crocheted bits and bobs

as you know, at long last, i have learned to crochet. i actually made this little crocheted stone the very night i learned and it's only now that i managed to tuck in the ends and get it photographed.

the other side of the stone is a bit more freestyle and i think i like it even better. what did it take me, five years to get my act together and learn this? i do wonder what i was waiting for.

there's a freedom in crocheting that i don't feel in knitting. i like that freedom and yet the strange combination of order and randomness. i just free-styled these little pieces the other night and had intended to put them on stones as well, when another idea floated into my head. i'm going to felt some little bowls to go inside and they will be a cover of sorts for the bowl, to add texture to it.

and in a more orderly fashion, i'm also making granny squares with the goal of putting them together into a blanket. it will take a whole lot of squares, but i try to do a couple in the evenings while watching t.v., so eventually, i'll get there. it's so nice to finally begin to use the yarn i've had stashed for this purpose for several years. mostly because using up the yarn you have means you get to buy new yarn!

i'm trying to enjoy my last weekend before starting my new job, tho' today marks the beginning of my contract, so i'm officially employed as of today. what better way than to putter around, being creative while the laundry gets done. here's hoping you're having a relaxing, creative weekend as well.

when you are ready, the right teacher will come along

before our fabulous weekend away, i emailed the girls and asked if anyone could teach me how to crochet a granny square while we were there. i threw in some yarn and some crochet hooks, just in case. my dear friend elizabeth tried to teach me a couple of years ago, but i'll be the first to admit that i never really caught on.

but somehow, on saturday evening, it clicked for me and i made the granny square above. and i don't even have the feeling, which i had the first time around, that i would go completely blank if asked to make a second one. i took my early attempts along to show the girls and you can see them here, together with the blue and grey one that i made on saturday. as you can see, i have really learned it now, whereas some of the others ended up with two centers and weren't  even remotely square.

i learned something else about how totally free you can be when you crochet (way more so than with knitting). you can really just crochet in all directions. it was rather amusing because when i first started the square, i was sweating from the effort and had to take off my scarf and sweater (i don't think it was a hot flash, just the hard work of learning something new). i also forgot to breathe a couple of times, from the sheer concentrated effort. that wasn't so good, but it did make everyone laugh. but then, i relaxed and just crocheted. maybe it was because one of the others crocheted the white thing above and there was so much freedom in it - no sense of right and wrong, but just where the yarn takes you. i think it took realizing that for it to click for me.

i started crocheting a circle after my first square, just to give it a try. and it stayed flat and didn't become a nest (that has happened before) and i got into a kind of rhythm with it. and it felt somehow freeing. and tho' my effort wasn't nearly as free as christina's little white lichen? snowflake? seafoam? thing, i felt like i had learned it at last. and i will get more free with it and i'll undoubtedly show you the results right here.

check it out, i even managed to crochet a little jacket for a stone! funny how sometimes it just takes learning something at the right moment. i don't think i was ready to do granny squares before and now i am. just imagine what i'm going to do with all those pins on my must learn to crochet (or knit or whatever) board on pinterest....

taking the time it takes

my grandmother made dozens of sequined ornaments way back when. i don't recall helping her make them, but i remember fondly getting them out each christmas and hanging them on the tree. i think i have only one of them today - a little golden boot.  but when i spotted some little kits featuring sequins, pins and styrofoam forms today at the grocery store, i had to try my hand at it. i can tell you that grandma was very patient. but sometimes it does a person good to slow down and just take the time it takes to make something.

finding meaning in stripes

working on a scarf for sabin in soft, colorful cotton

i've made my own striped scarf as long as i want it to be and have only to go down to the local knitting shop and have the nice lady there show me how to join the two ends and then it will be finished. in the meantime, i have turned to one for sabin. she had to have an identical basket to mine for the project and we gathered all of our soft, bright cotton yarns into it and i'll make a colorful scarf for her like mine. she doesn't get along too well with wool, so we thought the cotton was a good solution and it was a way to use some of a stash of yarn that i had acquired out of addiction to the acquisition of colorful, soft things rather than having any project in mind. being an inexperienced knitter, i wasn't sure at first if i liked the cotton, but now that i've gotten a little way in, i do like it and it will be nice for spring, which has finally shown up.

snowdrops - a welcome sight, spotted in the woods at the new house
(and we just officially received word that they've agreed and it really IS the new house!)

last week, i spent time with an old friend who i used to work with and who i will work with again, starting april 1 (convenient to start a new job with 3 days of paid holiday and a weekend, don't you think?). i had my knitting basket with me and was knitting on my stripy scarf. i also mentioned that i had two more weaving lessons left before they were over. he laughed uproariously and made fun of me for indulging in activities that, in his words, only a 90-year-old woman would do. and oddly, that didn't bother me. because i know better. for one thing, i bought my loom from an 80-year-old woman who wasn't going to weave anymore because she was now painting, so there goes the age theory. and for another, craft is cool. here we all are, crocheting granny squares, knitting, sewing, quilting and embroidering. we're outfitting rooms of our houses to accommodate these hobbies. and we're not feeling any shame about it, just because they are homely pursuits (in the sense of home, not ugly).

i've done a lot of thinking about why this trend is so prevalent at the moment and have a few theories. one is that in the face of economic crisis, people simply are doing more around the house - not only are they taking less long-distance vacations, they're thinking about making a cover for that mixer rather than buying one. so the popularity of craft is partially from the desire to spend less, tho' i can vouch for the fact that sewing and knitting are rather expensive hobbies. even more, i think that as so many of us are information workers in one form or another, spending our days in offices, using computers, making elaborate powerpoint slides and excel spreadsheets, we have a longing to make something tangible and real, rather than all of that virtual ephemera. knitting, crocheting and sewing satisfy that longing. plus, we're so removed today from the production of things, that we have a desire to return to the simpler times of our forefathers and -mothers, where people really know how to do things with their hands. a quilt is much more tangible than a powerpoint presentation when it comes to it, so we simply have a desire to have something real that we made with our own two hands.

that dark chocolate brown stripe doesn't entirely fit

of course, i'm not above assigning deeper meaning to the things i've made. when i started the scarf, i consciously decided not to rip anything out and start over, but leave the small imperfections as markers of a learning experience and hopefully, to lend their own charm.  i've been looking upon the stripes in the scarf as a series of events, just as life is made up of event upon event. they build upon one another and the shades of the different events play off of one another. sometimes they clash and other times, they harmonize. towards the end of my scarf, i felt the need to introduce two new colors - a dark chocolate brown and a darker turquoise. interestingly, the brown doesn't work. it doesn't ruin the scarf, thankfully, but it jumps out in a jarring way, just like some of the things that happen in life. also interesting was that i couldn't see it until i had gone past it and added the next colors, so it wasn't until later that i realized how it didn't fit. just like life. but having vowed not to take out stitches once they were in, i have left it, as a learning experience. in life, you don't get a do-over.

in all, i'm pretty ok with the ribbing that i'm doing things a 90-year-old woman would do. those old ladies know how to do stuff and they've seen things. and i'm just fine with that.

proof of progress

march 7

march 9

march 11

march 13

i'm especially pleased with that row of yellow. it's some yarn i bought last summer at the viking fair in roskilde. it's hand-dyed with natural plant dyes - gyldenris as it's called in danish (not sure what that is in english).  the colors are slightly less vibrant than this in real life. i've got the saturation dialed up a notch (or two) in my camera at the moment.

i should have bought the entire basket of this yarn dyed with natural plant dyes

* * *

 a big congratulations to molly, my very first follower, and long lost sister in south africa. 

she just had a beautiful baby girl.

nature's bounty

this weekend, i took the last of the season's bounties from the garden - tomatoes red and green, thyme, basil, chili peppers, zucchini, eggplant, parsley, zucchini flowers, shallots and borlotti beans and i turned them into this:

#68 - canned mixed veggies

for use this winter with some good bread and a salty hard prima donna cheese.  i was inspired by camilla plum's programs on preserves on DR2. so inspired in fact, that i also made these...

#69 apple butter, #70 preserved lemons, #71 apple chutney

more later about my 24 hours with no internet...