this one goes out to my granny

So. I’ve been crocheting.

I’ve told you before that I started out crocheting before knitting, and it was sort of disastrous and bad for me and cursed — if you shouldn’t knit your boyfriend a sweater, you REALLY shouldn’t crochet him a slip-stitch acrylic blanket, fergodsake, and that goes double if you are gay. In my experience, it causes pretty bad back pain. I’m just saying.

This blanket is soooo much better.

I started out making lots of little granny squares that I was going to combine into an afghan at some point down the line.

But one of the things that appeals to me about making a danged blanket is being able to see it grow. I want it to be a massive and unwieldy pile of fiber that I can work on while watching Buffy on hulu.com. There’s not much a winter left, but while people are still wearing down coats and my radiator hisses, I want to be buried beneath fiber. Even in the form of cheap crochet thread like I’m using for this.

Plus what if I can’t figure out some good way to get these little squares arranged, let alone attached? What the heck am I going to do with hundreds of squares?

Better to crochet one ever-increasing square.

I don’t actually have enough crochet thread to make it into an actual blanket at this point, though. I might rip out my little squares when I need more thread for the big square.  And then buy some more at Hobby Lobby in my midwest travels.

I am having such a good time with these crochet projects! I’d forgotten how lovely and sculptural crochet can be. My mother used to crochet afghans some when I was growing up, and she taught me the basic stitches a long time ago. I’ve had to re-learn online for this project, and even though I feel totally lost reading any sort of crochet pattern (is it just me, or do the crochet stitch names seem to have nothing to do with the actual stitch?), I’m feeling the urge to crochet some more. I feel like it might be easier to make things fit well? Is that crazy? I found several projects I want to crochet through Ravelry, like the Victorian Shrug + Wrap on the cover of Crochet Me!, and the Spiraled Flower Shawl from Vogue on the Go Crocheted Shawls (by the same designer, will you look at that?).

Do any of you crochet?  Like, actual garments? Where do you find patterns?  Is there a free online crochet zine, like Knitty for crocheters?  I’m not sure I want to take the plunge buying these books while I’m in my early obsessive stages.

been gone so long

Oh my, that was an unintended break in posting. Would you believe it if I told you that I’ve been so busy with some new crafts that I didn’t have time to take any pictures or write out some thoughts? I clearly jumped the gun naming my blog, but I suppose that it’s pretty common for so-called “knit”bloggers to also sew or embroider or bake or or or…

I’m not a knitter that has a big problem with crocheting; I originally learned to crochet and tried to knit an ex a forest green afghan out of dk-weight acrylic yarn. Entirely in rows of slip stitch. (Even you monogamous knitters probably know about the slip stitch – this is what gives stability to some pieces or holds some pieces together.) I had to visit the campus health center for back pain the summer I was working away on that thing, and the doc prescribed me some heavy-duty muscle relaxers. The tension in that thing was so tight, I could barely get the hook through the loops of the previous row, and despite the fact that I didn’t rip out a single stitch and worked on the thing every night for months, at the end of the summer I had a rectangle of dense, stiff fabric that was neither long nor wide enough to be used even as a scarf. I have no idea what happened to it or the leftover yarn during my next semester, but I wish I had it around now to compare to the things I’ve been crocheting this weekend.

“Things?” you are probably thinking. Um. In the past 24 hours I’ve knit 13 granny squares. It all started because I sewed a no-cash wallet last weekend and then wanted to sew again. So I sewed another one. And then I sewed a bunch of triangles of scrap fabric together to make crappy little pyramids. And then I took another scrap of fabric and made a sampler with all the different stitches my cheap-y Singer machine can make (not that many). And it had only been an hour, and I couldn’t think of anything else to make without a pattern.

And the urge just struck me. I suddenly really needed to crochet some granny squares. I have a bunch of DMC Senso wool/cotton and wool/linen yarns my Mom bought and never really used last year, and a set of plastic crochet hooks I added on to a Joann.com purchase to get free shipping. So I just googled “how to make a granny square” and followed the directions in the first link (this really excellent one if you are interested in joining in the madness). And now I have 13 of them.

But I’ll tell you what. The madness does not stop at 13 granny squares. This time around, my crochet tension is nothing like that slipstitch crazy-making afghan. I feel more relaxed looping and scooping my double crochet stitches than I do knitting stockinette in the round. I got on Ravelry this morning and started trolling for crochet patterns to add to my queue. I came up with some beautiful sculptural capes, lacy tops, and tawashi. Tawashi are like fancy, cute dishrags, and although some are slightly more complicated than the infamous ball-band dishrag, they are just so fancy! and cute! Look!

I have a pair of gift socks just languishing on the needles now, because I have become obsessed with knitting teensy granny squares and glorified brillo pads. Forget public knitting — I’ll be on my couch with my hooks for a while.