Great Title, Catchy Subtitle!

A nice side effect of the current crochet psychosis is that I usually have stuff lying around the house when I desperately need a last-minute gift. Turns out that Donna turned 40 on Thursday, so she got the pineapple scarf. If I had played it right I could have made it look like I'd made it with her in mind, but at least I was able to pull a hand-made gift out of my hat.

Here's a baby blanket that I gave to my husband's boss and his wife last night for their four-month old son. (Had a devout Shabbat dinner at their house with our kids, both of whom behaved very well considering that it involved strangers and rituals to which they're not accustomed.) It's Simply Soft in Soft Blue; I don't normally go for the "blue blankets for boys" thing but I was destashing and had two full skeins of it that I had been planning to use to make a tank and skirt, or a dress, for Amanda until I got the cotton Skacel Ocean which I like much more in terms of texture, drape, and general effectiveness as a summer item. Anyway, I usually use Bernat Baby Coordinates in a pale cream color for baby blankets but ya use what ya have. Started Monday morning, finished Thursday night. In retrospect, the scallops aren't very boyish so maybe that makes up for the color. Actually, I really don't care that much, and it's gone, so no more overthinking it.

Getting read to work on...a hat for Amanda out of the Jo-Ann wool/cotton yarn that I frogged out of the scarf; fingerless gloves for me in a yarn I haven't chosen yet (I have a lot of dark gray Simply Soft but I think I want a natural fiber, at least in a blend; I have nearly a full skein of kitchen cotton that would be nice but it's periwinkle blue which is not exactly my taste). Also need to replace my pineapple scarf since it REALLY looked good on Donna -- better than I thought it would.

Not much extra to put in here but I might as well start wrapping this up:



Here's a scarf made from the Kauai Pineapple Lace pattern in the Crochet Pattern a Day calendar. I'm starting to have a great big beef about the editorial quality of this calendar, but that's not related to this scarf. The pattern is originally designed as an edging but I've been looking for a skinny thread-crochet scarf and this worked really well. I didn't use the bullions in the pattern, not because they're difficult but because I don't like the way they look. The goal is to use this as a light summer accessory with T-shirts, or as a sash/belt. I think it'll work. If I make it again, I'll make the first motif double-sided so the pineapples all appear to go in the same direction -- on this version, they're all pointing the same way so when you wear it, half point up and half point down. (This is the kind of concern that's eating up storage space in my head.)


Here's Amanda wearing a V-stitch scarf made from Caron Feathers in Sandpiper. She's definitely bonding with the kitten. I'd get mad at her for not taking better care of her scarf (dragging it on the floor like a tail isn't exactly careful) but it's been warm lately and she's really just too cute to get mad at her. She's NOT drinking out of the cat's bowl. She got her own bowl of water with her own opposable thumbs.

It's cheating to fill up space with stuff that I've already made, but WTF. I started crocheting again last fall when I noticed my stylist (the fabulous Carmen Okpattah at Velvet Waves -- this woman can do amazing things with textured hair, regardless of ethnicity) wearing a gorgeous crocheted hat. It turned out to be recycled sari silk, which sent me to eBay to buy some...and then I turned some of my mother's old cotton/viscose cord from the 1950s into an iPod case...then I made everything into an iPod case...then I started making skinny scarves for the holidays, and here we are.

<> Finally heard from L. on the scarf without any prompting on my part. She says: "First, let me properly thank you for the yummy and soft-as-a-bunny scarf. It reminds of a Milky Way candy bar. Which is weird but I loved those things as a kid so perhaps it's my Madeline."

This is a scarf I made for Fabulous L. in New York. The pattern is the mohair ripple scarf from Vogue Knitting's Crocheted Scarves book. Because I find mohair itchy, I made it out of Moda Dea Cache, which is the only chenille I've worked with that doesn't end up stretching and looping like crazy a month after you make it. It's light and soft but I have no idea if she liked it. She's got very determined tastes and it's entirely possible that it's not to her liking but she appreciates the value of a handmade gift and will never tell me. Oh, well. I only see her in the summer so at least she has an excuse for not wearing it in my presence. It was kind of a bitch to makebecause I hate swapping yarns and weaving in ends, and there was something really odd about the way that they set up the shells in this pattern, but if I ever get ambitious, I'll make myself one, because I like fluffy, and I thought it was pretty.


Here's Amanda modeling a scarf and hat I made for myself. They're TLC Amore with recyled sari trim. I like it a lot in theory but it's before I learned how to actually make a hat that fits well. Oh, well -- it doesn't give me hat hair.


There's a lot of space to fill here...OK, things that bug me. Luke having a daughter on Gilmore Girls. People who have the right of way but stop in traffic to let people turn left in front of them, causing accidents behind them. People who think they have the solution to your children's emotional problems but have no clue how deep-seated the problems are; if it were as simple as "not indulging their anxiety," don't you think it would have been fixed by now? People who claim they're not racist but then get upset that high-achieving Asians are ruining the school for their kids, um, because it's OK to be prejudiced against a group as long as they're not socioeconomically disadvantaged?






This is my first piece of actual apparel: a skirt for Amanda made out of Caron Simply Soft in Dark Country Blue. It's important to note that the child ASKED me to make her a skirt. I am not inflicting my hobbies on her.

When I was a kid, my mother frequently made my clothes. They were all very well-made, but I went to snooty private schools or snooty public schools that might as well have been private schools, and I was a target and a laughingstock in my purple corduroy elastic-waistband pants when everyone else in sixth grade was wearing Levis. I am really trying to not turn Amanda into a crochet fashion victim. But she asked for the skirt, and I made it. It turned out OK. Next time, I'm doing it totally in the round without joins so there aren't any seams -- there's a hitch in the back seam that kinda bugs me, but Simply Soft is hardly heirloom yarn, and it only took me a day to make, so it ain't getting frogged.



My first ribbed/cabled item -- a hat from the Crochet Garden's free pattern, made of Lion Brand Wool-Ease worsted weight. This turned out so much better than I possibly imagined it would. Of course, my mom the knitter said of the pattern "Well, they're not real cables, it looks awfully open next to them," but hey-- it's made of WOOL (mostly) and it's plenty cozy and warm enough. Unfortunately, my spouse didn't feel like he was man enough to wear it with the big cables and ribs, so I gave it to a manly-cool leader at the YMCA who IS manly enough, and for whom the kids had been begging me to make a hat. I'm going to make it much smaller in the Jo-Ann's wool/cotton blend that's so soft and ply-free for Amanda.

Here's Bob's second scarf, knitted in random stripes out of charcoal and brown Wool-Ease Chunky. It's the second scarf because he lost the first one made strictly of charcoal, and I didn't have enough of either the brown (purchased for a kid craft project -- stupid second-grade book report art projects) or the charcoal to make a complete one. If he loses this one, I'm done. The flash has distorted the colors; the brown is more of a true brown, not a reddish brown, and the gray is charcoal, not silver. Stupid flashes. (Stupider not knowing how to adjust color but it's really easier and more fun to blame the technology.) This was even more of a bitch with all the stripes -- I ended up with something like 60 ends to weave in which is just too much.

# posted by EKM @ 12:16 PM 0 comments