Too much to do

I should be asleep. Instead I'm torn between practicing my knit stitch and making an amigurumi for tomorrow and writing a long comment on Ravelry that actually has nothing to do with yarn.

The wonderful thing about learning to knit is now there is a whole new world of patterns opening up to me. The bad thing is... there's a whole new world of patterns and I want to make all of them and my Ravelry queue was already so out of control even before I started looking at the knit patterns that this is not looking good for me actually finishing anything anytime this year.

I've been dutifully practicing the knit stitch this weekend -- for one thing, StringTheory2.0 won't teach me the purl stitch until I get the knit stitch down cold, and for another, I'm just kinda amazed by the whole process. I could barely do this or even figure out how it worked on Tuesday, and I'm still not sure how it works, but I'm doing it, pretty comfortably even, though the sharp points are hurting my fingertips. I wonder if it would be overreacting to get some thimbles. Also, my right arm is sore, probably from the way I'm holding the needle. I hope that goes away soon.

Even though I'm still irritated over the whole Son of Stitch 'n Bitch debacle (notice I don't even bother explaining it anymore, because I've griped about it so much that I figure anyone who's talked to me in the past three months has heard about it), and even though I don't think the definition of "edgy" is "put skulls on it", I picked up a copy of the original Stitch 'n Bitch today. What can I say, when it comes to beginning explanations and diagrams, Deb Stoller's the best in the business. That I know of. Feel free to disprove me by sending me other books. :P

In other news, my cousin's picking up crochet again after a long break and just posted her first project to Ravelry -- a super-cute grocery bag. So awesome!

A curious compulsion of mine

I was just longingly making goo-goo eyes at the Amazon Top 100 crochet bestsellers (something I do at least three times a week) and once again found myself lusting after all the stitch guides.

Secretly I am convinced that each new stitch guide I see contains special, super-secret stitches that cannot be found anywhere else and will revolutionize my crochet once I find them. The fact that I haven't really found any of these new special stitches in any of the last five stitch guides I've bought does not dissuade me. It just makes it statistically more likely that they'll be in the next stitch guide I buy, right? And so the cycle continues.

And I don't even really want to buy all these stitch guides! I'd rather save my book money for books with actual patterns to make cute clothes and adorable little amigurumi! Probably the only two of my stitch guides I use on a regular basis are The Crochet Stitch Bible and Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet. And yet I keep looking at every new stitch guide I see and half the time I order them anyway.

I think the saddest part of all this might be that I've even read the part of Crocheting in Plain English where Maggie Righetti explains how she fell prey to thinking a stitch guide would solve all her problems and then when she got it it was all just variations on filet crochet and I still fall for it.

Stitch-Stirrers: Crochet Resources

From this week's prompt at Stitch-Stirrers:

If someone new to crochet who had never really picked up a hook or someone who wanted to advance their skills were to ask you for some good materials for learning, what’s the best resource(s) you've found on the subject of crochet, on-line or otherwise that you would suggest?

I kinda hate to give such a cliche answer, especially with the whole Son of Stitch 'n Bitch debacle still fresh in my mind, but I really have to give it to The Happy Hooker: Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet by Deb Stoller. The how-to-crochet instructions and illustrations are simply the best I've seen anywhere, and I had been looking for instructions I could grasp for years. Maybe it's the bright colors, or maybe Stoller's just speaking my language. Concepts that I just couldn't make sense of when they were accompanied by grainy pictures in my grandmother's tattered crochet booklets suddenly made sense. The book also provides fun patterns that were good choices for my first garments (though check the errata).

As for other resources I'd recommend as absolutely essential (at least for myself), I have trouble resisting any stitch guide, but my favorite is The Crochet Stitch Bible by Betty Barnden. And I know I say it all the time, but for stitchers, Ravelry is the best thing since... ummm. Maybe ever. It's that good.

Can you resist the fig-leaf bikini?

I may live to regret this, but tonight I think I'm going to break one of the cardinal rules of yarn blogging and say something negative. Please hold your rotten tomatoes till the end, folks. I promise you'll get a chance to throw them all.

In a discussion at the Crochet Liberation Front board at Ravelry, ProperTrappings (who for some reason does not have a blog I can link to, boo) asked if anyone else was familiar with this book:


So far, I'm the only person to admit to seeing Hookorama, and, as I explained to ProperTrappings, "and to be totally honest, I’ve since cited it as one of the reasons knitters think crochet is crap."

Hookorama is filled with bright, cartoony patterns for things I can't figure out a single use for. The thing everyone, myself included, brings up first is the Garden of Eden section with the fig-leaf bikinis. It's not that I'm opposed to crocheted bikinis (though you'd have to be daft to go in the water in one) or even fig-leaf bikinis, necessarily -- I imagine there are designers out there who could make them look beautiful. But unfortunately Hookorama's version looks more something the goofy middle-school kids playing with construction paper came up with. (I can't find a picture online, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it. Or not.) And then there's a lot of cartoony fake fruit... I cannot recall a single pattern I felt would be useful enough to make. ProperTrappings rightfully points out that it's probably aimed at the teen market and anything that gets people interested in crochet is good, but to me, I can't help it, it looks like a crochet joke book.

But why does that bother you, Mad Crocheter? Don't you have a sense of humor? You really are mad, aren't you?

Well, to answer those questions:

1). It bothers me because for some reason, Hookorama is one of the few crochet books I've seen in multiple LYS (local yarn stores, Mom, just in case you're reading). Yet I can't find a copy of Everyday Crochet -- a book hailed for its creative yet wearable garments -- in any of them. Maybe Hookorama looks like a cute, fun, colorful book, and I'm sure lots of people have picked it up. But I'm equally sure most of those people put it back down -- only two Ravelry users have done projects from the book, and one was a contributor to the book and the other one frogged the project . And I'm also sure quite a few of those people were knitters who, as they put it down, made disparaging remarks about the fig-leaf bikini, followed by "but what can you expect from crochet?" I understand that there's not as much of a market for crochet as knitting right now, and therefore I don't badger my LYS owners to stock more crochet books, knowing I'm just one person and I barely know any fellow locals who crochet. But when that precious crochet shelf space goes to a kitsch collection, how will anyone ever know there's more to crochet than that? My Google research suggested the book was originally published in 1980 -- if true, that's a long time ago. There's been a lot of innovation since then, in both knitting and crochet. Why can't we have new stuff instead of kitschy reprints? Is the market really that bad?

2). I do have a sense of humor, and sometimes it even intersects crochet. But amigurumi takes care of my humorous crochet needs just fine, thanks. With style and creativity in spades. The Japanese are currently reinventing crochet, but I'll save that for another time.

3). Not mad so much as frustrated. The cycle as I imagine it: LYS owner doesn't know much about crochet. LYS owner stocks book because it looks bright and colorful and will look nice on the shelf next to SnB: The Happy Hooker. Crocheter picks up book. Unless crocheter has a fig-leaf fetish, crocheter puts book down, figuring LYS has nothing for crocheters. Knitter picks up book. Knitter puts book down, figuring crochet is just as tacky as they've been told. Book doesn't sell. LYS owner figures no one wants crochet, and doesn't stock more crochet books.

And now, because even though I broke a cardinal rule of yarn blogging and am now a jerk, I don't want to be a super-duper jerk (by yarners' standards; I think those are stricter than most bloggers' standards): If you are one of the writers or designers of this book, please understand: I don't want you to starve, I don't hate your work, I know there's a place for it. I just wish there were a place for the new things too.