Mad Caterpillar

My great grandmother used to make these by the bucketful, and every time we'd go to visit her she'd send me home with one or two. I didn't appreciate them as a young girl as much as I do now, but fortunately I had the sense to hold onto them. Now that I am older, I know the skill and the love that went into them, and I treasure them for the heirlooms that they are.

With my foray into the world of granny squares, I have found that crochet can be kind of addicting. And for some reason, I started to wonder if I could create one of these little lace pieces myself. So armed with this book, a ball of cotton thread from Joanne's, and a tiny crochet hook that had heretofore only been used to pick up dropped stitches in knitted socks, I proceeded to make the wee trifle above. Despite several mistakes I think it turned out rather pretty, although it is indeed very small. I have a couple ideas for what I will do with it, but in the meantime it does make a lovely trivet for my favorite teacup:

Posted by Danielle at 06:58 PM | | Comments (3)

The state of the weather.

My family outgrew our tiny house in Seattle several years ago. But the housing market here being what it is, we can't afford to upgrade. And our location is so convenient, that we're not willing to move as far away as we'd need to in order to get more space. So we make do with what little space we have, fighting a losing battle with clutter, and remembering to enjoy the advantages of a short commute and proximity to the things we love to do and the places we need to go. What our house lacks in size, however, it gains in view. In fact the thing that attracted us to this house many many years ago is the beautiful view of the Olympic Mountains that we appreciate every single day that we are here. Even when you can't see the mountains, you can see the weather. And weather abounds here in the Pacific Northwest. Take yesterday, for example. It started out overcast and damp, progressed to slightly sunny, and by mid-afternoon it was obvious that a storm was about to roll through. Here is the view at 3:15pm:

And again at 3:45 pm:

And again at about 6:30pm. The storm blew by in a couple hours, and bright sun shone from behind the mountains as it set in all its weather-laden glory:

It looks like we're in for similar weather today.

The state of the granny.

I have finished 20 of these little squares so far. I have 364 more squares to go to make the size of blanket that I hope to end up with. This is going to take a while.

The state of the sock.

I am really enjoying knitting my Sock Pal's sock. The Sea Wool is delightful to work with, the colorway is even prettier than I thought it was in skein form, and the pattern is turning out gorgeous. I was a little skeptical about the cuff that the pattern called for, as the picture in the book really doesn't do it justice. (I'm knitting the "Go with the Flow" pattern from "Favorite Socks".) But I love how it looks in person, the ladder lace cuff is really different and feminine, and looks great with the main pattern of the sock. I really hope my sock pal likes it. Here's where I'm at so far:

Posted by Danielle at 03:45 PM | | Comments (0)

Any time I try to crochet something, I usually have to fiddle with it at least three times before I get it right. Same goes for my first attempt at making granny squares. I'm finally happy with the one on the lower left. I've been wanting to find a way to use up spare bits and leftovers of sock yarn and Koigu, and was considering doing something like this which I like very much. But I know I won't have enough leftovers to finish this type of design during my lifetime, and lately I've been enjoying looking at all the beautiful granny square blankets folks are creating and showing online. So I thought I'd try out a square using some Fleece Artist sock yarn leftovers.

I really like how it's turned out. I'm using Dale Baby Ull in black as the contrast color. Most of the socks I knit are reasonably colorful (or are made from lighter neutrals) so the sock yarn scraps that I've been saving up so far should work well with black as the contrast color. I'm sure this will still end up taking a long time before it is ever finished, but it's fun to crochet these little squares so I know I will enjoy the process.

Posted by Danielle at 06:32 PM | | Comments (0)