Recently in Crochet Category

Today marks the end of my first full work week since I went on bed rest at the beginning of July. Part of me had been dreaming of the day where I could be back with adults and wouldn't have to hear a baby cry every time I needed to take a phone call or send out an important email. Another part of me was terribly sad at the thought of not being able to spend the day with her. Worried that maybe she'd get more attached to her grandmother (who is watching her three days a week -- we're still working out how to deal with that last day) that to me once I wasn't around quite as much, and hating the idea of having to use my pump so much. Breastfeeding is a mixed bag, emotionally, for me, nursing her directly always beats pumping, especially now that she's getting faster and her nursing style rarely causes me any pain.

After working three days, I had Thursday to think about everything. I decided to ignore my work email, turn off my cell phone and just have a nice day with my baby. I will say one thing about being back in the office. I like being a mom much better when I can separate the work part of my life from the mothering part. I do a better job of work when I don't have to worry about whether Z is unhappy and I do a better job of being with Z when I don't have to worry about work. I'm definitely not at home with her as much, but she gets to spend the day with someone who wants to and can devote all of their attention to her, and when I am home, I can focus on her.

This was also a big week since she started solid foods (just a bit of rice cereal) and has really begun to interact with her environment. She actively grabs toys when she's on her gym, she's begun to chew a bit on teether toys, and she's constantly in motion, rolling to one side or the other from her back to get a different perspective on the world or get her hands on something that interests her. And she has an incredible vocabulary of noises now, including this funny puttering sound she now makes with her lips. She's generally much less fussy and spends a lot of time with big smiles. Her favorite parent-assisted activities involve sitting up and trying to stand. She loves to be upright, even though she can't do all the muscle work herself.

She's also gotten to enjoy some new hand made, very special items recently. The Sunday after Thanksgiving was her christening. My mom made her a beautiful gown (note: my inability to get it to sit right on the hanger and the fact that this is long after the dress was worn should in no way reflect mom's sewing skills; the dress is beautiful and sweet and the collar sat perfectly for the ceremony):

And my Aunt Mary crocheted her a sweet little white sweater to wear with the gown -- November in Michigan is chilly after all!

What could be sweeter than the little heart details and the ribbons at the collar and cuffs? Well, maybe one thing:

My own baby angel after her christening. She was so sweet for the whole day (except for when she had the water dumped on her head). My Aunt Mary took the picture and I just love how it looks like her eyes are sparkling. I thought the picture captured her so well and it was probably the best one taken the whole day.

If knitting up some bone could help heal Mr. Etherknitter, then I figured that crocheting an eyeball could provide some good healing mojo for John's eye. Lucky for me, I didn't even have to design an eyeball myself -- the wonder that is the internet provided me with an excellent free pattern for crochet eyeball creation.

The pattern for the crochet eyeball from Monster Crochet called for perle cotton, but since I didn't have any of that around my house and I wasn't sure I could deal with the itty bitty tiny crochet hook I decided to see what my stash held. This is the yarn I selected for the pupil, eyball and iris.

Fibers for an Eyeball

The pupil is a black merino sock yarn that was in my stash, and came as part of a trade from Emma, a long time blog friend, the white yarn is some left over Phil'Onde from one of my all time favorite sweater projects, and the yarn I selected for the iris is the Trekking XXL that I just recently used for a pair of socks for John. Since this eyeball is meant as something as a healing talisman for my sweetie, I decided that I wanted the color of the iris to be similar to the color of his own eyes, which are a lovely green with bits of brown and I wanted all the yarns to have a special meaning. The last yarn I selected (which didn't make it into the picture here) was for the "optic nerves". For this, I selected some Mountain Colors Bearfoot in reds, blues and browns which some how called out to me as appropriate for this project. This yarn was left over from a pair of socks that I knit for the woman who taught me to knit while I was in grad school.

Look Into My Eye.... Think Good Healing Thoughts

After a few hours in the afternoon, I had a completed eyeball. It's stuffed with some left over coopworth fuzz that remained after Julie and I put the lovely stuff that Liz sent us on a drum carder. I figured if I was looking for fiber stuffing with good vibes, this last unspinnable remnants of this stuff would be the perfect stuff.

So now as we enter the weekend, John has his own personal eye healing talisman. And when things are hopefully all done and healed, he'll have a funny little reminder of all the positive energy that came his way as he was working on healing.

I didn't tell the guy checking my bags at the ferry, but I snuck a crochet hook and a little bit of cotton yarn into my knitting bag before I left for Sleeve Island so that I could work on my next lesson in crochet: making circles.

Two Crochet Circles

One of the things that I have always thought was one of the strong points of crochet is making circular pieces of fabric. Let's face it, when it comes to knitting, circles are hard to do. You end up having to get creative with short rows or deal with fussy double pointed needle tricks. Crochet circles have a simple elegance to them in both the way they look and the way that they are constructed.

After getting through the explanation on the basic stitches, the next lesson in The Happy Hooker is on creating circles. The circle on the left in the picture was my first circle. It's started with a loop of single chain stitches and, as such, has a hole in the center. The circle on the right was started with something like a slip-stitch -- after you make as many stitches as you want around it, you pull on the free end and tighten the hole down to nothing. Very clever and not very difficult.

Believe it or not, it actually took me a little while to figure out how to end each round of the circle without having a big gap between the series of chain stitches that start the circle and the last crochet stitch. Apparently I was putting my slip stitch into one of the chain stitches instead of into an actual stitch. Once I figured that out, it all got a lot easier and my circles looked like they were supposed to. Amazing how something so simple could elude me for so long -- I actually ripped that one out 3 times before I figured it out!

The first circle is composed of all double crochet stitches. In the second circle, I decided to practice the different stitches from the previous lesson. The first ring is single crochet, the second ring is half-double crochet, the third ring is double crochet and the outer ring is triple crochet. It's a bit hard to see, but the circle is getting airier and arier as it expands out. Making circles is also a lesson in increasing. Also something that is much simpler to do well in crochet than in knitting.

If only I'd had this book and done this little project before I put the edging on my spiral rug, I'd have known exactly how to avoid that jog! I'm not going to go back and change it, but this has gotten me thinking again about crocheted rugs made from good thick cotton yarn as accents for my bathrooms.

As it turns out, about the same time I crocheted the circles, I also picked up a copy of the most recent issue of Interweave Crochet. I think I have now found my next "sweater" project -- Annie Modesitt's Lacy Leaf Cocoon. It looks like a crochet take off on a similarly shaped jacket that she had in Vogue Knitting not too long ago. I love things like this for summer wear -- sometimes I just feel a little too undressed in just a tank top and want a little something extra that isn't too warm to wear as well. I think this project would be perfect! It's really a shame the picture on the website doesn't show you the back of the jacket. The back is what is really spectacular in my opinion. And really takes advantage of the neat thing you can do with crochet in the round. (As an aside, I like this issue of Interweave Crochet a great deal... I think it would be kind of fun to make the crocheted sandals (scroll down from the Cocoon jacket if you've clicked on the link above) and there are several other projects I can see myself enjoy making over the summer).

I've still got a few more lessons to go (and knitting projects to finish) before I commit to more yarn and a large crochet project, but I love how now that I have some basics, I really feel like I can tackle almost anything. And given how easy and fast it is to rip and re-crochet, I'm not even afraid of making mistakes. I can't see myself becoming a full-time crocheter, but I have to agree with Debbie Stoller's assessment that crochet is the perfect summer yarn-related craft and that cotton yarns (usually something I avoid when I knit) really shine when you have a crochet hook in your hand!

So I've been thinking about crochet. Like a lot of things, I got thinking about crochet because I got a good book recommendation from Julie. She'd just purchased a copy of Debbie Stoller's The Happy Hooker and was working along on a scarf and singing the praises of the section that describes how to crochet in the first part of the book.

I've been intrigued by crochet for a long time. Longer, actually, than I've been intrigued by knitting. When I was somewhere in my early double-digit years, my great aunt Verna taught me the basics of making a granny square. She didn't teach me everything, just enough so that I knew how to keep going around and around and around with my happy colored cheap acrylic yarn. This granny square became one of the biggest granny squares ever known to humanity. I just kept going and going and going, adding new skeins of yarn as I went. I kept going because I really had no idea how to stop and finish it off. I'd probably still be working on it today, except I have no idea where it went. At some point, it was just no longer in my life. And since I couldn't remember how to start another crochet project, and I was moving on to counted cross stitch, I never really got back to crochet.

And I wouldn't find my knitting muse until my mid-20's. For most knitters, crocheting is pretty much relegated to the provence of making pretty edgings on garmets. Slip stitch and single or double crochet are just about all I ever needed to do and those simple edging elements were explained in my big Vogue Knitting book. But putting that edging on my Handspun Spiral Rug really got me thinking about crochet again. I generally like doing those crocheted edgings on knitted garments: so fast, so simple and so easy to rip out and correct mistakes.

So it seemed like high time to give crochet another chance. I bought the book and decided that I was going to give myself some at home crocheting lessons, with the goal of actually creating a crocheted garment that I would enjoy wearing. Or at least some cool placemats for my table.

Crochet Sampler Swatch: (From Bottom to Top: Single Crochet, Half Double Crochet, Double Crochet and Triple Crochet

Here's the results of my first lesson: a sample swatch composed of single, half-double, double and triple crochet, separated by a slip stitch rows. The swatch is done in Sugar n' Cream a 100% cotton yarn that I picked up at JoAnn's for just such a learning experience. I did five rows of each stitch between the slip stitch dividers. Pretty amazing how the size of the stitch can change just by adding one more loop. It also has a big impact on the density of the fabric. The single crochet at the bottom creates a much denser fabric than the triple crochet at the top.

So far, I have to agree with Julie whole heartedly -- this book does really have good instructions. After my first "lesson" with the book, I feel like I am ready to create a whole army of dish cloths. And I'm very excited about the next steps: increasing, decreasing and crocheting in the round. Maybe I'll finally actually figure out how to bring a granny square to a natural and lovely completion.