…in lieu of family, friends, and passersby? You could say that. Probably accurate enough that it’s a good thing I’m crocheting, rather than knitting. Only one implement, and one with a rounded tip. Although, anyone who assumes they’re safe from a stabbing on that basis might be worried to learn that I’m currently working with a D. Haha.

Anyway, while I’m stuck in the house, too close to having the baby to really go out, but too far to get a bed at the hospital, I’ve tried to keep a project in hand to sort of – absorb the energy (without actually requiring much energy from me). At first the star-ghan filled this need for me, and I was pleased to have more time to work on it, to get it finished before the baby got here. Once that was done, I sat around for a little bit. I didn’t really want to start a new project (certainly not a new design project) so when my fingers started twitching I went stashdiving. Nothing really floated my boat, but the longer I waited the crankier I got. Eventually I grabbed an old mangled skein (nearly untouched in terms of use, but dang was it mangled) that my sister gave me. When I started crocheting again as an adult, she gave me all of her old 4-H project yarns (some of which have been very useful). This particular yarn was a skein of Bernat Baby Coordinates in Aqua/Pink. Seriously, that’s the name of the color. I wasn’t really that jazzed about the yarn, but a stashbust is a stashbust, and I tried to think of something to do with it. I tried to find a cute pattern to use it for, really I did. I have to say, though, cute patterns made from only one skein of Baby Coordinates seem to be really hard to find. Since there was no way on earth I wanted to buy more, I ended up making a carseat afghan:

Which, as you may be able to tell, is a rectangle of double crochet, about half to one-third the size of a baby afghan. Hardly exciting, but it did keep the hands busy. I have to say, I didn’t really enjoy working with this yarn. I don’t think it’s attractive in the skein, I don’t think it works up attractively – the shiny white ply has a tendency to get pulled out and reminds me a bit of dental floss, for another thing – but woohoo, another large skein of low-end yarn plumping up my stash, used in a practical fashion!

I was about to write off the yarn completely as just yucky – but I didn’t, and I will tell you why. The closer I got to the end of the skein, the more breakage there was. (Seriously, Emily, what did you do to that thing?) Eventually they were coming so close together that I decided to ball it up and see if I had a good-sized piece left to work with, or if I should call it quits. Turns out, I did have a good-sized little ball left (along with a nice little pile of tufty scraps) but instead of adding it to the afghan I decided to make another baby hat. I should probably mention here that with the little balls of yellow and white left over from the star afghan, I made an extremely cute ribbed baby hat, with a pompom on top. It was my first time pompoming something and it was so fun and so cute that I was antsy to try it again. (Now I know the real reason that some people get the pompom sickness and stick them on everything. If you’ve never made one, beware – they are FUN!) The hat was mindlessly easy, too – just a rectangle of single crochet worked through back loops, sewn together and gathered at the top. Since I didn’t have quite enough yarn for it, I eliminated the cuffed edging on the second one. I have to say, the yarn looked better worked up in sc on an F than it had in dc on an H, but it was still not scoring points. Then I got to the pompom. Here’s a shot of the two hats together: the Soft Baby looked beautiful, whereas the Coordinates looks…cheap? But look at the pompom.

That pompom is unbelieveably fluffy, puffy, and fuzzy. Look at it! Compared to the Soft Baby pompom it looks like cotton candy. There are actually strands of white Soft Baby in the Coordinates pompom as filler, so we aren’t even getting the full effect. Here’s the moral of the story, I suppose: if you have a bothersome skein of Coordinates sitting around, don’t just work it up and suffer. Find a project where the amazing fuzziness of its cut ends will shine and leave you amazed – latch hook, perhaps, or as fur on a stuffed animal. Of course, you could always make a million pompoms. They will be soft and poofy.

Oh, and I’ve put up the pattern for the Gapless Star Applique I used on the Starry Night afghan. Enjoy!

Remember the baby star-ghan, thwarted by my yarn shortage?

I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to finish it. It was definitely too small without any additional yarn, so I went to my local Walmart in search of another skein of blue Red Heart Soft Baby. Unfortunately, the first Walmart I went to was completely out of blue, and there was a problem at the second one. I snagged the first skein of blue I came across and was about to chuck it into the cart when I actually looked at it. The yarn was clearly, clearly not the same color. I peered at it suspiciously, snorted at the ‘No Dye Lot’ tag (I’ve heard that before), and checked the color. Powder Blue. That’s what I had, right? The yellow yarn had still been encased in a ball band marking it as Powder Yellow, but the blue had been bandless. Besides, when I bought the yarn for Max’s baby things (more than two years ago and several states away) I just bought the blue and the yellow baby yarn that they had in stock. Walmart only carries a limited colorway – you know, one solid, one variegated yellow, one solid, one variegated blue, one solid, one variegated pink…you know. But if I could tell without a side-by-side comparison that the blues were different, there was no way on earth that it would blend in politely.
I stood there for a few minutes, contemplating my options, and reluctantly grabbed a skein of white with a vague idea of a cloudy border. When faced with the complete breakdown of your plan, fudge a fix and turn it into a design element, right? The irony of the situation is that I had stopped by Michael’s not twenty minutes earlier and hadn’t even thought to see whether they had the yarn I needed (do they carry Red Heart? I’m almost sure they do). Oh, well.
Anyway, to wrap up the dye-lot issue, I checked the Coats and Clark website when I got home, and it appears that my yarn was Sky Blue rather than Powder Blue (which would explain the obviously different coloring). I wish I’d known when I made Max’s baby ripple afghan that they made a paler blue: it’s pink, yellow and blue striped, and the blue is a jarringly different hue than the (powder) yellow and (powder) pink. (Powder blue would probably have matched beautifully.) But as I said, Walmart only carries one blue.

I sulked quietly to myself for a little while about changing the design (I do like to have things my own way, especially in terms of artistic direction) but I made myself get to work on it, and I have to say that it turned out nicely. Even if I still think that just blue with appliqued stars would have been cleaner, visually. Judge for yourself:

I will be posting a pattern for the star appliques – when I tried to find some, they were all far too gappy to be used attractively on a darker color (like the blue) – and I’m going to look into posting directions for the afghan. Because the underlying structure is not mine (Beth’s Little Star, remember?), I want to be careful not to step on copywritten toes.