Time to Retire

The joy of crochet is its simplicity: there is only ever one stitch in work & just a few variations of the basic stitches to master, but the possibilities of using & combining those stitches together are endless.
― Erika Knight

Crochet is such a wonderful craft! There are so many facets & variations to explore with a hook & some yarn. The creative possibilities are endless
― Margaret Hubert

Women today want to find ways to relax, but have limited time, and crocheting can be a mental health vitamin that provides that feel good place.
― Alyson Bell

Crochet is not a hobby. It's a post-apocalyptic survival skill.
— Unknown

When the hubby and I signed up for Amazon Prime, I started working on an afghan because I thought I’d be spending more time in front of the TV and a crochet project that isn’t too complicated is a great craft for that.

I found an easy pattern – a ripple crochet using the granny stitch – then I found some yarn at Walmart. It was a nice variegated one, and I figured I could alternate it with stripes of matching solid colours. There were only three problems with my plan.

First, I liked the variegated so much that I decided to do the whole afghan in it. Second, I ran out of yarn when I was about twenty inches along, and Walmart didn’t have any more. And third, I wasn’t glued to the TV nearly as much as I thought I’d be.

*sigh*

I was able to get more yarn online, and though it didn’t match 100%, it was good enough for me. And it took a while, but I did, eventually, finish the afghan, which will forever be known as my Amazon afghan.

A few weeks after that, my mother-in-law’s birthday was coming up. She was in a nursing home and I thought she might like a nice blanket for her bed, so I decided to crochet her one using the same pattern as my Amazon afghan. I checked my stash, and found two packages of yarn – 10 balls of 50 ounces each – one in a cream colour, and one in peach. This will be forever known as the Peaches and Cream afghan.

I’m not sure what happened to that afghan. It was given to her and from what I understand she liked it, but I have no idea if she ever used it. She passed away last year and I’m pretty sure it didn’t come back from the nursing home. It’s not that I want it back, I have plenty of afghans of my own. So it’s fine if it got left behind for someone else to enjoy, it just would have been nice to know where it went.

When I was recovering from my cancer surgery a few years ago, one of the nicest gifts I received was an afghan my sister in New Brunswick sent me. This was during the pandemic, so I wasn’t allowed visitors, but I could wrap myself up in this afghan and feel the love.

So when a friend was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy, I decided to pay this random act of kindness forward and do an afghan for her. I picked colours I knew she’d like and away I went. It really made me feel good to know it made her feel good.

Then my brother-in-law’s wife was diagnosed with a rather aggressive cancer. Not only did she have to undergo surgery, but radiation and chemotherapy. So once again I got busy with my hook. I chose colours that made me think of her, and actually worked on it a lot during my stitchery meetings.

And a nod must go to the ladies of the Northumberland Hills Stitchery Guild for not letting me end it with the pinky/purple colour I was going to use. Even though it meant I had to leave in the middle of the meeting to go get a different colour. LOL They were right, I was wrong, and I’m very happy with the way it turned out. So was the recipient.

But I have to confess, after four afghans in a row, I was getting a little tired of this pattern. When I finished that last one I figured I’d give crocheting a rest altogether, but it’s still a good project to work on at the stitchery meetings, and it’s easier to do in front of the TV than stitching something.

So I’m probably going to keep on crocheting, but I’m going to find a new pattern. Time for this one to retire.

Margaritomancy Monday

margaritomancy ~ divination using pearls

I have a very good reason for being late with this post today. Honest!

I was sitting here last night, crocheting, and as it grew later I did think I should get to work on today's blog post, but at the same time I didn't want to stop what I was doing.

Okay, maybe I should start from the beginning.

First of all, I hate just sitting watching TV. It makes me antsy. But there are a lot of good shows on, mostly just Monday, Tuesday, and Friday nights - the rest of the week is pretty sad and pathetic. But I digress. Sometimes I'll have the lap top open to write a letter or catch up on my emails, but mostly I just play solitaire, Text Twist, or some other mindless games. And before you even say it, there's no point in trying to write when one of my shows is on because it takes too much concentration.

So I have come up with what I call my TV crafts, namely embroidery, knitting, and crochet. Once upon a time I used to do baby quilts - nothing fancy, just embroidering every other block with some sort of baby animal scene, then sew them all together and either machine quilt them along the seams or just tie them. But then people started having babies faster than I could embroider and I switched to knitting.

The problem with knitting is that, unlike embroidery, it requires a bit more attention than I'd like. It's okay during the boring parts of a show or during the commercials, but during the action parts it's all too easy to drop a stitch or lose my place in the pattern. Which is why I haven't gone back to work on the navy blue cardigan I started knitting myself a couple of years ago. It's going to be beautiful ... some day.

Now while some crochet patterns require a lot of attention, at least I don't have to worry about dropping a stitch, like I do with knitting. And with crochet I like to work on big projects, like afghans and throws.

So. When I decided to stop wasting my TV time on mindless games, the first thing that came to mind was crochet. I have a small stash of yarn left over from various projects and I figured I could start a scrap afghan. You know, just granny squares of all these different colours and then join them together. You should know by now that nothing is ever so simple as that for me, right?

I had two big balls of variegated pastel colours - white, pink, blue, mauve, green, and yellow. I think I'd originally bought them for a baby blanket, but I decided to use that as my base colour and match up the other colours to it. This worked with the first colour - mauve. I had enough for seven 10 inch squares and then ran out. And looking through my stash I was chagrinned to realize I had nothing else that went with the variegated. I checked my leftover stash and I checked my big stash - nothing.

Now I could have just put a wide border around six of the squares and sewn them together for a crib blanket (which I didn't even think about until now), but what I did was go to Walmart and found a pale blue that worked. Seven blue squares later (I decided that I'd do seven squares of each colour to match up with the mauve) I had to go out of town to the nearest Michael's where I found pink, yellow, and green.

Fast forward to me finishing all 35 squares and then I started joining them together - five rows of seven squares each, made easier by the fact I was smart enough to weave in the ends of each square as I finished. Now the squares themselves were patterned thusly: two rows of variegated, one of colour, two variegated, one colour, two variegated, and ending with one colour. This made the logical choice for joining them the granny stitch because it carried on the pattern of two rows of variegated between each square.

Joining the squares into rows was easy. But the problem with the granny stitch for joining the rows is to make sure everything lines up right. I'd granny stitch my way down to the corner where four squares meet, go a couple stitches further, check my work, and invariably discover that the four rows did not meet in a nice, clean square. They'd be off kilter. So I'd rip it out and try again. And again, and again, and again. I probably re-did it enough times to make a couple extra afghans before I was done.

And yeah, in the great scheme of things no one but me would notice it's a little off, but if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing right. Right? And besides, it had gone from being a scrap blanket to being a blanket for the grandbaby when she comes for a sleepover. You know, when she's old enough. In a couple of years time. ;-)

Anyway, I finally got the hang of getting the rows to line up properly and I was close enough to being finished last night that I didn't want to stop for fear of having to go through the frustration of trying to figure it out again. So instead of stopping to write this post, I kept on crocheting thinking that during this week's TV time I'll only have to worry about the border. Easy peasy.

Except ... when I spread out the afghan, thinking to take a picture for this post, I couldn't help but notice the first two rows were - you guessed it - off kilter. *sigh*

Did I really think the granny stitch join was easier?

Silly me!