Square-A-Day Tablecloth

I can finally talk about the effing lovely tablecloth I crocheted for my mother! You have no idea how hard it was to keep all the pain and suffering joy to myself through the long months of tediously repetetive slaving crocheting. I wanted to share the fun I had hunting down 17 balls of the same brand of cotton thread on this tiny speck of an island. I wanted to share my dismay when I realized the tablecloth would not be wide enough for my mother’s table - and my rage when I realized the additional 10 rounds of edging made it wide enough, but just *that* much too long. Plus I spilled an entire glass of Diet Pepsi on it, and I wept. But Christmas is over now, and I can finally show you………..

HOW MUCH I LOVE MY MOTHER!

Lots. I love her lots.

I didn’t take the best pictures, I’m afraid. This next one, for instance, was taken at 1:30 a.m. with an iPhone. I was flirting with insanity at this point.

It took me 1,000 pins and 16 hours to block it. Sixteen. Hours. I didn’t measure the sweat and the tears, but I lost about half a teaspoon of blood. Please don’t tell my mother I got blood all over her tablecloth.

Pattern: Square-A-Day Table Cloth

Yarn: 17 pkgs Aunt Lydia’s crochet thread, size 10

Hook: 1.5 mm (U.S. size 7)

Modifications: Added 10 rounds of edging

I was on the phone with her when she opened it. She said, “Oh, I needed a new lace tablecloth! But why did you open it? What did you do with the bag?” Then came a short period of incoherent squealing and a mad dash to clear the table. 

I done good.

Cork Afghan

Pattern:  Cork afghan from Leisure Arts #250

Yarn:  Red Heart

Hooks:  U.S. sizes I and K

Remember my Afghan Angst?  I’ve never disliked a project more than this one.  After all the fuss I went through figuring out the pattern (I finally just quit worrying about what the pattern said and just eyeballed it), the lady who asked me to make it took months to bring me the yarn.  Of course by the time she brought it to me I had forgotten everything about the pattern and had also misplaced my notes, so I had to figure it out all over again.  With Red Heart.  Call me snooty if you must, but I freaking hate Red Heart.  And I hate baby blue.  And I hate crocheting. 

But the gal loves it, so I guess it’s a success. 

For her, anyway. 

Afghan Angst

I know how to crochet.  I've made doilies and and hats and blankets.  I taught The Goobers.  I taught a class for my homeschool group.  So when someone from Anemone's dance studio said she'd pay me to crochet an afghan pattern she couldn't figure out, I said, "Sure!"  And then I took the pattern, went to Wal-Mart, bought a gazillion skeins of Caron Simply Soft (because this afghan is just for practice and any afghan in this house just ends up being used as a fort or a dog blanket) and got to work.

Then I found out that I really am a knitter at heart. 

Crochet is so not me.  I hate the way the hook feels in my hand.  I hate the repeitive rotating motion of my wrist.  I hate the look of the stitches.  I hate reading the patterns.  I hate the counting.  I hate having to rip out entire rows when I notice a mistake in the last section.  Ugh.

But I kept working on it, because I said I would.  I thought I could at least figure out the lady's trouble areas and teach her how to get through the pattern - then I could decline payment and she could make her own stupid afghan.   Sadly, it wasn't happening.  I kept having the same problem she did, and I couldn't figure out why.  It made me crazy!  One day I lost the portion of the pattern I was working on, and that made me even crazier.  I didn't do any work on it for weeks, and then decided to pick it back up and see what I could do.

Well, glory be, I figured it out!  The pattern must have been wonky, and I'm not a good enough crocheter to realize it and fix it right away.  So now I can do all the patterns in the afghan, which is great, but I'm having trouble with gauge.  Some of the patterns pull in, and you're supposed to use bigger or smaller hook sizes to adjust for that.  Cool.  I get it.  But the recommended hook sizes aren't giving me gauge.  And I can't tell until six or seven rows in whether that gauge will work or not.  And the entire afghan is about 12 inches shorter in length than it should be.  Ack!

So I'm starting over.  This time I'll take notes and do math and be very conscientious, because I can crochet.  I can.

Flashback!

JellyMan and Anemone are doing fantastic, wonderful things but due to The Man and his issues with security I am unable to share them with you. Take it from me, they are fabulous. You would be impressed. Or maybe not, but you would probably pretend just to be polite.

Since I can't brag about my marvelous children in any detail, let's have a little bit of a flashback, shall we? This is one of my early crocheted items. I taught myself from a Reader's Digest needlework encyclopedia in 1998, the year I decided to quit my job and become the best stay at home mom ever. *cough*

I thought that I would whip up roughly 100,000 of these medallions and sew them together to make a bedspread. Right. I must have been delirious from lack of sleep. This the only one that made it, and now Anemone uses it as a rug in her dollhouse. It looks good in there. :)