Category Archives: Crochet

New Pattern!

Posted on July 8, 2011 by | Comments Off on New Pattern!

I’m so excited that this is finally finished!

Simply Square Log Cabin Dishcloth (Ravelry Pattern Page)

Hope you like it!

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Posted in Business, Crochet, Design

Ravelry is awesome? Who knew? ;)

Posted on July 8, 2011 by | Comments Off on Ravelry is awesome? Who knew? ;)

Just saw this on Rav…where else? LOL.

A Tight-Knit Community

The subtitle: Why Facebook can’t match Ravelry, the social network for knitters.

Oh hell yes!

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Posted in Crochet, Knitting, Life

Knitting in Public

Posted on July 4, 2011 by | 1 comment

Of course, in my case it’s more likely to be crochet, but it all comes with the same set of issues:

I am not an overly social person, and nothing that I do while out and about seems to draw as much comment as pulling out a project and yarning away.

This drives me absolutely nutty.

When I’m in a waiting room, all I usually want is to blend into the woodwork. I’m stressed out by small talk; I’m even more stressed by it when I’m stressed already. I generally don’t make a public appearance unless I have to. I’m a homebody. I work in retail and I already talk to people all day. It absolutely exhausts me. The last thing I want is to chat with random strangers at a time I could be enjoying the quiet. Having my rhythm broken is far more annoying than never having the rhythm in the first place.

I don’t knit at work anymore, either. Same issues, but magnified, as I feel compelled to not be standoffish with those I have to see most days.

I don’t know if I really have a point, other than finding it soothing to grumble about having to either talk to folks or leave the crochet home. But I suppose grumbling is part of what a blog is for. 🙂 Though I’m sure there’s an interesting thought in there somewhere about the difference between random people in public and random people on the internet. In public once removed, or something.

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Posted in Crochet, Knitting, Life

Progress

Posted on June 8, 2011 by | Comments Off on Progress

Slow and steady, right?

Work continues to be a bit of a living nightmare. Home Office keeps adding things to the must-do list while cutting payroll. I know that a lot of folks are in the same boat with this right now, because employers are well aware that they’ve got us trapped. They’ll no doubt be surprised when their best people leave as soon as things pick up. It’s part of the cycle of corporate life.

I have a pattern ready to go to testing. It’s been a 5-minutes-here, 5-minutes-there thing, with the day job having to take precedence, so I’m wicked excited about the possibility of finally getting another pattern released. Hopefully that will happen in the next couple of weeks.

Spent last weekend in Maine, trying to relax and pretty much failing. It was gorgeous, though, and the company was good. We went to see X-Men First Class at the drive-in…I don’t think I’ve been to a drive-in since high school, and the movie was fantastic. Crazy fun!

I made an addition or three to my growing stack of dishcloths this weekend. School is inching closer to getting out, and the summertime is adding a level of chaos to the kids’ behavior that’s just a tad exhausting. It was 90-odd degrees today, so they’re even nuttier than summer normal. Lovely New England weather, lol.

And that is, I think, about it for the moment. 🙂

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Posted in Business, Crochet, Design, Life

I don’t have the words for how awesome this is.

Posted on June 3, 2011 by | Comments Off on I don’t have the words for how awesome this is.

Via a post in the Ravelry forums today, I found this artist, who works in crochet that is absolutely stunning. Just wow.

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Posted in Crochet

Good foundations

Posted on June 2, 2011 by | 1 comment

A few years ago, as I was tumbling through the crochet corner of the blog world, I stumbled upon a pair of tutorials (here and here) on chainless foundation stitches and I fell in love. Hard. And suddenly everything was chainless, and it was good. Well, until I discovered that I still liked a good old-fashioned starting chain for some edges, but that’s another story, and it doesn’t detract one whit from how crazy brilliant these foundation stitches are.

Anyway, these things still seem to cause a good bit of confusion–hell, they confuse me sometimes, if I go a long time without using them–and apparently that carries over into the professional crochet world. Doris Chan just had an experience illustrating that Foundation Single Crochet is not standardized just yet. And she not only posted about that, she posted a link to the best tutorial/explanation/sheer expression of awesomeness I’ve seen on the subject.

Definitely worth a visit. If you crochet at all, it’s fascinating stuff.

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Posted in Crochet

Day 14

Posted on November 14, 2010 by | Comments Off on Day 14

Trip to Maine was nice. Got to stuff myself silly at my favorite local eatery and spend an hour or two cursing at Traveling Woman. I don’t know what it is about that project, but even the simple stockinette portion kept going wrong for me. Methinks that I am currently lacking the focus to knit lace. Or the yarn is angry at me for making it live in a ziploc bag in the dark between bouts of working on the thing. You never know.

This afternoon I have the house to myself and in the absence of three small loud children I’ve been working again on a new pattern template. Nothing elaborate…I’m not in a good place right now to purchase or learn anything more elaborate than Word, but I’ve managed to jazz it up a bit all the same and I’m pleased with the results. I also set to writing the pattern that I think will make its debut the soonest. It’s been pulled from the pile of swatches and scraps and will shortly, with any luck, be made to behave.

I have no FO to show for this weekend, but the scarf project I’m trying to finish right now should be all set by the end of the week. Yay!

Got no pictures, either. I can be incredibly lazy sometimes, and moreso when I’m tired and bouncing between happy and cranky. On the plus side, the boyfriend gave me this to keep my moody self out of his hair, and I’m finding that I quite like it so far. So a book may actually get read around here for the first time in ages. Exciting stuff.

Ah, well. Back to the pattern thing. I have to do this writing in little pieces or it wouldn’t get done at all. Watching a design grow under my hands is easy. Writing it out so someone else can follow it? Not so much.

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Posted in Crochet, Design, Knitting, Life

There’s a buzzing in my head.

Posted on July 8, 2010 by | Comments Off on There’s a buzzing in my head.

Design ideas always seem to come in bunches. I’ve been happily crocheting piles of granny squares for a while now, happily toodling along in totally-recreational-crochet land, and sometime in the last few weeks designs started to sneak up on me again. It was a little bit stealthy at first…I pulled out yarn to work on an idea I had been toying with a couple of years ago, before my life got a bit frantic and I lost the threads of the things I was working on. And playing with that made me think of this, and that made me flash on the other, and all of a sudden I’m sitting on the bed with swatches and skeins all around me, fighting to stay awake and see if I can figure out that last issue that’s keeping the thing from *working,* damn it….

Not sure how I’m going to make the time to bring these to life, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know that I have to. Inspiration comes in it’s own time, and if it’s that time, it’s that time. Nothing you can do but run with it.

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Posted in Crochet, Design

2010 International Freeform Crochet Guild Show

Posted on May 22, 2010 by | Comments Off on 2010 International Freeform Crochet Guild Show

It’s up!!!

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Posted in Crochet

Slow week on the crochet front.

Posted on May 8, 2010 by | Comments Off on Slow week on the crochet front.

I went nuts making granny squares for a week or two, then stopped cold.

Factor 1? I finished watching the final 2 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which had been holding me hostage to my television most nights and thus creating the perfect conditions for exactly that sort of project-you-can-do-without-looking-at-your-hands.

Factor 2? My boyfriend brought home an Xbox. Hard to crochet when you’re playing video games. He’s a bad influence, I tell you. A very bad influence. 🙂

Factor 3? My job is making me want to beat my head against a brick wall. Which the crocheting is usually an antidote for, but the issues there are making my schedule screwy right now and thus interfering. Though I did help a coworker read a pattern this week, which was sort of unexpected and cool. She caught me knitting a dishcloth at lunch recently and now we talk yarn when we run into each other. It’s a good feeling to know that somebody in that nuthouse understands!

Hopefully actual pictures soon.

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Posted in Crochet, Life