I crochet?

It's been a long time since I've posted about my crocheting, mostly because it's been a long time since I've done any crocheting. I tried to bike rather than take public transit most of this past semester, which cut down on a lot of my crocheting opportunities, not to mention that my current apartment is only the very briefest of Metro rides from work when I do take that route. On top of that, I've been driving whenever I make the trip back home to NY, which eliminates what used to be a very fruitful 5-hour bus ride several times each semester. Plus I was just plain old busy. I've only made 2 very simple projects this semester: a baby blanket and a scarf (and I'm just now realizing I forgot to take any pictures of the scarf).

I made this blanket for my cousin's baby, who was born in the fall. For the first time perhaps ever, the blanket was ready before the baby was, and that was because it was so easy. I hate joining squares, and that's the part that always makes the blankets take so long, but I've always found "join as you go" patterns a bit complicated for the kind of mindless, "keeping my hands busy while my mind is elsewhere" crocheting that I often do. I opted for the absolute simplest design I could conceive of, the "big giant granny square" design. I really do like the way it came out, though, and since they whip up so quickly, I may try to make some more, now that I'm thinking about it.

Georgetown Scarf

This is the scarf I made for Rhett this winter. I got the pattern from. . . a homeless man on a bus. That story is part of the reason I love my neighborhood; people may not be well-off, but they're kind and decent people. (We'll ignore for now the pressing issue of street violence.)

I had been in DC for New Year's Eve, but was heading back to NY for the rest of my break in the early days of January. I was taking a Chinatown bus, but had gotten to Chinatown - mercifully very early - only to realize that I'd forgotten my ticket! I got back on the Metro bus to head home and pick it up. Sitting near the back of the bus, I noticed that the man across the aisle was wearing a crocheted scarf, in the style pictured above, in blue and gray Georgetown colors. He was talking to his friend, but they noticed me staring (I hadn't realized how intently I'd been looking at him) and said hello. I said hello, apologized for staring, and said I was just admiring his scarf and trying to figure out how I could make one like it. He took it off and tossed it across the aisle to me. I looked at the stitches for a couple minutes to figure out how it had been made (I think it was a double crochet - at least that's what I ended up using when I tried to replicate it), and when I tried to give it back, he told me I could keep it.

Of course, I wasn't about to take his scarf, so I insisted on giving it back, and said that since I wanted to make one like it as a gift for my boyfriend, it would be better if I made it myself than kept his. I got off at my stop, ran back to my house, grabbed my ticket, and went back to the bus stop to wait for the bus in the other direction.

While I'm waiting for my bus back to Chinatown, I see and his friend walking down the street again. He says hello, and take his scarf off to try to give it to me again. I keep protesting, and he eventually puts it back on.

Then he asks me for money "to help him buy a sandwich."

Usually, I say no to people asking for change. If I don't say no, the most I do is give them change. But this was clearly a nice guy, who had twice tried to give me his own scarf. He had tried to give something to me before he had ever asked me to give something to him. And we had a relationship by that point (I still wish I had asked his name). So I gave him $5, and never regretted it for a moment, never felt like I'd been had. I was only glad I could help him, and grateful to have gotten a pattern I really liked for a scarf that Rhett was (eventually, once I finally bought the yarn and actually made it) really excited for.

Baby Blanket

Blanket, no flash

Blanket, flash.

Detail of the bottom corner. I like to try to make one corner square of every blanket a tiny little microcosm of the blanket as a whole. (It didn't work so well this time, since the corner square was designed and put together, and then I changed my mind about what the actual pattern of the blanket would be.)

These are the pictures of the blanket I made my baby cousin. I started it when I found out my aunt was pregnant (around Easter), worked on it on and off during the summer, buckled down during fall semester, and made myself finish it over Christmas. She was born in early November. I saw the family the day before the scheduled C-section, and was aiming to have it done by then. No dice. Then I aimed to have it done by Thanksgiving, the first time I saw her. Still no. ThenI aimed to have it done by Christmas, as a Christmas present. Then I made myself finish it before I left home for the next semester, and she got it right around her 2 month birthday. My original intention was blocks of color, each with a white center (thus the supposed microcosm), but then I decided against that and just made the blanket as random as possible - if by random you mean meticulously arranging it so that it looks as random as possible. It's blue, green, and yellow, with the occasional white square thrown in to make it look more random, and I was going to put a border of green, white, and more green on it, but my mom convinced me that it had to be yellow. (I put borders on all of my blankets, because I still haven't gotten the hang, after all this time, of joining squares evenly.)

I really like the way it turned out, but I'm still curious about what the original pattern would have looked like.

Scarves, Scarves, Scarves!

Nothing will make a camera upload easily like a blog post that tells the whole world how impossible it is to upload pictures off your camera. These are the rest of the scarves I made over Christmas. Only the ones for Suellen and my dad were Christmas presents, but after Suellen decided she liked hers, she asked for another one, so she could wear them together. (That's stylish? What do I know? I just create.) My cousin and Carreen both liked Suellen's, so I made them each one, too. They're all based off of the same basic pattern, the one that I used to make Suellen's original scarf at Christmas. It's really quick, and even I - I'm not a quick crocheter - can whip one out in an evening while I'm watching tv.

Suellen's second scarf

Detail. These were all made from yarn I had laying around the house, some of which had been sitting around in random granny squares for years, which is why some of the fringe is so curly. I hoped/hope it will straighten out, but I don't really mind the effect, in case it doesn't.

My cousin's scarf. She liked Suellen's gray, black, and pink, but didn't want the pink.

Carreen's scarf. This one might be my favorite color combination.

Detail.

I really liked making these scarves. If only I weren't living in yarn poverty, I'd be making more. If I could find some nice blue and gray yarn (which I'm sure I could if I could FIND A YARN STORE!), I'd be making Georgetown scarves for all my girlfriends based on this pattern, and Georgetown scarves for Rhett and all my guy friends based loosely on this pattern. We might be aiming for next basketball season, at this rate.

Crochet Stuff

For the record, I've been trying to post more pictures of my crocheting projects - I finished several more scarves and a baby blanket for my cousin over Christmas break. I've had a difficult time getting the pictures from my camera to my computer though. The camera is new - it was a Christmas present - but I've uploaded pictures from it before, as evidenced by the few crochet projects I've posted on here so far. I can't figure out what I was doing differently then to make it work.

I'm currently working on a blanket, in red and white, for. . . well, I'm not 100% sure who it's for yet. I haven't been able to find any yarn stores that sell good, cheap, yarn - in the vein of Michael's or A.C. Moore - in DC that are easily accessible. There's one way out in Rockville. Everything in the city is small, boutiquey, and expensive, and doesn't appear to even sell yarns like Lion brand or Red Heart, much less at a good price. I had conceived of this project as a blanket for my aunt, as a thank you gift for her inviting us to her house for vacation every summer, and I chose colors that reminded me of her and her house. That was over a year ago, though, and I hadn't done any work since, but when I finished the baby blanket and needed something else to do, it had to involve that yarn, since it was all I had in the house and I had nowhere to buy anything else. As much as I'd like to make my aunt a blanket, though, I could do that any year. I have three cousins getting married this year, though, two of whose weddings I'll be attending, and one in particular (though the other one, too) for whom I thought I blanket would be a particularly good wedding present.

There's definitely not time to do both. Do I give this blanket to my cousin, even though I can't help but think of my aunt as I make it? I'd have to conceive of an entirely new blanket for my aunt, too, and ignore the blanket I have in my head for my cousin (It'd be sage and gold, I think). Or do I give to my aunt, as I'd always planned, for no particular reason at all, and not have anything much to give my cousin on the very big occasion of her wedding?

This is all, of course, complicated by the fact that I only actually had a couple skeins of yarn for this project, which are almost gone, and I won't have more until I go back to NY (for the engagement party of said cousin, in fact) in two weeks, which just puts a delay on the project, whichever deadline I'm aiming to meet.

After those nice, easy scarves, I'd forgotten what a pain it is to join squares for a blanket. My poor cousin's going to be 2 months old before she gets her baby blanket.

Another scarf

Scarves were a big Christmas gift this year, because I had bullied my family into a non-commercial Christmas (or I'd tried, anyway - the clothes and digital camera my parents got us weren't exactly handmade). This is the one I made my dad. It's based on a pattern from my pattern-a-day calendar (this one attributed to Dinna Diaz of theyarntree.com), but the effect was very different, since I used a size I instead of a size S hook, and I didn't add the fringe that seemed a pretty defining feature of the original. (Seemed a little girly for a man, and we have to protect my dad from his own impulses to wear whatever anyone gives him. That lavender sweater never should have seen the light of day in a men's department, but when it did, and he was given it, the poor man wore it for years.) It's crocheted using two yarns at once, something I'd never tried before. I absolutely loved the effect, and I think I'll do it again.

Scarf

I'm not sure whether this type of feature will be interesting to anyone, but I'm going to post pictures of my completed crochet projects here, on the rare occasion that I complete a crochet project. This is a scarf I made my sister (the older of my two younger sisters, hereafter known as Suellen) for Christmas. I got the pattern off of a Pattern-a-Day calendar (where it's called the Neapolitan Ribbon Scarf and attributed to Megan Dann Fesinmeyer of pensivefrog.com), although I modified it ever so slightly to increase the length and width. The pink and black I had at home, leftovers from I-don't-remember-what, and I picked up the grey (they added a Michael's near my house!) for the third color. Suellen seemed less than thrilled with it at first, but warmed up to it once she saw it in the mirror. I very much hope she wasn't just pretending to warm up to it. Her initial reaction was to wear it as a belt, which surprised me. As long as it makes her happy.