Category Archives: Crochet

So maybe 6 weeks ago my 2 oldest children started experimenting with crochet. Knowing I had once loved it beyond reason, they egged me on and egged me on until I finally picked it up again. And here we are.

I had put it down in the first place because I had developed problems with the coordination in my hands and it was just too frustrating to work at half the speed that I was once able to achieve. But when I started again I learned that I had adapted over the years and crochet felt as fluid to me as it ever had.

To be honest, I felt like I had a piece of my life back.

So now they’re working on their projects and I’m working on one of my favorite things…a simple granny square throw…and we sit together and bullshit while the hooks flash in and out of the growing fabrics and it’s about an awesome a thing as you can imagine.

So I had to come back here and chronicle my newest adventures. And celebrate with the internet. It’s rough out there, and it’s a great thing to note the little victories. That’s what keeps us sane and full of hope.

I’ve been slowly working on a Vintage Vertical Stripe afghan for the last year or two, and I’ve been rather severely hampered by the fact that I made it way, way too long to start with. I was planning to have the stripes run vertically on a bed, and I totally overestimated how long it would need to be, which I suppose was my penalty for starting it while I was in the middle of the woods.

So when I realized I was never going to finish it, and when I realized that I really, *really* didn’t want to send it to the frog pond, I decided to try something radical. Worst case, it gets tossed. best case, it gets revived. Why not?

After carefully cutting a couple of feet off of it, I started unraveling the cut edge and reworking the last stitch or three. I did one row at a time and worked up:

On the “wrong side” rows, it took a little more finagling and working some twisted stitches, but it came out looking fine. The right side was dead simple. By about halfway through I was fairly certain that what I was doing would actually work.

And with another half-hour of work, I discovered it had.

I have some weaving of ends to do, but I needed to do that anyway.

I won’t lie. I feel dreadfully clever. And I’m pretty excited that I’ll most likely finish the thing now. How could I not?

This is an incredibly neat technique for getting started. It’s based on foundation double crochet and makes a lovely join.

Doris Chan is just awesome.