we're only ashes.

Crafting mojo, what's that? I sure wouldn't know, because mine went out the window mid-month.

I started off decently, getting 31 rows done on a sleeve. Problem is, I had hoped to not only finish that sleeve this month, but do its pair as well. That didn't happen. At least I made SOME progress, but there's some tinking/fixing in my future, because I see a miscrossed cable, grrr.


[Image Description: A knitted sleeve for a cardigan, in progress. It features deep ribbing at the cuff, with a cable running up the center of the sleeve. The cable is teal in color and the rest of the sleeve is gray.]

There's a community on Ravelry doing a CRAFTO bingo board this year, and you know I love a crafting challenge, so I am attempting to take part. One of the squares is "A Favorite Designer", so I made my TENTH Lacy Crochet Kerchief by Kristen TenDyke:


[Image Description: A crocheted triangular kerchief. The edges are in green, and the center is lace in white.]

Early in the month, I started a fingering weight shawl. I had hoped to do lots on it in January but I'm maybe ten rows in, which giving that it's an asymmetric triangle that starts at a point, is pretty much NOTHING.

Also, for CRAFTO we're allowed two entries a month, so towards the end of the month I searched for something quick to make. I attempted baby booties, a headband, a knit 3D heart, and a knit flat applique heart, and none of them worked for me. I think my hands just don't want to knit right now; things felt awkward and fumbling and I just had no patience for it. Which SUCKS because most of my bigger projects that I want to do this year are knitted projects. I ended up not turning in a second project, which probably means I'm out of the running for a prize, but whatever.

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This was my first month taking part in getyourwordsout, and I had some success, but not much. First: I probably did work that I wouldn't have if I wasn't taking part in the challenge. That's good! But I was supposed to write on ten days, and managed five, and for some of THOSE, I counted creative snowflake_challenge posts, which felt a bit like cheating.

I have a bunch of ladiesbingo fics I want to finish, so hopefully I can work on that this month.

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I messed around with my Neocities site this month, successfully figuring out an auto dark mode for it! That's not live on the site yet, just on my local copy, but I'm proud at myself for doing that. I also did another chunk of the Shadowbringers recap, but that hasn't been HTMLized for Neocities yet. Soon. Finally, I started documenting FFBE Season 2, but quickly fell into despair when I realized just how much there is to do. But hey, if I can do Season 1, I can do Season 2. Just hoping Season 2 doesn't take over four years like Season 1 did.

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StoryGraph was doing a One Page a Day reading challenge in January, and I took part in that. I succeeded! Some days I even read more than a page!

I had started off with Contact but that was a bit too heavy for me, so I bounced off that and turned to a "safe" author for me and read a novella by Courtney Milan, "The Pursuit Of...". This was a good read. I liked both the main characters a lot, and LOVED the cheese storyline. Fun romp, would read again.

Then I started a reread of To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. This is also a "safe" book for me. I do enjoy her time travel series as a whole, but this one's a COMEDY rather than the serious nature of the other books, and it's a delight to read. I'm only a few chapters in but it's been fun already.

Given that I had signed up on StoryGraph to read 6 books this year, and I'm on my second one on February 1st? That's good progress! Am pleased. I probably wouldn't have done it had StoryGraph not had its challenge this month.