cahn

I am still crocheting away, I haven't stopped!

And knitting, actually. I... actually... really like knitting. As long as I don't make any mistakes (that I don't immediately catch) because what I really don't like is fixing knitting mistakes. (Fixing crochet mistakes that happened in the last round is tedious but fine, which is good because I make a lot of them.) I'm in it for the miles of knit stitch, not doing anything actually hard! I am working on a sweater. It is... pretty clearly a first sweater? It's been my go-to during work meetings and I've been working on it off and on during meetings for about six months now and am halfway through the first sleeve, which I guess is good insomuch as it means I can't have been spending that much time in meetings, right?

A large part of what I have been doing is making baby blankets for various church friends (people at my church keep having babies, just found out about another one due in Feb I'd like to make a blanket for) and baby-sized blankets for my niece and nephew, not super interesting (eventually I found my One True Baby Blanket pattern, the lemon peel stitch and just keep repeating that one) but also satisfying because they are small and take relatively little time, so my short attention span is kept happy.

But also! I have fiiiinally managed to finish those two blankets I have been working on for ages! Well, the Coral Story blanket I actually did a lot of work on very quickly because I loved it so much, and then I got stuck on the joining the hexes together thing and let it sit for about a year before doing the joining. The Hue Shift blanket was a slog and I kept leaving it to work on baby blankets and so on, but I got faster at it which helped a lot, and I got a lot done in the double whammy of travel and covid this summer. Anyway it has taken me a little less than two years to get both of these done! (Ssh don't tell anyone, the Coral story still has some ends that need to be woven in, but I did weave in all the ends for the Hue Shift because A. and E. were eager to use it.)

Now that I have finished these blankets, I... have plans to make another one! (No, we do not need another blanket. Yes, I'm going to make another one anyway.) Using the pattern thistleingrey talks about here. (This one will be scrappy -- I am planning on using a lot of the odds and ends of yarn that I bought when I first learned to crochet thinking "that looks pretty!" but, uh, didn't know what to do with after that.)

Pics!

Avena:


Coral story:


Hue shift:

I have had this draft for a while and I guess I should post it??
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I seem to have randomly picked up crocheting this past week? A babysitter taught me how to chain stitch when I was a kid, but I'd never figured out how to do any more than that. And anyway I'd been looking around for something to do with my hands during Zoom meetings that would let me still pay attention to the meetings without being bored out of my skull (I've been doing chain maille, which fills that niche, but was looking for another potential activity) and then I saw these cute amigurumi kits which a) I really wanted to make one, because they're so cute b) they had all these tag lines like "total beginners who've never crocheted before can do this!" and I was like... hey, total beginner who has never crocheted before, that's me! I could... maybe... do that?

So I bought a set of crochet hooks, got out the yarn in the kids' craft bin (I am rather amused that the two super cheap spools of yarn I bought when E was a toddler as basically play toys for her have lasted through almost ten years and two kids, though we're down to assorted medium-to-small balls of it now), and watched some videos. I hate watching videos, but I must reluctantly concede that for this kind of thing it is six thousand times better than pictures (yes, yes, this is cahn getting with the digital world, decades after everyone else did) as my ability and motivation are not large enough to figure out how to do it from pictures, but I was able to pretty easily via video. Some large number of ripped-out stitches later, I now know how to single crochet and double crochet, and courtesy of not just meetings but also the kids having outside karate and E and I watching She-Ra, I have a small half-washcloth-sized single-crocheted piece of material that E has already earmarked as a blanket for her (small) stuffed animal, at which point A commissioned a similar blanket for his small stuffed animal, which I finished double crocheting today during back-to-back meetings.

(It's soooo good for meetings, better than chain maille; it's just the right combo of repetitive but requiring a bit of visual attention and also hypnotic that I can actually concentrate better on someone else talking while crocheting than I can if I'm not doing anything with my hands.)

Something that's weird to me is how much more physically compelling I find crocheting than knitting. A friend taught me how to knit many years ago and I knitted a washcloth and then quit because I didn't find the act of knitting particularly interesting, whereas I actually enjoy crocheting and find it very soothing and kind of addictive. (Not gonna lie, part of this is that ripping out stitches, which I've been doing a lot, is extremely satisfying :) ) I assume there are others who feel exactly opposite (most of you? like... I think half the people on my DW list are huge knitters) and find knitting compelling and crocheting uninteresting. It's just fascinating to me though because I guess I'd always subconsiously assumed (yes, feel free to laugh at me) they were pretty much the same in terms of crafting appeal, they both involve creating cloth from yarn with one stick vs. two sticks, what's the difference? ;) (All this being said, I'm thinking that some of it probably also has to do with where I am in life, and maybe I should try knitting again. I do think I like the fabric that results from knitting more!)

The only thing is that it seems to tear up my neck and shoulders. I think this is because I don't have good back/shoulder posture while crocheting. (I'm pretty sure my hands themselves are in reasonably good ergonomic position, but it's certainly rather repetitive so I think I'd need to be careful there too.) It's about the time of year I usually have some problems with this anyway, so I'm trying to be better about stretches and we'll see.

I haven't bought a kit, and will try to make the chick by myself after I get yarn for it (I've been practicing magic circle), as I am pretty sure I can do it on my own. But I will probably get their fox kit and make that for E, as she adores foxes and I feel like I should support their business for inspiring me to do this, and also the fox looks more difficult and like a kit might be more fun than me trying to figure it out myself, whereas it was more fun for me to figure out the chick by myself :)

So anyway! Tell me about yarn you like! Ideally yarn that comes in pretty colors and is soft and easy to crochet. Cheap and durable is a plus, especially until I get better at this :P I don't have any opinions about artifical vs. natural fiber -- it's all good :)

karanguni is hosting a Low-Key Handmade Exchange. The idea is to "work down your existing stash of materials and/or get motivated to make something by doing something small and nice for someone. Whatever you offer to create shouldn't stress you out either financially or emotionally, but rather be a nice, low-key way for you to engage with your discipline of choice!" Anyone is welcome! I think there are a couple of people who read this DW who might be interested? (but maybe you knew about it already)

This is… exactly the kind of event I need, as I personally have a rather large stash of shiny anodized aluminum rings I've used to make chain maille bracelets, but lately I haven't been making any. (The anodizing process, interestingly, is FDA approved for cookware — not that I'd recommend eating with them or eating them, mind you — and although it can be scratched with steel, it's fairly hard.)

I thought I'd show you some of what I've made :)

( Pics. )

(note to ambyr: I have also been working on a long Byzantine chain for… uh… six months now, in little bits and pieces. I'm hoping I can actually finish it up this month. I'll try to post a pic when I do.)

So as you probably all know about me by now, I get these obsessions that last anywhere from a couple of weeks to a year long. They're about different things, but fairly reliably I can count on having an obsession every couple of years on some sort of jewelry-making, particularly with gemstones. ( Cut because apparently once I start talking about shiny things, I don't shut up. )

( Pictures! )

Here's what I spent a while this weekend doing. It'll be a Christmas present for the Kid, only in argentium silver (which I just ordered yesterday). Custom cut indicolite tourmaline that I got relatively cheap from someone who couldn't figure out what she wanted to do with it, heh.

A couple more pics here.