I need to have my head examined.

I frogged the sock.

To tell you the truth, it sort of happened by accident. I'd made a couple of mistakes on the foot, and I was warned I'd be able to feel them when I wore the sock, and I had one on each side so I couldn't just make the side with the mistake the top, so I started frogging, and then I was so close to the toe that I said screw it, I'll start fresh.

I'm now trying yet again. I just finished the toe and started working in the round (joy!). I think I've made fewer mistakes this time around, but I know they're still there. But I'm pretty determined that I need to finish this sock come hell or high water. Otherwise I'll never learn anything about knitting a sock start to finish.

At this point, my only hope is that the sock is wearable.

In other news, I like knitting with double points (bamboo, baby!), but I don't like dealing with the three double points I'm not knitting with. I guess I'll get used to it. It'll build character.

can't sleep, sock will eat me

Now that I'm about three inches into the sock, I'm starting to feel like I know what I'm doing. Which means I'm starting to see the mistakes I've made. And the insane stubborn perfectionist voice in my head wants to ditch it and start over and do it better this time. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, right?

The sensible voice in my head says this is a ridiculous idea, because even if I do the toe right this time I'm bound to screw up on the heel. Because it'll be the first heel I've ever made. Just like this is the first toe I ever made.

Natalia said I should just keep going and I "can always make this first sock into a foul-mouthed sock puppet." I like this idea.

Stupid cast-ons

The good news is I'm making my progress on my first sock.

The bad news is everything else.

Eve valiantly endeavored to teach me Judy's Magic Cast-On today. Multiple times. I could just not get the hang of it. Maybe it's because I was working on dpns rather than circulars, but first I couldn't get the loops to interlock, and then once I finally managed that, I couldn't manage to knit between the two -- it was too tight. I think the most I got was six stitches before the whole thing fell apart.

After watching me rip, curse, and try again for about an hour and a half, Eve pronounced me "stubborn as a mule." I told her that was one of the nicest compliments I'd gotten in quite a while.

The provisional cast-on as directed in Knitty's Toe-Up Sock Formula drove me crazy (me not liking a crochet cast-on? There is clearly a disturbance in the Force) so I was really hoping the Magic Cast-On would do the trick. Curses, foiled again.

So the upshot of all this is I've decided wrap-and-turn toes aren't so bad after all. I'll have to post a picture of my first one so you can see what happens when you forget to slip a stitch on the second half of the toe. I might have frogged it and tried again if I weren't already so sick of frogging, but since this is my first sock and I know it's going to have mistakes no matter what, I decided to suck it up. Lizardsmells tells me that's easy enough to fix. (Oh, there is good news! I got to hang out with Lizardsmells which definitely makes me cooler than you are. Envy me!)

Oh, and in other bad news, the tip of one of my #1 dpns has been chewed on. *looks meaningfully at No No Bad Kitty*

Why did I think this was a good idea?

I've been absent lately owing to my inexplicable desire to knit some socks.

First of all, sock yarn is crack. I think the fascination with socks on my part is mostly so I can justify buying lots of pretty sock yarn in outrageous colorways. Who was it that pointed out that you can get away with color combinations in socks that would blind you in a sweater? I'm going to have to go on another yarn diet. Sadly I'll probably be sick of all these pretty colors by the time they're all made into socks, but, well, whatcha gonna do? At least with socks you only have to buy one skein to finish a project, even if it is a $20 skein. Three pairs of socks are still cheaper than a sweater and will probably provide hours more entertainment. And being entertained means I'm not running to the LYS. I hope.

I picked Knitty's Universal Toe-Up Sock Formula as my first sock pattern -- straightforward enough, custom fit, seemed like a good introduction. Well, it is a good introduction to sock knitting -- the frogging, swearing, and wondering how the hell these stitches are ever going to resemble a foot parts of sock knitting. I've lost count of how many times I've ripped out this thing and started over.

I had probably the most issues with knitting the double-wrapped stitches, but Eve and this utterly adorable little book called Knitspeak helped. I think I know what I'm doing now -- well, at least I thought I did, until a few minutes ago, but I'm tired and I'm hoping it'll look better in the morning. I sure hope so. This thing is finally resembling a toe and if I have to frog it I think I'll cry.

I still have to walk before I can run and why is knitting so complicated?

Biting off more than I can chew is nothing new to me. O RLY? I can hear StringTheory2.0 rolling her eyes from over here. So it was only a matter of time till it happened with knitting. The basic stitches are starting to feel natural, so I'm naturally starting to think about what I can make with them. I can now hear StringTheory2.0 beating her head against the wall.

The really funny thing is, ST2 and I were just having a conversation with a third party the other day about how people want to learn to knit and crochet so they can make pretty things and then a lot of them aren't willing to learn the basic steps first. I believe at the time I reassured ST2 that if the urge got to be too strong, I could just go crochet a finished object. See me sticking to that right now?

So I've been doing a little scouting on Ravelry tonight looking for the perfect first knit pattern. And the more of these patterns I try to read, the more befuddled I am. Use a what kind of cast-on? What's wrong with the cast-on I already know? You mean I have to learn another one? I'm starting to remember why it took so long for me to give knitting a chance. I better go crochet a bunch of stuff before my head explodes.

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.

Waving the white flag

I have spent far too much of the past week involved in various knit vs. crochet arguments on Ravelry, ranging from... ridiculous to more ridiculous, but it's okay. I've worked through it now, and I can even show you how.

The Five Stages of Grief Over the Relative Unpopularity of Crochet

Stage 1 -- Denial. "There must be other crocheters out there... somebody said somewhere that there are three times as many crocheters as knitters. I don't know who said it, but I've heard it everywhere so it must be true!"

Stage 2 -- Anger. "What is wrong with all these knitters? Why don't they like crochet? Why do some of them make fun of crochet? What's wrong with them? Is the Mad Crocheter going to have to choke a bitch?!"

Stage 3 -- Bargaining. "I can show people! I can get knitters to love crochet too! I can crochet really cool things and learn to design and then they'll all see that crochet is cool too!"

Stage 4 -- Depression. "This sucks. I'm going to quit Ravelry. And hide under a rock. A really big rock. No wait, screw that. I'll just hide under my yarn. It's softer."

Stage 5 -- Acceptance. "Ah well... now I have more time to crochet!"

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?

Not according to plan

I was dead beat when I got home tonight and just wanted some really easy crochet to work on. Somehow I ended up with the Looks Knit Great Fit socks. In retrospect, I don't think "really easy crochet" and "socks" belong in the same sentence.

Originally I was worried the socks were going to come out too small; now it seems like the left one (the only one that's gotten past the cuff) is probably going to be too big. And I should have learned more about the anatomy of socks before getting started. I'm not sure where the heel flap is supposed to end. Does it go to the bottom of the heel and then stop? What if I don't have the right number of rows yet? Normally I'd probably set about experimenting and making it up at this point, but it's been a long week and I'm tired. And I don't think I have any mindless crochet projects currently going, aside from a baby blanket that I'm just not in the mood for.

I'm wondering if I should just frog the whole thing and start over. I think making that decision tonight would qualify as rash, though. I guess I'll just go back to screwing around on Ravelry. Carpenoctem invited me to co-moderate the lazy, stupid, and godless group (intentionally lowercase because we're too lazy to capitalize), founded to mess with those who declare anyone who occasionally enjoys a good swear as "lazy, stupid, and godless." It's off to a smashing start!

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.

Two skeins long and bulletproof

First of all, before I start telling you about this other project, you all, but especially the sock yarn addicts, need to run out and get some Crystal Palace Panda Silk. It's the bomb. Light and soft and fabulous colors. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way...

I mentioned the Crochet Chocolate Top from Moda Dea that I've been working on. Not bad, huh? The picture quality isn't the greatest, but you get the idea. Unfortunately, this photo doesn't really show the things about the pattern I really like. The main stitch is a single crochet/double crochet combination that I initially thought was a misprint, but it's really attractive and makes a pretty solid fabric. I'm making it in Blue Sky Alpacas Dyed Cotton, which is wonderful to work with. So fluffy.

Unfortunately, I fear the yarn is unwittingly contributing to a common crochet complaint: The fabric is pretty stiff. Or as some knitters would say, bulletproof. The yarn is worsted, just as the pattern calls for, but I think the incredible loft (which I love, don't get me wrong) of the Blue Sky makes it thicker than the Moda Dea yarn the pattern was designed for.

However, so far I'm still liking this enough that I'm sticking with it. I've decided if the thickness makes it too heavy for the warmer months, I'll just make the sleeves longer and make it a winter sweater. I'm not sure what I'll think of the sleeve construction, which appears to be drop, but I'll work with it. I definitely like the pattern enough to take the yarn companies' free patterns a little more seriously. I know many will look down their noses at that, but with the shortage of high-end crochet patterns, we have to get creative.

One more thing about the Blue Sky: I'd love to crochet a bathrobe out of it. It would probably be prohibitively expensive and not the most sensible use for such wonderful yarn, but it sure would be fun!

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.)

Ribbon Yarn: The Revenge

Apparently ribbon yarn can read. And it knows every bad thing I said about it the other night, and it is out to get me.

Crocheting with the ribbon yarn gets much easier as you get used to it, and though I'd previously wondered if the Yarn Cocktail ladies were actual crocheters, I was actually amazed to see the huge circle transform into a little ruffled one that I was quite taken with. It was kinda like magic.

Now imagine my horror as the little circle kept decreasing... and decreasing... and decreasing...


See that cute little ruffle? See that look on my face? That's because it's way too tight.

I have some ideas on how I might be able to make this work, but unfortunately they're going to involve frogging and I doubt the ribbon yarn's going to like that. Also, they're probably going to involve messing with the pattern, which has the potential to be disastrous. I had a bad feeling about crocheting a hat from the bottom up in the first place.

I have gotten some helpful suggestions for alternate uses:

• garter
• sleeve trim
• Renaissance faire garb

At this point I just want to make something else that is no challenge at all. Maybe I'll work on the baby blanket that's just rows and rows of hdc. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Ribbon yarn and other crochet hazards

This week at the Crochet Liberation Front forum, someone was asking for suggestions on patterns to crochet with ribbon yarn. I've been planning on making the Bay Blue Hat from The Crocheter's Guide to Yarn Cocktails for a while and in fact had bought the Berroco Zen yarn for it just recently, so I decided to bump it up in the queue and report back to the CLF.

Somewhere along the way when I seriously got into crochet and started shopping at yarn stores instead of Michaels, someone must have told me that ribbon yarn was not good for crochet. I say "must" because I don't specifically remember someone saying it, but for quite a while I've had a sense that crocheting with ribbon yarn is something to be avoided at all costs. But the Bay Blue Hat was cute, and only required two hanks. And now I had incentive. So today, I accidentally fed the yarn to a pug, shrieked, retrieved the yarn, and then got started.

Initial impressions of crocheting with ribbon yarn:

• The ribbon yarn is going to twist. I can't imagine a way around it. So I figure either you can put on your thinking cap and waste a lot of valuable crochet yarn, or get used to it.
• The twistiness makes counting your stitches hard, so if you lose count on the base chain, you're screwed.
  
• Foundation chains are even more unpleasant and time-consuming with ribbon yarn. I spent a lot of time wondering if I was even stitching in the right place.
  
• This may just be particular to Berroco Zen, but... here, have a look at the structure:

See how the yarn is constructed, with three threads running lengthwise and all those little ones running between those threads? Yeah. Holy snagging on my crochet hook, Batman. I'm starting to understand why we leave this stuff to the knitters.

All that said, crocheting with the ribbon yarn did get easier as I got used to it, and, perhaps more importantly, as I got past the foundation chain and had distinct stitches to stitch into. Despite an initial suspicion that the ladies behind Yarn Cocktails were just knitters out to get our money, I'm liking how the hat's starting to look. That said: I would not recommend ribbon yarn for process crocheters. If you like the look of the finished object, it may be worth the frustration, but if you mainly crochet for the sensual pleasure of yarn running through your fingers (does that sound dirty? It's not supposed to), I doubt that ribbon yarn has got what you need.

Actual pictures forthcoming at some point. (I've recently learned that half the people who "read" this blog don't actually read, just look at the pictures, so I'm trying to react accordingly. Don't say I never gave you anything.)

The last word on Lidsville

I just saw a young woman at my workplace wearing a very cute newsboy cap -- the same style of cap as Lidsville. I studied her cap as I walked by, and that's when it hit me.

Was the "inner band" actually supposed to go on the bottom rather than the inside? That probably would have helped with fit and making the cap "longer" like my dad wanted.

Then again, I found a comment on Ravelry from the designer saying no, the inner band was supposed to go on the inside. But I still don't understand the brim construction.

Maybe I'll figure it all out once I make a Lidsville for myself... but with so many new projects on my plate, I think it'll be a while before I'll come back to one I've already done.

It is kind of hilarious that I'm sitting here still obsessing over this hat weeks after it's been finished and gifted, though. Clearly I need more new projects to take my mind off this.

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.

Lidsville, Completed.

I finally have a picture of Lidsville, so I might as well explain the last few snags in its making.

I arrived at my ancestral home to discover that in my hurry, I had left the plastic canvas brim behind. Swearing ensued. My mother helped me improvise with a piece of cardboard. Then came yet more problems with figuring out exactly where I was supposed to sew stuff together. I asked my mom for advice; she said she had no clue. (It seems for a lot of us stitchery skipped a generation, huh?) I finally got the hat slapped together about two minutes before giving it to my father. He put it on... and immediately wanted me to make the back longer.

He may be getting a Chia Pet next year.

I added a few rows to the back and some decreases to make the hat tighter. Then, in what I would call a true stroke of irony, I found plastic canvas in my late grandmother's stash and had to figure out how to swap out the cardboard for it. Finally I handed it to my father, who put it on and said "that's good." I replied "it better be. I'm out of yarn."

I would say I'm... content with the final product, and might even try making myself one someday. However, I had an issue with the pattern, and based on the comments I've seen on Ravelry and some of the Google search strings this blog has gotten, I suspect some of you had the same problem: The crochet instructions are just fine, but there is very little direction on how to do the sewing. I'm a crocheter, not a seamstress, and I didn't really know what to do with directions like "sew the brim to the hat." Where, exactly? I realize that I sound like a dolt, but, well, when it comes to sewing I am a dolt.

I'm not saying this is a bad pattern, because I don't think it is. I think it's a good pattern. But with clearer sewing instructions, it could have been a great pattern.

As promised, the incoherent (though sober) update.

Have reached the point where hat construction no longer makes sense (and neither does using pronouns). Have nagging fear hat may be too small. Cannot figure out how top of hat is supposed to go on. Too sleepy to care. Will try again in the morning. Praying cat does not eat hat in the meantime.