These can be found on a diversity of shops online.
I looked for these online, and I have found them on the Big A and Aliexpress, too. But alas, on A they are pretty expensive and on Aliexpress, the shipping is just meh. I don’t want to import these, tbh. So, how else to acquire something you want when it’s seemingly not available to your conditions? Right. Do it yourself. 😏
So, I started thinking what I’d need to make one of these. It’s fairly easy: some leather scraps, paper, something bind it all together and a strap. I’ve got everything, so I did it.
I chose my leather scraps. There is some grey, light brown, some red and black leather scraps in my collection. All of these are leftovers from crafting projects my Mom did or just scraps from former leather clothing from my grandparents. It’s a wild mix, but I did not buy any of these, is all I am saying. 😉
Next up: paper. My favorite theme. I collected some sheets from my stash, cut them all to DIN A8 size, so that in the end, the pages of my journals are about A9 in size. So that’s really tiny. I cut all my papers and it was a lot. I decided I had enough to make 4 little journals, so I folded all of them and stacked them up. then I made a template for the stitches, punctured the first stack of papers and stitched them together as signature for my first mini journal. After finishing this, I stitched the signature to the leather cover I cut out previously. For the first little booklet, I make a little strap from a rubber band. Attaching it to the leather proved to be difficult. In the end, I made a hole with a punch into the spine of the leather cover, put the band through it ant glued it to the leather. I also put some glue into the spine of the cover to glue the signature into it. And there, it was done.
I ended up adding some charms to it, but I’m done and I love it. The second one was basically done in the same way, I just used some waxed cotton yarn to wrap around the cover to hold everything together.
Now, I still have two stacks of paper left, so two more mini journals are to be made, but I will not do that today anymore. I hope you enjoyed reading this! ✨💜
I got some yarn from my mother last year and I intended to make a scarf from it, initially.
it started out with two balls of this colorful yarn I got from my Mom
I started and wanted to make a loop scarf. In the process, I decided to just.. unravel it and start over, crocheting something else entirely. A leaf-inspired pattern I found only seemed like a great idea, so I started to do just that and crocheted along. It was so much fun, but this pattern really, really needed a LOT of yarn.
Unravel a Scarf, Start a Star
I was kinda happy how this turned out, but I never got to use or finish it entirely. So I, well, put it away for a while until my Mom found the other yarn balls of the same kind and color in her stash. She wanted to try knitting something from it, deemed the yarn to be “weird to work with” and unraveled her project again before handing me the rest of the yarn. And there I was, thinking what to do with it now before I decided to unravel my scarf project and start something else entirely: a star-shaped afghan.
I used this pattern here: Ravelry.com – well, mostly. I needed a Video Tutorial to be able to follow along better. And so it started! Unravel the scarf, start a star.
Conclusion
Somewhere in the process, I picked up too many stitches so it ended up a little crumbly, but I still like how it turned out in the end. 🥰✨ I can even use it wrapped around my shoulders, if I want to.
I have been avoiding a COVID infection for the longest time. So when I started getting a sore throat on Thursday evening, 15th Dec., I didn’t think much of it. It made me thirsty as heck, tho, and I probably drank 2 liters of water on that evening alone. Of course, that much water in the evening leads to a very sleepless night with having to pee all the time. And thus, I was kinda groggy the next day when I went to work, throat still sore.
On Friday, still not thinking much of it, I went to work, although I thought about not going and calling in sick instead. But then I thought, besides of the sore throat, I was feeling okay-ish and if it got worse, I could still go home earlier.
I ended up going earlier, indeed, so there’s that. and I kinda felt weak and cranky and I curled up on my couch. I went to bed early and had a weird night, having to get up every other hour. I was feeling strange, like I was getting a fever, but then not really. Just the beginning of feeling sick.
Saturday, 17.12.2022
Finally, the weekend. Biggest accomplishment of this day was finishing my star-shaped crochet blanket. Other than that, I really did not do anything. It formally was planned to head out, meeting my parents for a walk with our dogs, but I told my Mom that I wasn’t feeling well, so we postponed it.
I stayed home, I started to slowly get a productive cough and was feeling miserable with a slightly heightened body temperature. Very slightly. Still, I wasn’t thinking Covid, but I planned on doing a test the next day to be sure this was only a cold or a bronchitis.
The night was filled with lively dreams and utter sleeplessness in the early morning hours. Luckily, my doggo let me sleep a little longer than usual, so there’s that.
Sunday, 18.12.2022 – Testing positive
The cough got worse over night and I felt even more miserable. After forcing myself out for walkies with Lucas and being very frustrated and irritated with him, I made myself a cappuccino, sat down.. and coughed so much and so strongly, I decided to take a test. The first one was almost instantly positive with just a very slight control bar visible. I was like “wait a second, this looks wrong?” – yeah.
So, I took a second test and it was positive after a few minutes already, too. Just like the first one, just with a more visible control bar. *Winning sound playing* congratulations to me, I won a COVID infection!
During the day, I really felt sick and tired. And constipated, like every sinus and everything in my head was stuffed. My nose is runny and my cough is productive, strong and hurtful in my chest and head.
So I’m also taking pain meds to cope. My skin, especially in my kidney region, gets really, really tender and touching it hurts a lot. Even my clothes rubbing on it is awful. Most pain meds reduce fever as well, but coping with pain is more important to me than letting my body temperature do its thing against the virus. I hope this does not impact with getting better.
Monday, 19.12.2022
Today started out with me having no pain, but feeling utterly sick. I booked a PCR test for later that day to have an official document stating my infection. It came back positive in the evening. Tell me something new, huh?!
I developed a low fever during the day, causing me to sleep through most of my afternoon and evening. Nothing much to add: thick and nasty mucus, growly cough, runny nose… and everything hurt in a very specific way I cannot quite describe. I also hate how my skin gets so sensitive to touch when I’m having a fever, it’s awful to even move.
I called in sick for the whole week. My boss was very understanding, but I sure also sounded massively sick on the phone, as my Mom told me later when I called her. Yeah, well, must have been because I was also feeling like shit. My task of the day was driving to and from the testing station safely, and I made it. There was black ice in the morning, luckily, when I had to go, it was all gone again and the streets were sanded and all was fine.
I got to bed early that evening but I could not fully fall asleep until 20:30, when I got up for a toilet break. I decided to take some pain meds, to maybe be able to find a comfortable sleeping position then. It seems to have worked, in the end. I slept good, but very sweaty.
Tuesday, 20.12.2022
Everything feels still feels very sick, but gradually maybe getting better? At least Mom said “oh you sound better today!”. That’s a news! Other than that, I don’t have a fever anymore, for now, and I feel as if a fog has lifted, so that’s a thing. But my brain chemistry is really messed with and I can’t smell as good as I could before, my appetite is LOW aaand my heart-region feels weird… The coughing is better, though, and the nose is not as runny anymore. So here’s hoping I can spend the holidays with my family, maybe. 🥹 Let’s see.
Concluding this post with a huge “COVID SUCKS, DON’T GET COVID!” and see you in the next post.
I’ve been wanting to write more blog posts and post more art on my own website/Blog for months and I just can’t get my head around doing it…
Now I’m reviving Tumblr and crossposting seems like the way to go. Writing on one platform, distributing it over the internet to the other platforms I feed. Maybe changing to Tumblr/WordPress completely in the end, it would be so much less stressful? I guess. I don’t know for sure!
Just thinking aloud. It’s all a mess atm. Anyhow, my Tumblr is valhundart.tumblr.com – feel free to follow me there!
