One craft in service to another…

I finished a couple of projects on Sunday. I was SO pleased with myself that I thought I’d just go ahead and make a list of all the other ones I’ve designed, but haven’t finished. About 3/4 down the page I thought, “uh oh, this is starting to look like a lot.” At the end of page two, I quit writing and went back to try to establish timelines for my projects to make sure I’m doing things instead of just planning to do things.Sometime, I should share my glorious portfolio of quilt ideas. I have actually made two of the quilts I designed. However, that’s small potatoes compared to the dozens I’ve designed. A few years back I just kinda went nuts with a vector-based design program. Whee!

Crochet Accessories: Despite my propensity for designing, I did both design finish and finish these. A great example of one craft (sewing) in service to another (crochet)! As with many projects, I kinda designed these on the fly. Consequently they have the usual issues relating to being impatient, but they’re certainly very sturdy and functional and pretty, and that’s what counts! I wanted them because I do tend to drag my crocheting around a bit - coffeeshop here, road trip there, upstairs, downstairs… Keeping track of the little odds and ends that go with this hobby while not annoying my husband with the mess is a challenge for messy me.

So - on the left (above left) is a crochet-hook roll and on the right is a crochet accessories bag. They are made of two lovely fabrics (see right)- a purple and green floral and a lavendar quilted cotton - plus a bit of dark purple bias tape, some gorgeous ribbon and wooden buttons. These have prompted me to decorate my whole crafting space in purple and green.

One project was a place to keep my scissors, crochet needles, measuring tape, row counter (no, I can’t keep track in my head!), markers, and other junk. The thrice-partitioned pouch folds nicely to get tied into a neat bundle. The pouches are not terribly large, which is GREAT. I have a habit of dragging around too much crap with me. (left, project in front)

The other item is a crochet-hook keeper. (right, project in front) This hook case - quite conveniently, I think - has room for at least one of every crochet hook from size B-1/2.25 mm to size S/19 mm. There are a bunch of 1 cm slots, several 1.5 cm and a few 2 cm, enough for one extra of each slot size.

It was NOT an accident I left the chalk lines in there - that’s so you can see that the left line represents 2 cm slots, the middle 1.5 cm and the right all the 1 cm slots.

I plan to make another one for my smaller hooks - the really itty bitty ones with numbered sizes, because not only would they fall out of these hook slots, they’re also about an inch shorter than the ones with letters.

You can see a few more pictures of this at my Flickr page.

Cheers, Miriam