I also mostly use the stuff I make myself. These days, I don't get a lot done because I am busy, but also I spend more time on the internet than I really SHOULD - this summer I have been watching stuff on Amazon Prime on my laptop and that seems to inspire more working-on-projects. I think it's because sitting in a more upright chair (I have a wooden folding desk chair) tends to encourage me to work better than being in the recliner does - and I also dislike doing sewing or embroidery tasks there, because a dropped needle is much harder to find. At my desk, if I drop the needle, chances are it lands on the desk and is easy to find, and not in my lap where I have to stand up VERY CAREFULLY to avoid stabbing myself and find the needle before it hits the floor.
* I finished "The Black Cauldron" last night. This is book 2 (of 5) of the Chronicles of Prydain. I am going to try not to give too many spoilers away, but....it ended with a bit of a surprise for me. (The whole last...25 or so pages). At one point, when the first big thing happened, I went "NOOOO" because it seemed so unfair based on what our heroes had been through. And then there was the surprise of what happened at the end....It was a surprise, and yet, it feels like the story ended as it should have. In a way, it was a redemption story and a self-sacrifice story, and I am always a big sucker for those.
I will say I wince a bit at a lot of the violence. I mean, in these books it's not graphic - I think the worst they say is that a character was "struck down" but I seem to have got much more sensitive to that, to the idea of characters in books (or on tv shows) dying than I once was. (This was also why I had a little trouble with The Three Musketeers, but I also want to go back and actually read that through some time)
One thing I do like about the book is the idea that characters that are very ordinary (or at least SEEM to be so....I have some questions about Taran's origins that make me suspect he's more than JUST an orphaned boy who became an Assistant Pig-Keeper) can go and do great and important things; there is something very cheering about that, I think. That you don't have to be nobility to behave in noble ways - and in fact, sometimes the nobility does not behave very nobly at all, in fact.
* A few of the long-expected boxes are coming in. Yesterday, the May "gachapon" crate arrived. (And now, in my "Informed Delivery" list of packaged, there is another package to be delivered soon that originates with "DHL International" as this one did, and I am very much hoping it is one of my long-delayed doki doki crates).
Anyway. I took some time last night (after talking to my mom, and more and more, as long as she wants to Face Time, I think that's going to be a really nice thing for me, to be able to SEE her as I talk to her). I opened the crate. As usual, there's a mix of the great and not-so-great (A wrestler character from...I think it was Street Fighter? Designed to hold a phone cord?).
I did have a couple favorite things though:
A nice heavy slightly-textured (it doesn't feel like cheap plastic, more like resin or something) figure of a sleeping Cinnamoroll (who is a dog and not a bunny, which is what I first thought)
He's just cute.
And I got a tiny Shiba Inu - with a little house (not shown). So the cord attached to him is like a leash that can be tied to the front of his house. (Heh. It reminds me of something my grandmother had - a little china figure of a boxer dog, and a little china doghouse, and she had them together on a small bracket on a wall in her "front room" - sort of a formal room, like a parlor, that we pretty much only used on Sundays or if one of us wanted to sit and quietly read. Everyone up there called that type of room a "front room." I don't really have one; my living room is too lived-in and messy to qualify, even though it WOULD be my "front room" if I had another space to use as my messy lived-in room)
Here's the dog. He is very tiny
My favorite thing, though is from Sumikko Gurashi- a squishy stress-ball sort of thing. I got the cat:
Heh, Squish that cat
Then, today, my penultimate Hello Kitty box (this is from Loot Crate, a different company) came. I have since cancelled my subscription with them - it was kind of expensive and I probably do need to scale back, and they began having shipping issues back in November, before COVID-19 ever hit, so....
I have one more crate I've paid for, I think it's the summer crate for this year. This one was the spring one.
The t-shirt is cute, though maybe? a little juvenile?
They say it was printed with strawberry-scented ink, but I just barely pick it up. Then again, it was in transit a long time. (And I think a scented shirt would bug me after a while, and definitely not practical if you are going to be outside where there are bees)
They also send a few little things - this time, a change purse (which I more often use to hold stitch markers or the like in my knitting bags), and a little charm bracelet, and my favorite thing, a scrunchie. I wear those all the time and this one, though it has Hello Kitty on it, it's super subtle and you can't tell from a distance. (Though.....it will probably be a while yet before I'm back out in public much, and a lot of the time at home I just leave my hair loose and messy, because I do think some hair ties put stress on it)
My favorite thing though was a big fluffy (it has almost a minky-like fabric in sort of a light teal on the back) blanket:
It's maybe not the idea time of year for this (though sometimes these kinds of blankets are not overly hot) but I took it and immediately washed it and hope it will be dry in time for tonight. I like to wash things like this first, in case of any leftover sizing/dye or other chemicals (I remember that one episode from early in the run of "House, MD" where a couple kids got poisoned from pesticide-laced counterfeit jeans, and while I never know how LIKELY that would be, it seems plausible....so I prewash any clothes I get or things like blankets)
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