Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Stirrin' some stitches

Over at the Crochet Liberation Front (don't all my posts start that way?), Tracie of Shade Tree Crochet talked me into joining Stitch Stirrers. I'd heard mentions of Stitch Stirrers but wasn't sure what it was; Tracie describes it as "a blog of prompts and other fun stuff for crocheters." I joined up last week, and today was rewarded with Mission 2008, which is for everyone to crochet a really nice afghan of our own design by December and then share or submit the pattern.

Pretty awesome idea, huh?

It's a good thing I have almost a year, though. Because I have no freakin' clue what to do.

The last afghan I did (aside from some baby blankets, which I'm not going to count because they were just rows and rows of hdc) was back in September. I was on a deadline for it (it was a retirement gift), and I blame the deadline for the fact that by the end, I was about to puke every time I looked at it. Which is too bad, because there's a neat story behind how that one came about: My grandmother had passed away last April, and since I'm the only other crocheter in the family, I inherited all her crochet things. (Her stash was actually very small, as was my other grandmother's too, but that's for another time.) One of those things was a booklet from Wal-Mart with instructions for a sampler afghan. At first I didn't think I'd have a use for it since I wasn't really interested in the sampler, but then I got to looking at the stitch patterns for the different blocks and realized I could repurpose those for other stuff. One, the Snapdragon Stitch, became that afghan.

But that wasn't designing -- it was using someone else's stitch pattern back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. It seems like by now all the basic stitch patterns must have been invented (though they probably haven't; crocheters are endlessly inventive). Maybe I should try something with color -- I've done next to no colorwork. Oooooh, this means I'll get to get some more yarn, right?

For now I'll just keep this mystery afghan in the back of my mind. I'm sure something will hit me eventually. And if not, well, I've still got Granny's booklet.

3 comments:

Diane said...

Do you think you'll get one done by December? Can't wait to see it!

Yarn or Death said...

We'll see, Diane. It seems like I should be able to, but I am nothing if not easily distractable.

Tracie said...

YAY...I'm glad you decided to join us at Stitch-Stirrers. I'm hoping to come up with some fun things this year. I figured having a year long mission would be fun, especially since creating an afghan isn't an easy task. I'm looking forward to seeing yours...as well as getting my own done.