Year of Projects 2024-2025 Roundup!

In my post yesterday I explained the internet problems we've been having, so let me just jump to the point of this post and say that I know this Year of Projects Roundup post is a week late.  It just wasn't possible for me to post last Sunday.  

That said, since I don't make any plans for my upcoming Year Of Projects, there's not a lot for me to write in this first post of a new YOP year anyway, so I guess it works out this time.

Let me tell you though... I felt sad last week not being able to create my favorite post of the whole year.  But this weekend, going back through all the things I've made in a year's time was a great mood-lifter.  Looking back at a record of things I've made in the last 12 months is encouraging.  And almost always, I get a nice surprise when I come across some things I had pretty much forgotten about.

So settle in for a scroll down memory lane.  Or just click through the pictures.  I promise I won't mind.  Or even know, for that matter.  

I started the past YOP year finishing up a small (14") Kawandi:

I've had the itch ever since to make another, larger one. I'm just not sure how large a kawandi I have the stick-to-it-iveness to finish. 

Just like in years past, when I put aside thick afghan yarn, I once again turned to my crochet thread to make doilies.  All but the last large doily are from the book, 99 Little Doilies by Patricia Kristofferson.  Kristofferson only assigns these doilies a number, but I usually feel compelled to give them a name.

🠅 Old Fashioned Sunday 🠇

Herb Garden

Not My First Rodeo

Carousel

I found it interesting that the same doily pattern made months later in a different color inspired a completely different name:

Crinoline

Chernozem

Windmill 

Lead Rosette 

And a favorite larger doily pattern was unearthed and made again:

Autumn Splendor 

Before winter's blast, hat making skills were dusted off:

With hats handed off, my first Dahlia blanket that I had started in the spring was finished:

I enjoyed making it so much, I almost immediately began another:

And before the chill of winter was truly over, a Granny Goes Large blanket was completed:

Somewhere in the mix of blankets and doilies, yarny baskets were crocheted:

I loved how these turned out, and would like to make more, but my neck was so sore after making these, I've been hesitant to give them a go again.  

Three and a half years after moving into this house, I finally sewed up some decent curtains for the laundry room:

I pulled out two sweet cross stitch projects I began in 2020 and finished them into mini pillows:

Actively ongoing:

In quiet, tired hours I've knit dozens of dish/wash cloths

and started a many-pieced hexagon blanket:

and the cross stitched Celtic knots I started a month ago are just about finished:

And that is the end of my 2024-2025 Year of Projects!  

Thank you for taking a look!

Internet woes...

We've had internet woes recently and I haven't been able to use my PC to get online regularly for several months.  The kicker was most recently being without internet for an entire week (just getting back online yesterday).  And that was after being off the internet for multiple days at a time the previous two months at least.  Note: before anyone advise that we ask for reimbursement or credit for lost service, I already have.  Over the course of multiple weeks and calls with overseas "agents", we accumulated a credit of a full month on our last internet bill, and still have credit on a future bill.

From the beginning of our personal internet experience, we've gotten our internet access through our phone lines.  It wasn't bad at all at the beginning, but once fiber optic service became available, our phone-line-internet-service began to deteriorate.  To the point, where we now feel like we've just been written off by Brightspeed (has been Embarq, has been Century Link) as relics of a bygone era that will eventually go the way of every other dinosaur.

Forced into the modern age, we watched curiously in recent weeks as fiber optic cables to our country neighborhood were being laid. The big utility trucks that for weeks narrowed every county road we traveled have moved on - taking their Ditch Witch drillers with them.  For at least a week, maybe two now, the busyness has been replaced with silence - as if all that activity had never happened.  Phone calls have netted no information about when internet service will be available through the shiny new underground cables.

Meanwhile, we're on two different waiting lists to get broadband through radio signal when the capacity is available for that.  The radio signal appears at the moment to be our preference.  Hopefully soon we'll get out of this frustrating spot we're in, as every day we have internet through our phone line feels precarious at best.  While this post is a bit of a rant, mostly, while I have internet service and the ability to easily write and publish a post, I'm wanting to let my readers know why I've been sporadic and downright absent so much here (and on your blogs) lately.  

Hopefully today my internet access will hold long enough for me to create a YOP update (which is actually my YOP Roundup post that is now a week late) and pre-publish it so it makes it out tomorrow - even if my internet is down.  If you see a Year of Projects post on Sunday, and I don't respond to comments, you can take a good guess at why.

And if you see me online here and there, your surprise will only be eclipsed by mine. Internet access has begun to feel like a priceless commodity.  Using it with little thought, feels frivolously careless.  

I marvel now how easy and like a game it felt to do a digital fast this past spring. You'd think that would have made me immensely patient when ours has gone out for days at a time. Aside from the frustration of not receiving a service we pay for - with a reasonable expectation that that service will be available - I am utterly dismayed at how much our lives are dependent on having internet access.  Bank records, medical records and communciations, calendars, news, information, inspiration...  

Everything is available on the internet, and when it is suddenly unavailable, I find myself at loose ends and feel unsettled.  And the moment I see that it is restored again, I feel a peace.

This is not right.  It's definitely not good. 

It just is.  

And I don't like the realization one bit.