More from my Hook

I’ve been doing a lot more actual crocheting of late - which is nice. That’s what I like to do, but it can get shoved to the side with all of the pattern-writing, and web design, and yarn buying, and sweater recycling…all of that stuff is good, but all of those things are for the crocheting. So it’s nice to be doing more of that. Here’s another pair of mittens:

And I’m delighted with them. The first and second pair work, but I wasn’t perfectly happy with them. With this third pair, I’ve gotten it right! Woohoo! So pretty, wonderfully shaped. Now I don’t need to keep tweaking it, I can just crank ‘em out. I plan to do many different color combinations and patterns to keep it interesting.

I’ve also worked up some plush hangers. It’s realy fast and easy; I basically just made a chain stitch around some plastic hangers with a really bulky yarn. Red Heart Light and Lofty, I think. I went all IK on the photography and stuck them on a chair:

Sadly, this sort of shot doesn’t really let you see what it looks like. (Here’s a clearer shot.)

I’m going to make one or two more. I like them. I do wish I had some nice, wide pink ribbon, though, to make some bows on them. I don’t have any ribbon to speak of. I keep running into projects that would benefit from some, but I make do without, and then whenever I wander into the ribbon aisle I can’t think what I need it for. I do like ribbon, though. It’s pretty.

Helping Others

I’m not the sort of girl who makes New Year’s resolutions. I prefer to set my goals as they become needed, and I’ve got a new one. This last winter (sorry, I know lots of you are still cold. Down here, though…winter has left the building. Look out, here comes summer! Bleh.) I was driving home one day when I stopped at a red light. It was chilly even with the sun out - many of the shoppers I had encountered on our diaper run (we buy them in bulk) were wearing heavy coats. At this particular light there was a man begging. This isn’t unusual where I live, although it shocked me when we moved here. After a few years of it, I mostly ignore them and try not to make eye contact with the crazies when I’m alone in the car with my babies. For some reason, though, this particular man caught my eye, and when I looked at him he reminded me of my dad. Perhaps it was that he was bald. He wasn’t wearing a coat, and, of course, I could tell he was bald because he wasn’t wearing anything to cover his head. The thought popped into my head, “How would I feel if my dad had to beg out on a street corner in winter, without even a hat to cover his bald head?” The answer was easy. Terrible, of course. Heartbroken. “I would hope that someone would help him.”

By this point in my internal dialogue I had travelled some distance, but the picture of that man and the feeling he raised has stayed with me. I know that there is quite a tangle with regards to who ‘deserves’ help, and who is using it to avoid work or to turn a quick buck, and it is an inescapable truth that I cannot save everyone - but the fact remains that there are people everywhere that need help, and I am in a position to help at least some of them.

I was sort of at a loss in terms of where to start - I poked around for several weeks investigating charities and the like, but nothing really spoke to me. I don’t know if I was waiting for one to call to me, but one did. I was in church last week, only half-listening (playing with Charlie, you know) when a woman got up to give an announcement. “We are looking for crocheters and knitters” (That’s me! I thought) “who would like to be involved in our humanitarian efforts.” (I would! I thought) My church has highly organized humanitarian services, and is well known for its extensive work for and with those who need help. Silly me for not thinking sooner to go through them. So, now I’m making mittens.

I’m making them in Max’s size, because somewhere out there (I would say ‘not too far away,’ except we’ve already come out of winter) there are little boys and girls, just like my baby, who have cold fingers no one to make mittens for them. So now, I am.

Today is a day of sadness. Today is a day of pain.

Today is the day it got warm enough to haul out the summer baby clothes. Yes, I would finally get to put Charlie in those cute little rompers I had saved from Max’s baby days. They are so cute - there are a few with dinosaurs, one with a froggie, one with a truck…I was so looking forward to using them for my second son, and revisiting the sweet memories of their last use. We pulled out a six-month size - too small. No real surprise there, the kid is a freaking giant. We pulled out a nine-month size - too small. Oh. I dug around until I was able to find one in a twelve-month size. And it fits. (Although, it’s a bit snug. I don’t think it will fit for long.) Sniffle.

In case you haven’t been keeping track, this child is not yet six months old. His six-month birthday isn’t until next week. And now he has completely skipped over drawerfuls of clothing. I have so many clothes that were lovingly unpacked at the beginning of winter that need to be sadly sent back into the storage boxes, unused, until they may be called upon to be worn by the next baby. Just for comparison, here’s a picture of Max wearing that exact same romper:

In this picture he is 12 months old. We have a few shots of him wearing it as old as 14 months, but I like this picture. I have to say, though, it looks like Charlie fills it out more. Which makes sense. According to our bathroom scale, Charlie weighs better than 20 lbs. Max didn’t hit that weight until after his first birthday.
Dang it, he is getting too big too quickly. Why is he growing so fast? Doesn’t he realize that I am enjoying his happy, chubby, perfectly healthy babyhood? Doesn’t he have any consideration for my feelings? Why doesn’t he want to stay my baby?

New Stuff!

Well, it’s a few days later than I meant it to be, but yay! There’s new content on Inner Child Crochet!
Chaco is for sale in my Etsy Shop! There are two new shapes in How to Design! There is an amusing article!

I am tired. Obviously there are some things that I really need to get done - like untangling the shopping cart code so you can buy Chaco here or on ICC, and fixing the ‘contact me’ page - but I am tiiiiiired.

Go play. Have fun. See you later.

*edit* Chaco was out of stock on Etsy for a while. He’s back. My apologies to everyone who wanted to give me their money.

Hello, there!

And welcome to everyone who has found my blog via the Crochetme newsletter. Let me tell you, that was an unexpected spike in traffic. Anyway, let’s see what we have to show for ourselves today. First and foremost, go poke around in my new Cafepress Shop! I made four different ‘candy heart’ designs. Writing messages for candy hearts is, unfortunately, one of the ways that I amuse myself around this time of year. Here’s one:

Go see. Aaaaalso, I went to Joann’s the other day (to pick up something important, and not for me) and they were having a sale on the Super Size balls of Lily’s Sugar’n Cream cotton. You know, the new 4 oz. balls. It was 2 for $3. I bought 4, which means that I bought a pound of cotton for $6. Rather a good deal. I almost bought twice that. The yarn I bought is earmarked for a project, though. So it’s completely allowable. Right?

I may perhaps have started disassembling another sweater. Maybe. And, um, I got in a package from Knitpicks.

Look. It’s a lot more economical to ship a lot of them at once. Okay? Plus now I know which yarn I want to order for another project in planning…

“One Small Step for Woman…”

“Along the road less travelled by…speaks louder than words…about - uhhhh…bother.” Ran out of quotes, there. Anyway, I’ve done something very exciting this week. I submitted my design proposal to Interweave Crochet. They’re currently accepting submissions for their Winter 2007 issue, so that means that if they accept it, you’ll see it in…ah, just about a year. Wow. Print publications are sooooo slooooooow. Sigh. Oh, well.
In other exciting news, I finished winding my cashmere into hanks. See?

That’s 3,326 yards of cashmere, baby. I’ve only washed the three hanks on the left, so far, but that’s all right. Washing it makes a serious difference in the texture and feel (as compared to the kinky yarn, especially) but I won’t feel bad about storing it in an unwashed state they way I would have just chucking it into my closet all balled up. Anyway, I weighed it:

And it’s about 8oz, or 220 grams, of cashmere. And, since cashmere yarn goes for about a dollar a gram, that’s about $220’s-worth of cashmere. It’s so luxurious, too. Not bad for four dollars! (And a month and a half…) It’s a good thing I got it done: one of the projects I’ve promised Kim for Spring is due to be made out of this, and I need to get cracking. I just wanted the final stats on the sweater, and all of the yarn here together, before I broke into it.

I’m also making another hard hat for Max. The one you saw on Charlie yesterday was meant for Max; but you see, a hard hat should not hug the head. Therefore, it needs to be bigger than a Simple Circle Hat, but I wasn’t sure how to tell how much bigger. End result, Charlie got a new hat. Boys want to play dress-up, too, you know.

A message from Charlie

“Sup, ladies - I am talking to the ladies, right? Mommy promised me that the ladies would go crazy for my cool new hat.”

“She made me wait for my nap almost twenty minutes, and everything, saying something like ‘Wait - just - a minute - almost…done!’ and so, please forgive me for not wearing my usual charming grin. I’m tired.”

“I sure am glad to finally have some protective headgear, though: it rains kisses all the time around here, and those things are dangerous. Well - I’m gonna go take a nap. Bye-bye!”

OK, folks, we may have a problem here

Look. Let’s think about this rationally. If, let’s say, you went to your local yarn store and they had sweater-sized amounts of yarn bagged up together for under five dollars, you would be nuts not to grab some, wouldn’t you? Even if it was a giant snarl and you would have to untangle it before you could use it, that’s one heck of a deal. As we all know, there’s (almost) no such thing as “too much yarn.” So why do I feel bad that the nicest yarns in my stash are still in sweater form? Well, I think it’s because that when you buy a sweater with the intention to dismantle it for parts, you’ve bought something that already qualifies as a WIP. Therefore, each sweater you buy before completing the recycling of the previous ones adds its massive bulk to the pile of projects you’re working on, forcing you to say, “Yeah, haha, I’m working on it, but I’m not quite done yet…”

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I bought more sweaters.

Before I show them to you, let me explain! My local thrift shop has a bag sale once a month, during which you can stuff a paper bag as full as is physically possible (from the clearance section of the store) for only $5. The last time I went (interestingly enough, it was a year ago…) I got a set of encyclopedias and a red cotton sweater. I frogged it, and the yarn is even now in my stash as a pile of kinky little red balls. I think that if I were to wind it and wash it it would be much more attractive and likely to get used. Anyway, they only accept cold-weather clothing through February, so I’m expecting that this rash of nice sweaters is going to dry up in a month or two (to be replaced with the ubiquitous tatty cotton-raime blend), and not be seen again until next Christmas. Can you blame me? Besides, at the bag sale it costs the same amount to put one sweater into a bag as it does five. I only got three, but I got some other stuff as well.

Firstly, I got a bucket of Duplo Mega-blocks (aka, off-brand legoes) for Max - original thrift store price? $10.00 - Hah! No wonder it didn’t sell.

There are more blocks in the bucket, but it is by no means full to the top. I also picked up a huge men’s sweater in an alpaca blend (what are the odds of that? You know, here. In the land of the Midwinter Sunburn.)

That’s 51% acrylic, 39% wool, 10% alpaca. I can tell the alpaca is there, though. It feels so delicious that I seriously pondered leaving it the way it is just so I could wear it right away. I think the pattern on it is pretty appalling, though, and if you combine that with the voluminous cut I think it would make me look like a giant checkerboard. I’m really interested to see how the yarn comes out: I’ve looked at it, and it looks like that there might be two strands - either worked together or plied together, I’m not sure, but the backs of the white sections are black, and the backs of the black sections are white, and the backs of the bluish-gray sections are darkish gray, and - you get the idea. I just hope that it unravels into nice, long segments of yarn. I think it will. Let’s see…there was a gigantic, fuschia lambswool cardigan (100%)…

This photo doesn’t do justice to the bright, eye-searing fuschia that is that sweater. I think I’m going to try and overdye it, felt it as-is, and make things out of it. I’m going to investigate the possibility, anyway. There was also a gorgeous heathered blue wool vest (also 100%) -

- which I have just decided I will keep as-is. It fits me nicely, although it is a little blocky at the waist. I may try to tailor it a smidge. Now all I need is a long-sleeved white dress shirt so I can go all-out preppy with it. Heehee. Gorgeous. I threw in some other oddments to fill up the bag:

I’m a sucker for cute little boxes. The Foxtrot book was a plus. But yeah: all that for five dollars. I calculated the total of their combined original asking price: $44.50. I also calculated their combined reduced price: $20.50. Muahahah! I just love a real bargain of a bargain. Now, here’s the plan: I’m going to stay out of the thrift shop until next month’s bag sale (um. I can probably do that…) and hopefully they will have moved more sweaters over to the clearance section under the impression that they are “out of season.” At this point I will go stark raving mad and come home with a mountian of delicious fiber, and stay contentedly busy with it until next winter. Your thoughts on this?

In other news, I’ve almost finished winding my cashmere. I swear.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Link to me! Come on - you know you want to. And look, a button has been prepared for you!

Look at that. A nice little standard button. I’ve added it to my sidebar. Now, you want to, too, don’t you? I was going to leave it at that, but I thought that some of you might want something a little…bigger. Bolder. More…obvious. For you, I’ve made the button below:

You’re welcome. Feel free to slather it all over your site…your blog…your children…whatever. I thought that was good, but then it occurred to me that a few - a select few - of you might need something even bigger. For you, my groupies (the rest of you, quit giggling and play along) I’ve made something very special.

There. How do you like that? I’m afraid that if anyone wants anything more, they’re going to have to contact me directly. A pop-up blinking banner that scoots around the screen? I don’t know how to make those, but we’ll see what we can do.