On second thought

After taking a while to cool down from the disappointment of how the wristwarmer turned out, I got it out again and tried it on. It's not great (or even good, in my opinion), but it's not bad for a first try. I'll try to get some pictures of it up this week.

It's a relief to realize that even though it's not the perfect image I had in my head, it's still something I can be proud of. I'd never made a wristwarmer before, and I wasn't working from a pattern. And the next one will be that much better for what I've learned.

In fact, I probably wouldn't be bummed at all if it weren't for the fact that now my beautiful Road to China is all fuzzy...

One down and... how many to go?

This evening I finally made myself sit down and finish the first part of the Mad Husband's now-belated Valentines gift -- the first of a pair of wristwarmers/fingerless gloves. He seems pleased enough with the first one, but I'm not. I know you have to sit down and make things in the first place before you can make them better, but I'm greedy. I want to hit the ball out of the park on the first pitch.

(The Mad Husband is confused. "Weren't you making it up as you went along?" Well, yes, but that doesn't mean I'm happy with it.)

The really special thing about these gloves is the yarn -- it's Road to China by the Fibre Company. Well, I really should have contained myself and practiced these in crap yarn first, because now the lovely lovely yarn has fuzzed. And the more it fuzzed, the less willing I was to frog and try again, because I didn't want to mess up the beautiful yarn any more. This is a problem. It's no good to have beautiful yarn if you're too scared to use it. I'm so bummed. Also, the thumbhole is too big and looks unwieldy. I might have enough Road to China left to make an all-new pair once I get my pattern figured out, but I'm not sure.

I made pattern notes, so I guess now it's time to get out some crap yarn and fool with it until I feel like it's refined enough for another try with the Road to China. I might also look at some other wristwarmer patterns to see how various designers handle the thumbhole. I thought about it earlier but really felt it would be cheating. I still kinda feel that way but now that I've tried it myself, I want to learn about better ways of handling it.

I may have to walk before I can run, but I don't have to be happy about it.

T-minus 45 minutes and I think I give up.

The current challenge over at Stitch Stirrers is "Crochet Your Valentine." When I read it, I thought "what a great idea!" I'd had a project in mind for the Mad Husband for some time and figured it would make the perfect Valentine's Day present.

I just frogged the whole thing.

I'm not sure what keeps going wrong with this one, though I'm starting to suspect it's the short deadline. First I forgot to take it to knit night, then I kept missing up my stitch count, then I found out I don't know nearly as much about crocheted cables as I thought I did, plus the yarn is fuzzy so fibers started sticking together, and I think that's the part that made me decide to let 'er rip and come back to it later with fresh eyes because honestly, that yarn is too nice (and too expensive) to screw around with.

It's times like this when I really wish I knew more local crocheters that I could turn to and ask what I'm doing wrong. My knitting friends and I can coo over each other's projects and discuss yarn and snark on bad patterns and all that, but while they can turn to each other for stitch advice, I'm on my own. While in some ways I think it's been good for me to have to figure things out myself, I can't help but think I could really use some help right now. I visited a really awesome crochet meetup recently so I think that will change soon, but it's not much help tonight.

If I can get this concept out of my head and onto my hook, I think it'll be my best piece of crochet so far. The problem is getting it out, but I guess there's only one way to learn that. In the meantime, I've still got a Valentine to take care of. I wonder where I can get a copy of Ocean's Thirteen at this hour?

Grrrrr. Arrrgh.

So I put the finishing touches on the thing I was going to offer up as my part of the Bloggy Giveaways Winter Carnival, only to discover mere moments later that I was too late, as spammers had forced an early end to signups. It was like a metaphor for my current issues with crochet. And by "current," I mean "last night." It seemed like a really big deal at the time.

I was winding some Alchemy Bamboo in hopes that I could get started on the project I wanted to submit to the first Crochet Liberation Front pattern collection -- a lacy nightie. I'd had it in mind ever since I first saw the yarn in another Ravelrer's destash list. It was going to be so pretty.

But in the process of winding, the yarn got tangled, and one of the Mad Cats (the younger one; we'll call her No No Bad Kitty, as she probably thinks that is her name) started trying to eat said yarn, and then I realized what should have been a short project had taken two hours, and then I realized that I had no clue how I was going to make this beautiful nightie in the first place, let alone adjust the pattern for different sizes and whatnot. And then I thought about the discussion I'd seen online yesterday savaging a new designer's pattern (and I have no problems whatsoever with this, for reasons I'll describe in another entry), and I thought about how I really didn't want to put bad stuff out there and cause people to think I didn't care about doing it right. It was all enough to make me think I should give up on designing.

And then the Mad Husband got home and I told him all of this (well, most of this summarized in the interests of not putting him to sleep), and he said, "Your problem is you want instant gratification."

StringTheory2.0 not only agrees with the Mad Husband, she's kinda astonished that I, the instant gratification junkie, ever got into fiber arts in the first place.

It does give some perspective on why I'm so bad about buying yarn, though.

So, after talking to our Fearless Leader, I feel better about revising my goals for this go-round from a lacy nightie to something simpler. You've gotta walk before you can run and all that. Man, I wish I could think of a way to end posts that doesn't involve invoking a cliche.

I'm the Goldilocks of yarn.

I'm hoping to put my first pattern out in the world this week, via Ravelry and this blog. Well, at least I was. After tonight's stitching, I may have to revise that estimate.

The pattern is for a men's scarf, subtle, with clean lines. It's just seemed to me that there are very few scarf patterns designed specifically for men, and most of the crochet patterns for scarves are so frilly and/or lacy you wouldn't think of a man wearing them. (Of course, if the gents want to, more power to 'em. I support everyone's right to wear outrageous crochet, as long as they respect my right to go to What Not to Crochet and snicker. Come on. You know you've all done it at least once.)

I originally started this scarf in Louisa Harding Kimono Angora, but gave up on that yarn pretty quickly once I realized the fuzzy texture of the angora was going to obscure the subtle design I was trying to incorporate. Then I tried Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK from my stash and got a bit further in before deciding the alpaca was too drapey and the design was unlikely to show up. Then I was thinking merino, something with good stitch definition. So I went to the Needle Nook (I needed more Panda Silk anyway) and asked for recommendations on a nice smooth yarn, not too much drape, and good stitch definition, and the one Arlene recommended that I liked best was Wool Bam Boo.

I really, really like working with the Wool Bam Boo, don't get me wrong. (Hey, between the Wool Bam Boo and the Panda Silk, I think I'm having a wild fling with bamboo. Man, I hope alpaca doesn't find out.) But now I'm thinking there's yet another factor I forgot to consider: yarn weight. As much as I believe in DK-weight for the average crochet project, this one might benefit from worsted-weight or even bigger. So now I have to come up with a worsted or bigger yarn, smooth, not too much drape, and good stitch definition. And then I have to buy it. And then I have to keep the Mad Husband from becoming the Really Mad Husband once he realizes how many different types of yarn I've bought for this one project. And in the meantime, what do I do with the Wool Bam Boo? Do I continue on or frog it? Finish it and stick it up on Etsy just to see what happens? Dude. The smallest part of energy I've expended on this one is the actual designing of the pattern. The devil's in the details.

Crochet malaise

I haven't picked up my hook since the Bay Blue Hat went to hell. I'm not sure what's going on, but I do have a few theories:

• I'm so annoyed with the Bay Blue that I'm not in the mood to try and fix it right now.
• I have some really nice yarn that I'm dying to work with, but after the Bay Blue mishap, I'm scared I'll mess it up.
• I could do a dry run of the projects intended for the nice yarn with crap yarn, but right now I don't want to work with crap yarn. Not even for kitty beds.
• I have some ideas for my own designs, but I'm so out of sorts I'm pretty sure I'd screw them up if I started them now.

...Oh well. Only way out is through, right? The only thing to do is pick up the hook and get to work. After all, I've got basketball to watch tonight and for me, basketball and crochet go together like white beans and sandwich bread. (Which is to say, for everyone else not so much.)

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.

Is this one of those learning experiences?

So over my holiday break I sat down with a design in mind -- not just some random design, but a very special design, one that I had sketched out in my Very Special Crochet Notebook (bought at a stationery shop in Japantown, San Francisco -- I'm telling you, this paper is buttery) and all but finished in my head. It was beautiful, it was functional, it was brilliant. Now all I had to do was crochet it.

Not so fast, Mad Crocheter!

Oh... crap. What the hell was Snidely Whiplash doing here? I did my best to ignore him and soldiered on.

Before I get any further in this sad tale, let me tell you about the yarn I had selected for this project. Better yet, my yarn, let me show you it. (So I think I'm a lolcat. So sue me.) It's Kaalund Enchante from the good folks at Knitch, lace-weight Australian silk, colorway Pawpaw (so I like pink, so sue me. Again. It's not like I have any money, I spent it all on yarn).

From the moment I brought this beauty home from the store, I knew what I wanted to do with it: lace fingerless gloves. They would be delicate and luxurious and so, so beautiful.

And this is where it gets really embarrassing.

See, at this point I had already received my copy of Camanomade's Secrets of Yarn Project Guide. And there it was in black and white. Silk. Stretch Memory: None. But I was so determined that I knew I could work with it. So I picked up my (tiny, tiny) hook and got started.

And then after a while it dawned on me that not only was this not working, it hadn't even put forth the effort to call in sick. The total lack of stretch was not going to do anything for warming my arms. The yarn just kind of hung on my arm, looking like a stretched-out-of-shape friendship bracelet. That beautiful vision in my head? It dissolved in a ring of loopy triple crochet.

And now I'm actually feeling kind of upbeat about it.

I figure massive miscalculations like this one are part of the whole process of learning to design. Didn't Anne of Green Gables say something about making mistakes was okay, because then she didn't make the same ones again? You always learn more from your failures than your successes (and when I say "you", I mean "me"). I learned some information that I'm in the process of repurposing. And I think I've still got enough silk left for a pretty little scarf. (Actually, I don't really wear scarves, not as a fashion accessory, but I think I'd better start.)

Of course, none of this was a consolation at the time. This is one of the benefits of getting some perspective before blogging, unless of course you'd rather read an entire post of "#$@*&$ %@$#%& *#@^$*@!!"

New Yarn's Resolutions

The good hookers over at the Crochet Liberation Front have been discussing their New Year's resolutions in relation to crochet. Luckily, I've been thinking about mine for a while (as they are ever so much more interesting than the usual resolutions that I break by January 5 when I realize yet again that living on spinach makes me crazy. I mean crazier).

The Mad Crocheter's Crochet Resolutions for 2008:

• When purchasing yarn, there are certain questions I will ask myself, such as "what will I use this for?", "do I like the color?", "am I already making something like this?", "do I have room for this?", and most importantly, "can I afford it?" I will consider the answers to these questions before buying because the answers are all more important than "WOOOHOOOOO!!! This is ON SALE!!"
• When I am gifting someone with a piece of crochet, I will wait until I have actually finished said piece before telling them about it, lest I be greeted every time I see them with "where's my tarot bag, bitch?" (this resolution dedicated to Donna)
  
• I will continue to work on designing original crochet patterns and finding publication options for them, even if it's just posting them here.
• I will continue to do as many nifty things with crochet as possible, in interests of promoting the art and showing knitters that crochet doesn't have to suck.
• If I crochet a gift for someone, I will keep perspective and not hover over them going "so, do you like it? Say yes you love it or I'm never making you anything again."
• I will use up yarn in my stash, even if it is cheap acrylic crap I bought before I knew any better. After all, you can't make shelter cat beds out of cashmere. (Well, you could, but you would deserve a swift kick in the butt for it.)
• I will actually finish the projects I've been working on forever, if only to mark them finished on Ravelry.
  
• I will use Ravelry as the excellent organizational tool it is for matching up yarns and patterns so I won't have moments like the one tonight where I looked into a plastic bin full of yarn and said "I don't know what to crochet."
• I will felt something. On purpose.
• I will crochet some socks. Just to see what happens.
  
• I will do something cool with lace, even if it kills me.
• I will take pictures of my stash so I can stare at it lovingly when I'm bored instead of meandering onto yarn sites where I will tempt myself into breaking other resolutions.
• I will do whatever my overlords at the Crochet Liberation Front tell me to do.
  
• I will continue to seek out all the awesome there is to be found in crochet and share it here.
• I will remember that this is crochet, not life or death. I will be unafraid to try new things, because in the end, it's all just yarn. What's the worst that could happen?
  

Take back the lace!

For a while now I've had intentions of taking up crocheted lace in the new year. There are multiple reasons for this, the most obvious one being totally ripped off from the Yarn Harlot in At Knits End:

The frugal knitter will quickly develop a taste for fine wool on tiny needles. There are many, many yards in those wee balls, and it takes lots and lots of tiny stitches to make anything. One hundred grams of chunky wool lasts only a few hours, but 100 grams of fingering-weight wool takes a good long time to knit up.

She's a smart one, that Yarn Harlot, even if she does hate crochet. (Why, Stephanie? WHY?!)

So anyway, I've been telling myself for a while that since I go through yarn so fast, the way to slow my yarn expenditures while still getting lots of yummy, yummy yarn to play with is to take up lace crochet. I've seen all the beautiful lace-weight hand-painted skeins at Knitch. Sure, that Claudia Hand Painted Silk Lace is 42 bucks a skein, but you get 1100 yards!! That would keep me busy for, like, a whole week or two.

Also, I think crochet is particularly well-suited to lace -- of course it should be, crochet was originally invented as a cheap fast way to make lace. (And we are convinced that the words "fast" and "cheap" explain why the knitters make fun of us.) I've seen some beautiful knit lace in books, but most of the knit lace I've seen in person was more loopy than lacy. Of course, this may just have something to do with the fact that I don't know many people who knit or crochet lace much at all. StringTheory2 (whose blog you totally oughtta check out) got some really nice alpaca lace-weight, but then she stopped mid-project and went back to sweaters. I think she said the yarn tangled. Which is why my new year's resolution here kinda depends on getting a yarn swift and ball winder for Christmas, because no way can I wind that stuff myself without losing the few marbles I have left. But I'm digressing.

So someone at the Crochet Liberation Front board on Ravelry observed that there seemed to be hardly any crochet lace shawl patterns around. And I realized she was right. If I search the "lace" tag in the crochet patterns at Ravelry, I turn up very little, and what's there isn't necessarily "lace" in the traditional sense. I think what Doris Chan is doing with bulkier yarn in Amazing Crochet Lace is pretty cool, but it's not what I'm looking for (mainly because bulkier yarns with lower yardage would defeat the whole point of my yardage conservation).

I'm really surprised there's so little out there. I know a lot of Irish crochet patterns were never written down and were lost to time, but there's got to be more lace out there. Hey, stitch guides pretty much tell you how to make as much of a given stitch design as you want, so how much harder can coming up with the rest of the pattern be? Uh oh. These are the words that will have my knitting group laughing hysterically at me in six months when I lose it and start ripping out my hair and screaming profanities at my lace.

Seriously though, there's so much we crocheters can do here, and our technique is made for lace! Personally, those loopy knit shawls have me suspecting that crochet may be better than knitting for making lace (don't worry knitters, you still have it all over us when it comes to socks). I'm really excited to see what we at the CLF can come up with. Lace revival? Hey, why not?

The Sooper Secret Project -- revealed!

Presenting my first original design... The Jester Bag!

This is what I've been up to with my Mountain Colors Bearfoot and all my hinting. I've been wanting some sort of small bag to hold my yarn so I can crochet standing up and keep it safe while I'm crocheting in bars. I saw a Lantern Moon bag I liked at Knitch, but then I thought, wouldn't it be more rewarding to make my own? There are some design elements that still need refining, but I've been just dying to post it!

The bag got its name from the edging I was puzzling over... finally it came to me as I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling thinking "no more shells", use triangles like a jester's hat and attach beads to the end. (I thought about bells, but decided I didn't want people to always hear me coming.)

I attached this loop underneath the "petals" so I can clip the bag to a beltloop with a carabiner, but you could just as easily leave it off. I had originally intended a longer strap but decided I didn't want to distract from the design with a large shoulder strap sticking out.

So many thanks to all the friends who have given me feedback and encouragement on this one. I apologize for not shutting up about it all week.

I'm not a weaver... where the hell did this tangled web come from?

Last night while drifting off to sleep I thought up the perfect conclusion to the Sooper Secret Project, and luckily I still remembered it this morning. I checked with ST2, who is my go-to person when it comes to "be absolutely honest, does this look stupid?" and now that I've been reassured that it doesn't suck (I am such an approval whore, I need to kick that habit if I want to design) I'm trucking along on it. I should be finished sometime tonight... IF my yarn holds out.

Contrary to popular rumor, crochet doesn't actually use three times as much yarn as knitting; it uses a third more yarn. (Still, it does use more yarn. I have in the past tried to use this fact to convince myself I should be knitting instead, but then I looked at the prices of all those needles you knitters have to have, looked at my hooks, and kept crocheting.) Sock yarn seemed perfect for this project because it came in a nice fat skein, nearly 400 yards worth. Well... the closer you get to the end of the yarn, the faster it goes. Right now I'm doing my edging (probably in way too tight a gauge because I'm trying to stretch the yarn) while eyeballing the remaining yarn trying to figure out how much is left and mentally chewing on my fingernails. (If I did chew my fingernails, then I'd have yet another good reason to crochet: Keeps my fingernails out of the way. Hey, maybe someone should tell Lebron James to crochet on the bench instead of chewing his nails.)

To add insult to injury, somewhere along the way the remaining yarn got knotted. So I've spent an hour and a half of what should have been crochet time trying to untangle my yarn. Normally when stuff like this happens I try to untangle the knot for a minute or so, swear, get the scissors, cut out the knot and go merrily on my way. But I can't afford to waste an inch of yarn here, so instead I'm wrestling with this blasted knot. In fact, I'm doing it right now, in between sentences and while reading other people's blogs.

There is a way to fix this for certain. But it involves frogging, and I don't wanna frog!! And anyway, at this point I've already cut the yarn once for not-knot related reasons, so right now there's nothing to do but soldier on and hope for the best.

And if it doesn't work out, it's not the end of the world, right?

Right?

...Oh, who am I kidding. I WILL think it's the end of the world if it doesn't work out. Luckily, I am easily distracted, so someone can just wave a shiny skein in front of my face and I'll forget all about it.

In other news, I need to do something to liven up this blog. Right now it's all "Crocheted a hat and frogged it. Still not king."

The art of procrastination

I got some feedback from some uber-helpful friends on my Sooper Secret Project last night, and I feel pretty good about where it's going. And it's going there quickly, which is always good. I just did a little surfing to get ideas for edging, though I may need to wait till I'm a little fresher to start playing with those. I just know I don't want shells. I love shells, but I put them on everything, and I want to mix it up! Of course if I change my mind and use shells after all you are all encouraged to laugh at me.

Of course, all this enthusiasm for my new project means nothing is getting done on the Christmas crocheting for my family. Right now I'm telling myself that's fine, crochet is after all a quick art. Check back in a week to see if I'm still feeling so confident.

Baby steps

I'm still not ready to unveil what my new project is (though I'm toting it everywhere with me, so if you see me in person you'll hear more than you ever needed to about it), but I will say it's my first attempt at writing a pattern, and I'm learning a lot... mainly that writing patterns is hard. Everyone's got to start somewhere, right? I'm anxious to get my knitting group's opinion tonight.

Speaking of my knitting group, one of them made me all verklempt... see, knitters? Crochet can be your friend!