A Plethora of Plushies

As I said in my last post, I HAVE been working on stuff. Surprising to most of you I'm sure, I wasn't working much on any of the fifty-million shawls I currently have going.

I was in need of easy, fast projects to help soothe my battered heart and keep me from stabbing people with my needles. So I started making a metric crap-ton of plushies.

I started on this little dude right after we lost Oscar.

I had originally intended to make him out of a different yarn, in worsted weight. But all the worsted I have is pretty muted and dark. I needed something brighter. I stumbled across this bulky MadTosh yarn while stash diving and knew I had found a winner.

Bubbles here (yes, I named him. Don't act surprised) came out so much bigger than I imagined and that absolutely delighted me.

Being able to start and finish a project in just two days definitely helped bring me a little out of the fog. I wanted to keep chasing that high, so I kept knitting.

Next was the otter I had promised John a while ago.

Yep, he's even wearing a little triangle scarf made of some leftover fingering weight yarn.

He now occupies a corner of John's desk at work. It makes me a little sad that he's alone, so I'll probably have to make him a friend soon.

Next up was a long-ago made promise for Kayla in the form of a Junimo from Stardew Valley.

Followed by the LAST DAMN BULBASAUR THAT I WAS COMMISSIONED FOR!

And finally, a birthday present for Vi.

You would have thought I learned my lesson with Bubbles and make it a wee bit smaller...

...Yeah, it got Ashtaned instead.

I do have another plush/art doll thing that I hinted at a while back, but I think it's deserving of its own post.

And lest you think I've abandoned my shawls entirely, here's a progress pic of Fade.

I'm on color 3 of 7 and section 6 of 13. The only problem is that I want to make some changes to the colors I chose...

And I have to buy new yarn to do that.

So much for this being a stash-only project.

But really, did you expect anything less of me?

Of course you didn't.

Six Months of Suck

That's what I'm officially declaring the first half of 2018.

I feel like I've gotten to the point of just being numb. I've tried to just cocoon myself up to avoid having to deal with all of the emotions that have sprung up from so many disasters. And by doing  that, I unintentionally cut most of my support net off when I needed them the most. Because I didn't want to have to relive all of the emotions every time I told someone about the latest travesty.

It's also why I've barely been writing on here. Who wants to read post after post about how things are all going wrong? Sure, I've been working on things, too (if I hadn't, I'd be in a crying, sobbing mess-heap in the corner) but none of it really seemed worth posting on here. At least, that's what I kept telling myself.

Yes, yes, I know. That was my Beaverly brain talking.

To set things to rights, I'm going to do my best to crank out enough posts this week to catch up with what has been going on in our lives. Because this blog has come to serve as a chronicle of not only my creative endeavors, but also of the important events in my life. And it's dishonest of me to try and shy away from the darker parts.

Let's get the list of disasters out of the way in this post, shall we?

First and foremost, we lost our darling old man cat, Oscar.

We knew it was coming. He was anywhere between 16 and 20-something years old. We never knew for sure. But he wasn't doing the greatest, health wise. But fate kind of hastened the end.

I will spare you the details, but it was heartbreaking. No time to properly say goodbye or let him know how much we loved him. I still can't think about it without despair threatening to drown me.

And if that wasn't enough to deal with, a few weeks ago my father-in-law suffered a heart attack, which was probably at least partially brought on by the stupid drama surrounding John's grandma's will.

Before you start extending your sympathy, you should know that I despise the man. Right before this, we had actually been discussing how we didn't want him at our recommitment ceremony because we were so sick of the hateful things he regularly spewed at us.

That's been a whole other thing. John's having to deal with some... well, let's say complicated emotions when it comes to his parents. However, that's not my story to tell. But I know from experience how much it hurts when your parents disappoint you.

I WILL say that the guilt tripping and emotional manipulation trying to force John into spending every waking moment at the hospital at his dad's side is fucking ridiculous. And if shit doesn't stop soon, we're going to have a real problem. It's not like, you know, we have a whole life outside of the whims of a manipulative old bastard...

*deep breath*

Okay, sorry. Let's move on. Because I can go on forever about this particular subject. Especially because John is such an incredible person and I HATE when people don't see and value it.

I wish I could say that we were done with his family in this post, but sadly, we're not. Remember the will from earlier? Yeah...

Let me lay out basic facts:

- John's grandma died nearly 3 years ago
- An uncle stole money out of the estate
- Shit went down in a dramatic fashion
- More shit happened that made everyone hate each other
- Literally this has been occupying our life for NEARLY THREE FUCKING YEARS
- Recently, an auction was forced through some legal loophole that sold off the land that was supposed to be divided among the three surviving siblings
- Said auction property included the land that two large storage buildings were on, so they had less than 3 weeks to get them cleaned out and moved

The fighting and arguing and manipulation and backstabbing has gotten us so fed up with the lot of them that we've pretty much completely written them off. And at least one of the uncles, if we ever saw him in person, would lead to a screaming match at the very least. Though I personally feel like a punch in the face would serve better. Alas, I must hold myself to a higher standard than that.

So, yeah, that pretty much sums up all the bad shit that's been going on here the past few weeks. We need a damn break from everything.

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me through these unintended hiatuses. The next couple of posts will be about happier things, I promise.

Until then, I'm going to go throw myself back into my creative work and try to shove this anger back down.

*deep breath*

And so we go.