Grannies away!

Far away from me, lol.

I love granny squares, but I inevitably get tired of them before I’ve finished what I’m doing. This is why when I opened the mystery tote labeled “yarn”, I found two half-finished granny square projects waiting for me. One is about ten years old and well-mangled by my impatience. I’ll never (ha!) start anything like that again! Planned for 315 squares, most of which would be 4 rounds in 4 colors…I don’t know what I was thinking. I must have been feeling patient that winter. I got bored and started joining and improvising, and the thing looks a mess in its current form. I’ll wait until next winter to rescue it. It still makes my head hurt, and it’s been years since I worked on it.

The other thing was a bright, beautiful rainbow square assortment, already partially prejoined. After staring at it for a few minutes, I realized that the addition of 12 squares and a border and I’d have a lovely blanket for laying the new baby down to play on. So I finished it this last week, and it turned out every bit as gorgeous as I thought it would. So pretty, in fact, that I’m tempted to make another…

It really *is* an addiction.

Pictures will be forthcoming once I get the camera downloaded, but for reference, the header pic is exactly the blanket I’m talking about, unfinished.

Rippling along…

Ever since I first stumbled across The No-End-In-Sight-Ripple-Along I’ve been wanting to play with ripple pattern. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’ve never made a ripple; I think maybe childhood trauma is to blame. ROFL! Looking back, I don’t think I knew a single family growing up who didn’t have at least one hideous ripple in their collection.

Of course, since then I’ve learned to embrace the ugly, and ripples have come a long way from the pointy gold and brown nightmares of my childhood. The ones I’ve been seeing lately are unspeakably gorgeous. Look!

Anyway, with the weather turning warm I haven’t wanted to start another afghan, so I’ve been trying to work out a ripple in thread. Thread is another on the long list of things I used-to-didn’t-like that I’ve come around to loving lately. Being stubborn, I can’t just find a pattern and run with it. No.

I’ve got to grok the ripple.

Which means not only pouring over pattern after pattern, but studying the ripple tutorial at Crochet Cabana and making an awful little little stack of stunted, twisted bits of thread. It’s worth it, of course, when you reach the point where what you’re doing is intuitive, rather than a study in carefully following directions. (Which is not to say, at all, that there’s anything wrong with that. I prefer it sometimes myself. But sometimes? I don’t. I adore the feeling of sitting down with hook and yarn and just making something happen.)

I think I need to work this out in yarn first. It refuses to look quite right, and I’m either doing something wrong, which will be easier to see in yarn rather than thread, or I’m failing to respect some property of the thread that’s making it behave just a little badly.

We’ll see.

If I ever get going on an actual project, I might just have to join that ripple-along, too.

I knew I was bad off…

But not quite this bad off.

I mean, you know you’re in trouble when your main complaint about summer weather showing up a tad earlier than expected is that it means you can’t squeeze another baby afghan in before it’s too hot to have that much work in your lap, right? 🙂