Great Title, Catchy Subtitle!

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