Crocheting Away

So much to talk about today! Let’s see…where to start…

Well. We moved into a new church ward last fall – after Charlie was born, so I didn’t know this – but apparently it’s the tradition in our current congregation to give an afghan to every new baby who is born. They had someone I’ve only heard referred to as “The Afghan Lady,” who supplied them with baby afghans and lapghans for the elderly and such. Something has apparently happened to The Afghan Lady (I don’t know what). Perhaps she’s moved, perhaps she’s died: they didn’t tell me and I haven’t asked. (:lol: It sounds kind of bad when I say it like that – I just think it hasn’t come up!) However, they found out that I crochet (back when I volunteered to do some humanitarian crafting) and asked if I could help out with the baby afghans. There’s quite a call for them – apparently over the last year there have been 15 babies born into our ward. Wow! They’ve assured me that there will be other people working on them as well.
Anyway, they supply the yarn, and the nice sister in charge of it asked me what I wanted. She told me that The Afghan Lady always used ‘the red heart yarn,’ and would I like that, because it would work up quicker, right? I assured her that it wouldn’t take that much longer to use the baby yarn, which I thought would be nicer – and comes in baby colors, too! So this Sunday she gave me two shopping bags of Bernat Softee Baby in various colors – which I like. Still, I think that I think I need to reassure her on the speed factor, which could explain this:

Click the pic if you’d like to see it closer: please excuse the tangle of yarn balls. I’m not carrying the threads, because I hate to see them peeking through. Yeah, I’ve done all that since Sunday night. Think I can get the first one done by Sunday morning? Perhaps. She said that they don’t have any left in the closet for boys, and there are several women expecting boys (including one of my friends!), so I thought I’d start with ones that can be used for the little guys, but aren’t plain to the point of boring.

In other news, I’ve decided (in a fit of spontaneity) to prepare and submit a design I was waffling about for Interweave Crochet‘s – weeeeell, crud. I just looked it up to see which issue I would be submitting for, and I missed the deadline for Spring 2008. (It was yesterday – I thought it was the 28th.) You know what, though, that’s fine. It takes the ‘rush’ out of it. I’m pretty sure by now that they decided against my submission for Winter ’07 (although I haven’t heard yet). Which is okay, because sometime after I submitted it, I had a little chat with myself about my designs. I’d been trying – or wanting, anyway – to do what everybody else is doing. To make sweaters and shirts and shawls and whatnot. And that’s not really what I do. I mean, I do it, but the designs that I love the most, and that other people think are awesome, are the toys, and stuff like that. And I do them really well. And I like them. You know? So I decided that it was better to do what I do well, that I like to do, that other people like, instead of straining and trying to do something that’s not really me, that other people already do, and do beautifully. I don’t blame them for not publishing my wristwarmers (yeah: I submitted wristwarmers. You never know.) but that’s cool, because this next design I’m going to submit will ROCK!

In other news, I carried a stack of Red Heart Super Saver down the stairs balanced against my chin and it gave me a rash that took 10 minutes to go away. Am I getting too delicate to be cheap anymore? Crud. Crud crud crud.

I’m still gonna work with it.