Workbasket Magazine – Available for Download

Hello friends,

Crazy times we’re living in now, isn’t it?

Here are the girls these days – we’re spending a lot of time in bed cuddling and reading books!

We’re grounded here as the coronavirus makes its way through the country, and although so many people’s lives have been drastically upended, I’m fortunate that things in our little household are not too out of the ordinary. I homeschooled my boys for many years, so the transition from regular school to homeschool again has not been too difficult. The two little ones are a little more antsy without somewhere to go and run around every day (it’s still too chilly here to play in the backyard). That has been a bit more of an adjustment, but overall, life for me still consists of keeping up with the same routines that keep the household going day after day.

That said, from the obvious inactivity on my blog here, I haven’t been crocheting as much as usual lately. Taking care of four children is, needless to say, time consuming. Two toddlers and two teenagers – I have my hands full! And as any mom knows the little ones’ constant needs for diaper changing, supervision, and all the one on one time they need to feel securely attached is my number one priority.

Time left over from childcare goes to keeping the household functioning as normally as possible. There are endless cyclic tasks of laundry, dishes, tending to the animals, feeding everyone, and generally keeping everyone alive and well.

I admit that when I finally get some time to myself in the wee hours, I’ve been doing some crafting here and there. I’m more and more able to get little projects in as the girls are getting old enough to keep themselves entertained for more than a minute or two. I am fortunate that I have a backlog of patterns to last me through any length of imposed quarantine!

However, I know that during this time, many of us have been suddenly thrust into a new type of daily life. Turning to crochet and crafting is a wonderful way to spend some time that many people now have an abundance of. Therefore, I was thinking about how I could contribute to helping out others from my little corner of the world when I have so little crochet work to share lately.

Since I posted about the Workbasket magazines that I received from a friend several years ago (RIP Mary), I have had many, many requests for pattern searches and other questions relating to them. It feels unfair sometimes that people so desperately want to look through them but they’re kept away in my cabinet so that they’re not ripped up by the little ones, as brittle as the paper is.

So I thought that during this quarantine time while the Mr is home and able to help out with the childcare, that I would take this time to digitize the Workbook magazines. Then I can make them available to you all free for download here on the site. This way, many of us can benefit from the handful of Workbook magazines that are sitting in my cabinet. It also might give a few of you a new project to work on and keep you busy through these isolating times. If nothing else, the old ads are entertaining too!

The way I’ve done this is by taking a photo of every page of the magazine and then putting it into Photoshop to clean it up. Then I’m moving all the photos into publishing software and turning them into a pdf. Not all the pages are perfect, as my time is somewhat limited, and I do apologize for that, but they will be available and legible, and that’s the best I can do right now.

I’m not going in any particular order, I’m just grabbing one at a time and going through the process. My goal is to get a few copies in a week, so check back regularly as I try to accomplish this!  When I finally have all the copies digitized, I will put them all on one page along with their contents for easier searching. For now, they’ll all just be in separate posts as I get them digitized and available.

SO… without further ado, here is the first copy of Workbasket magazine for you: March, 1980. You can download the pdf by clicking the pretty blue “download” box:

DOWNLOAD MARCH 1980 WORKBASKET

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The Workbasket – March 1980

Please note that the page numbers do not add up. I have gone through the magazine several times to see why, and it appears the pages are misnumbered or something, because there were no pages that were removed. I honestly don’t know why some of them seem to be jumped over. 

Enjoy, my friends. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay socially distant physically, but let us remain gathered around the crafting table together virtually.

My best wishes for health and wellness to you all,

Mellie