Potholder Prowess

I've been on a crochet kick for about two weeks now (give or take). I thought I'd try something a little more complicated than what I've been making, so I opted to give the Crochet Flower Hot Pad a go. The pattern itself was simple but interesting enough to keep my attention. Here's the finished item:



I also took a few progress pictures to give an idea of the construction...


This is really the skeleton of the piece. All of the fancy twisting stuff happens later. Most of the crocheting is just around this skeleton, so it's actually very easy.


This is the the result of a 180 degree clockwise turn of each petal. Again, it's very simple but it's what makes the potholder interesting.


Finally I just counted 5 stitches from the tip 3-stitch group on either side and tied it to the next petal over in the same place. This helped a lot for crocheting that last round. The braid coming off of there is all of the ends. I'm sure I could have crocheted it without cutting the yarn at each color change, but I found that the wrong side actually looks nicer, so I'm glad I didn't because I would have been stuck with those yarn carries.

"Hooker" is a Dirty Word

I taught myself to crochet over the Spring break. Huzzah! The goal is to make pretty lace things, i.e. doilies. I have no trouble with single, double, and treble crochet, so I'm good to go with the basic stitches. I just need to figure out the proper techniques for joining circles and so forth. Then I think I'll be good to go. The patterns are like reading gibberish, but I'm sure that will come in time just like the knitting patterns did. I made a stitch sampler dishcloth (or at least that's what I'm calling it) with the three basic stitches in it. I don't have it on me, so instead I'll post a picture of the cat mat I'm making out of single crochet. It looks much better in person.



Have I mentioned that crochet is satisfyingly fast? No? Well it is. My little attention span appreciates it.

When I went to the craft store to pick up some size 10 and 20 crochet thread, I also got me a set of these:



That's the next fun thing to teach myself. The resources out there for tatting are a little more sparse than... say... those for knitting or crochet. We'll see.

Let us go a little more obscure. After I figure out tatting (and doilies... and somehow acquire money), I want to learn a few tricks with these (which I need to order about a zillion of, it seems):



In my mind, bobbin lace is the epitome of lace. I hear that it's not as difficult as it looks. My fingers are crossed, my thumbs are pressed, and I'm spitting between the digits that are left. We shall see one day.

A Sleeping Tiger

Sleep! sleep! beauty bright,
Dreaming o'er the joys of night.
- William Blake

RE: Toodetud eestís.

I checked with Astrid of Astrid's Dutch Obsessions regarding how Evilla is spun. Her response:

"The thick/thin is typical for Evilla and part of its charm. It’s made the rather “traditional” old-fashioned way in Estonia."

This raises further questions in my mind. What's the "traditional old-fashioned way"?

Toodetud eestís.

My "when you finish your papers, you can knit with this yarn" yarn came today. There's a particular Estonian shawl I wish to knit from it, so I thought to myself, "My my. Wouldn't this be neat if I were to knit it in Estonian yarn?" "Yes," I told myself, and proceeded to search for said yarn online. I came up with a yarn called Evilla, which, according to the website, is made of wool gathered from Sweden, Finland, and Estonia. It's spun so as to preserve the lanolin, which will certainly be nice for knitting.

Anyway, the yarn is sitting here in front of me and I give it my amateur lace test. First I look it over and I notice thick and thin spots. I am intrigued. Is this handspun? If so, I love it all the more. Second I pet it. It's a little coarse, but nothing out of line for pure wool. Nothing pull out an individual strand and give it a gentle tug. Nice and strong. So far, so good. I'm not allowed to knit with it for the reason mentioned in the opening sentence, but nobody made any rules about thinking about it.

I have two skeins, but there's no use in showing them both off since they look the same. Here's the larger one at 1,518 yards:



For the record, the smaller one is 1,419 yards. They're both huge.