors are my favorites.  I used to wear my hand-knit socks to work - meetings and all - sort of my little bit of nonconformist belligerence.  Nobody could see them under my slacks, but I knew they were there, and that's what counts!

Anyway, I've worn through the toes and heels of a few pairs, but lately, it gradually dawned on me that when I wore my socks, the ends of my big toes ached at the end of the day.

I knitted all my socks exactly per the pattern's directions.  But...

I HAVE BIG FEET.

So why the heck did I make my hand-knitted socks the standard women's size?

Maybe they were too short?

Well duh!

I tell you - NO BRAIN.

So I started knitting my socks longer in the foot, and that fixed my problem - no more sore toes!

EXCEPT...

There were still four pairs of older socks that I absolutely REFUSED to get rid of.  I liked their colors and designs, and I still wore them, but at the end of the day, my poor toes ached.  I kept avoiding wearing them, but I couldn't get rid of them, either.

After ruminating on the problem for several weeks, a plan emerged - I'd make the socks longer!  Because they are knitted from the cuff down, I cut off the last couple of rows of knitting at the toe of each sock, found the end of the yarn, tugged at it, then unraveled the entire toe to the place where you start shaping the toe.  I rolled the loose yarn into a ball, picked up the stitches, and started knitting.

See the black toes!!!

When the raveled yarn ran out, about two rows into the new toes' shaping, I attached black sock yarn and continued to the end, adding about an inch to the length of each sock.

So here's the result!  Four additional pairs of COMFORTABLE socks, with a minimum of time and effort.

Now, to the yarn stash!  Gotta start making more socks!!!

Staying Home and Social Distancing - What I'm Doing

With the coronavirus crisis, we're staying home like everyone else, except for periodic foraging trips to the grocery.  I cook - a LOT.  I clean.  I actually bleach my kitchen counters and sink, something I never did before.  I'm taking a short-term online American history course from Hillsdale College.  I'm trying to learn Tai Chi on YouTube.  I make to-do lists and try to check things off.  I scroll through FaceBook.  I'm working on painting watercolors.  I'm knitting hats for the 2021 NBA All-Stars volunteers.  I'm crocheting chemo caps.  Not all at once, of course!

We're also watching a LOT of television.  Thank heaven for cable TV while we're staying home.  Turner Classic Movies and MeTV really get a workout!

There are daily visits from the likes of Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Blondell, Lauren Bacall, Lionel Barrymore, Clara Bow, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Ruby Keeler, and a zillion others.  I especially like the movies on Silent Sundays - I"m glad we can DVR those - they start at midnight!  Not that I wouldn't stay up all night to watch them, but...!  Not a good idea, when I'm doing home health care right now, and medicines need to be doled out at specific times.

There's a boatload of MeTV to watch, too - Leave It to Beaver, The Flintstones (!), Green Acres, Hogan's Heroes, The Andy Griffith Show.  And we've officially turned into Old People - after dinner, we watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!

Oh my.  We're turning into our parents.  I guess someone has to.

On top of all this, because of CDC recommendations, I've started making face masks for us.  I cut up material yesterday, and today I started assembly.  There's a nice pile to work on, as you can see.

So, plenty to DO.  I had long lists of things I wanted to do after retiring, but now my lists are somewhat different.  

But...

IT'S ONLY TEMPORARY.