Stumpy

Sometimes the cure for crafters' block is a little bit of crazy crochet.

Packing For The Weekend

I didn't quite manage to get all my stuff packed for my weekend away before I left for work this morning.

I did, however manage to pack the really important stuff.

Two balls of cerise Louisa Harding Kimono Angora and two turquoise, a ball of cerise Alpaca and a cake of pale pink and white mohair blend.

Anyone want to place a bet on how much of this is in it's current form by the end of this weekend (after two six hour car journeys and with only crochet hooks packed)?

There's a skein of yarn in it for you if you guess right. My choice (won't be nasty acrylic).

You've got til about 8pm on Sunday night (UK time) to get your answers in, and I'll reveal all then.

New Books, New Scarf

At the end of a week the likes of which I hope I don't have too often, it's nice to have a productive weekend.

The weekend's productivity started on Friday night, at the I Knit London film night. Although I had a project in my bag, I'd been thinking about something soft and fluffy for a couple of days, and when stash-raiding, had come up empty.

When I got to I Knit, I must have spent a full half hour stalking the shelves, trying to decide on the perfect yarn, and just as the film was about to start, I stopped ignoring the call of the Kid Silk Haze that I'd picked up and put down at least six times.

With a skein of KSH in one hand, a crochet hook in the other, and a glass of wine on the table in front of me, I started making a long foundation chain, intending to make a lengthways scarf while watching Sideways.

Somehow, after more than 200 chains and a fair amount of trebles (the crochet stitch, not the alcoholic shots), I found myself ripping it back (not the easiest thing with dark purple mohair yarn in the mostly dark) and starting over.

Without any real thought, I found myself doubling the yarn (taking the risky but successful step of using both ends at once) making a ring, then another, and then another. One flat circle followed by another, and another, and so on, and when the film ended and the lights came back up, I had six flat circles joined together and a good head start for a new scarf. Not wishing to tempt fate, I bought the other ball of purple KSH before I left the shop.

I crocheted at the bus stop, on the bus home, and for a while at home before K got home from his night out, and kept going over the weekend, til by the end of Sunday I had a pile of ends, a few yards spare (phew!) and a beautifully soft and fluffy purple crocheted Kid Silk Haze scarf.

I didn't even really stop to read the new books which the Amazon fairy brought me on Saturday morning: The Gentle Art of Domesticity by Jane "Yarnstorm" Brocket (whose domestic life I've been coveting for a long time now); 200 ripple stitch patterns and 200 crochet blocks by Jan Eaton and Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off by the Yarn Harlot (I did read a little of this in the car on the way to and from the supermarket).

I'll be posting the pattern for the scarf, which I've christened Ynez (after Santa Ynez, the area of California where Sideways is set), just as soon as I can get enough time while it's still light to take a decent photo of it so check back in a couple of days if you're interested.

Waving, Not Drowning

I've been dealing with quote a lot of stress lately. Some of it comes from external sources, some from within myself (I'm sure I'm not the only one who beats themselves up for not being perfect all the time).

It sounds corny, but when I think about it, knitting (and crocheting, and spinning), have literally saved my sanity over the last couple of years, and I have a kind of sliding scale of what I can do when I'm stressed.

When I'm ok or a little bit stressed, I can knit. When I'm too stressed, I can't, but I can crochet. When I'm too stressed (or too tired to concentrate) to do both, I spin.

Normally this works really well, and accounts for the vast amount of spinning I've been doing lately, over and above what I'd do just for the love of it, but for the last couple of weeks, my wheel has been broken. The screw which holds the foot pedal post to the ball bearing worked it's way loose, and I didn't want to break it any more, so had to stop for a couple of weeks til I could figure out how to fix it.

This has left me with a bit of a hole in my therapy plan, which I've been filling with frantic crocheting, most especially this current piece, a wavy crochet wrap, using up the other 5 balls of Noro Silk Garden that I bought when I was making Lori's Clapotis.

It's kind of taken on a bit of meaning above and beyond just being a wavy wrap. Every day this week I've been crocheting furiously on the way to and from work, each stitch helping (but not entirely) distract me from the worries that have been crowding in, and as a result, it's become a bit of a monument to my need to recognise that I can't be perfect all the time, and sometimes, good enough is enough.

So although this has so many mistakes I'd be almost embarrassed to show it off to anyone who knows about crochet, I love it, because with each stitch, it helps me keep my head above water.

I'm waving, not drowning.

Honest.

(... and the wheel got fixed last night. Amazing what a little squirt of superglue can do.)

My First Crochet Hook

I learned to crochet at Ally Pally 2 years ago, and since I learned with a borrowed hook, I needed to get some of my own, sharpish.

So I did.

I wandered round the show, and stopped at a stall selling Vogue crochet hooks and knitting needles. I bought three hooks - an 8mm cream one, a 7mm lime green one and a 6.5mm pale blue one.

Although I've since bought many, many crochet hooks, including the super wonderful ergonomic clover ones, that green one is the one I've used the most.

It made the Tea Scarf, it's made many a twirly scarf or a one-skein scarf (from the Debbie Stoller Happy Hooker book), and it's currently making a wavy stole and a secret scarf (yes, two projects at once, don't you just love how it can multitask?).

On Saturday night though, it had a much more important function.

I firmly believe it's never too early to get kids involved with stuff, and at 13 months, my niece is growing up very, very quickly. Quite apart from being able to run around after the cats, she's able to hold crayons the correct way up and is beginning to draw. What's even more amazing to me is that when given a box of three crayons in Pizza Hut on Sunday, she not only took them out to play with them, but also put them back in the box - all facing the same way. On purpose. Several times. This kid is smart. Certainly smart enough to hold a crochet hook and start getting acclimatised to it.

Ok, so she used it as a drumstick for a bit, and chewed on it a little too - but then, so do I.

So although she's a little young yet to start crocheting, she was at least examining it and trying to figure out what the hook was for, which, I think, is a good sign and may indicate a future crocheter, and at that point, my first crochet hook will become her first crochet hook.

It just feels right, somehow.

Have Hook, Will Travel

This week has been a week of almost perpetual motion.

On Tuesday I went from London to Perth (the one in Scotland, not the Australian one) so that I could be in Perth rested and ready to do a day's training with a really lovely group of people on Wednesday.

Then on Thursday, I did the journey in reverse.

Six hours each way on the train, not counting time either end getting to and from home/work/hotel made for an exhausting time. Coupled with having to work on the train, meant that the poor cake of my tequila sunrise hand-dyed handspun was sadly neglected, and came home the same way it went up, along with the 4 balls of Louisa Harding kimono angora, and mostly super secret skein of other stuff I'm doing for someone else (although I did manage to do some work on that in the hotel, before I conked out from exhaustion (training all day is hard work, especially when you're the trainer).

So nothing much to show off this week, which is a shame, because I've got lots of things I want to do (and clearly, either an over-developed sense of what I can get done when I travel, or a panic that I'll run out of yarn and be projectless) and other stuff I can't show off quite yet.

It's not even like I'll be able to do anything this weekend, unless I manage to get over my travel sickness enough to crochet in the car (I'm on a bit of a crochet trip right now), because I'm off to see my sister, brother-in-law and adorable niece.

Tea Scarf

Since coming back from Crete, the days have got colder and more wintry, so I turned my red merino handspun yarn into a crocheted scarf.

It's about 4 inches wide and long enough to double wrap and pull through, and it's so snuggly soft it's like my neck is wrapped in a hug.

With this scarf, and the powers of rooibos tea, I'm sure I can keep the autumn chills at bay.

Recipe for a Tea Scarf

approx 200yds soft fluffy worsted weight yarn 7mm crochet hook

Row 1: chain(ch) 140 Row 2: ch3 for turning chain, then double crochet (DC) (UK: triple crochet (TR)) in each base chain. Rows 3-5: ch3 for turning chain, DC(TR) in each chain Frilly border: ch3 for turning chain, ch1, DC(TR) in (same) turning ch, *DC(TR), ch1, DC(TR); repeat from * in each chain around the entire scarf, ending where you began.

Finishing: weave in ends.

Wear with pride. Tea drinking optional, but I can heartily recommend trying Rooibos Tea.

Wavy Warmth

I went to SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas earlier this year, and while I was there, I was lucky enough to be able to visit Hill Country Weavers (not just once, but twice!), and amongst my haul of goodies I bought two balls of Berocco Ultra Alpaca with the intention of making a nice cuddly wrap.

Amazingly, for me, the result was actually a nice cuddly wrap (as opposed to buying yarn for a project, having it languish in stash hotel for months then doing something else entirely with it) and the yarn was so lovely that I started working on it almost as soon as I got home.

I came up with a stripe pattern that went:

5 rows teal 3 rows purple 1 row teal 3 rows purple 5 rows teal

then reversed the colour bands

Luckily for me, I had just enough yarn to make it work and finished it over Easter, on a visit to my boyfriend's parents.

I so desperately wanted to finish it so I could wear it down there, envisioning a nice crisp spring walk along the beach wearing it, that I crocheted the whole 5 hour journey from London to Devon, complete with over the ear LED light so I could continue in the dark. Whenever we drew up next to another car, I kept getting funny looks. Can't imagine why.

It hasn't had much use this year, but I dug it out this morning because it's been such miserable weather here, and this is just the thing for a horrible grey day.