I haven’t known how to crochet for altogether that long, but I’ve made quite a few things in the short amount of time I’ve been doing it. I pretty much had to give it up for the past eight months or so due to a total lack of time, but I’ve started it back up in abundance. I’ve started working on my granny square afghan again, and it’s really taking shape. So far I’ve put seven of the panels together (that’s 49 squares) and have sewn together another six panels to be attached to the bulk of it soon. I’ve also gotten about a third of the border squares done, though I’m now thinking about adding another layer of squares around that to make it a little wider and to tie in the thematical whole better. One way or the other, I’ve been having fun crocheting again.

I’ve also sort of kind of vaguely picked up knitting. I had picked up these little circular stitch markers thinking I might be able to use them with my crocheting only to find that they had no opening to be easily removed from crocheted stitches. Unlike knitting where the stitches are still pretty open so long as they’re on the needles, once a stitch is off a crochet hook, it’s closed up and done. So what’s the most logical thing to do with a knitting product that I have no other use for? Learn to knit, duh. Besides, I would one day like to get into doing stuff like reinactments at events like the Rendez-vous, and while knitting would be period appropriate for the Rendez-vous, crocheting would not since it really came into its own in the 1800s, not the 1700s. So I have illogical reasons for doing most things, shove it.

Katie tried to show me how to knit a few years ago (and I failed miserably), and I used to be part of a group in the Haute called Knit Wits, but I didn’t really remember much about knitting from either of those two places. Therefore, I dug around on-line for a bit for some beginner knitting pages to learn how to “cast on” a bunch of stitches and then learn where to go after that. After some failed attempts (although I may have been doing it right, I thought it looked funny so I frogged it) I made a rectangle about seven and a half inches wide (on the sticks) and about two inches long. It didn’t look good, and Ian agreed. So I frogged the whole thing and started over. Come to find out, what I’d been doing was apparently the garter stitch, so it was supposed to look like that. Oh well, live and learn. So I’ve started it back up again and it’s sitting on my cheapy plastic needles that came with a knitting cat toys kit, and it’s stuck into my practice ball of yarn. I guess it looks better? I don’t know. I need to find a webpage that teaches how to purl so I can make the stockinette stitch that most people associate with knitting. Actually, Grandma Ringwald’s book on knitting and crocheting can probably show me that. Now if only I could find it… All my beautifully categorized books got jumbled horribly in the move.

I also picked up another project which I have yet to really mess with. While at the Rendez-vous a couple weeks ago, I picked up a drop spindle and some wool. The point of owning a drop spindle and a big ball of wool? Spinning, of course! One of the women at Knit Wits would occasionally make her own yarn using a drop spindle (basically the same idea as a spinning wheel except on the small scale), and it looked interesting then to me. Also, if I ever do get into reinactments as some crazy French fur trader’s wife, I figure that if I’m sitting in a tent knitting, it would also make sense to sit in a tent spinning my own yarn for whenever I run out of it. Madness, I know, but I really do love just about everything artsy craftsy. There’s sort of a thematic whole here, it’s just an illogical and silly one.

At any rate, those are a few of my projects that have been going on this week. I’ll post a picture of the afghan once it’s done. Then I’ll have to try and decide what to do with it. Ian and I already have far too many blankets as it is. I just wanted to see if I could do it, really. Oh well, I’ll figure something out. Have a fun weekend!