I think I've mentioned before here that I basically have three levels of active-ness. If I'm fully well or just a wee bit ill, I'm able to write. If I'm worn-out or outright sick, I can knit or crochet, so long as the pattern isn't too involved. If I'm truly suffering, the best I can manage is to hide under a pile of blankets and quilts on the couch and scowl at whatever nature documentary on Netflix I haven't seen too many times yet.
Surely I'm not the only person who watches nature documentaries when they're sick. They were one of the few types of shows my entire family would sit down to watch when I was a kid, so they have a certain nostalgic feel to them, even as they show polar bears stranded on ever-shrinking ice caps. Also, I've watched so many that if I doze off into a fever-induced slumber in the middle of one, I can wake up whenever and not have really missed anything.
I've been ill for the past two weeks with some sort of sinus infection, so not much writing has been getting done (grr). For a few nights, I was too busy having fever and chills to get any needlework done either. Right now I'm better but not yet illness-free, so the stash-busting has had more progress than the novel-writing.
The photos show that I'm still working on Sophie's Universe. I'm still not sure it's not ugly — I seem to say that about all my blankets — but it's definitely a lot of fun to do. Every single round has something or other going on. I've learned a lot about the mechanics of overlay crochet, and about what post stitches can do. Everything is still 100% stash. I even [sigh] found a big ball of leftover white yarn I am setting aside for the broad border section with the negative-space butterfly motifs.
The cut-off corners will eventually become the blanket's sides, while the sides with the rows of bobbles will eventually narrow to points. The central square will be tilted 45 degrees in the final version into a diamond. Right now it's almost exactly a metre across; well on its way to the planned finished size of 1.8 metres square.
By which time I hope to be doing more writing than needlework, and to have used up lots and lots of stash.