Progress

Progress finally … on several fronts!

First of all, the new lease is signed, the place inspected, and it’s ready to be moved into. I will, at some point, show you my epic new kitchen. I look forward to being able to really unpack (i.e. get my books out) for the first time in over a year. I also look forward to not moving again for a good long while. I also look forward to not having the world’s most obnoxious person living above me.

But for now all my tired brain and I have is a little bitty report on my afghan progress.

Since last we spoke, I’ve crocheted another 80 centers (first and second rows of medium brown and medium blue) so I’m now completely done with that part. I’ve also crocheted 35 middle flower petal bits (rows 3 and 4 of light blue/medium brown).

SLOW GOING PEOPLE. I have a little notebook in which I’m keeping track of my progress, and I don’t get to cross bits out nearly as often as I’d like.

Winter’s Warmth

One thing daily November blog posting does is make me remember every last thing I’d considered writing about during the past year. There are people who set themselves up for daily blog posting for a year, and I just can’t understand how that lunacy works. However, I think that getting back into writing and thinking about crafting at this time each year is ultimately good. So today I remembered I’d wanted to post about these afghans:

A couple of years ago I was in my mother-in-law’s closet for whatever reason and saw the giant stack of afghans that she’d made. You may remember Jennifer taught me to crochet 6 or 7 years ago, and in fact my first project (now abandoned) was one of these blankets in two shades of blue. I ultimately decided not to continue that blanket because (1) it was made from Red Heart, and there are more enjoyable yarns to work with, and (2) the center of it was incredibly wonky, the result of my not achieving any sort of tension control for about 15 rows.

Jennifer tells me she used to work on one of these blankets during the winter to keep warm. Jeff always talks about the wood stove that kept them warm at one of their houses, one of the old plantation-style houses in the South that didn’t have central heat or air. The blanket would just keep getting bigger and eventually cover her lap, and be finished by winter’s end.

When I was making my grandparents’ blanket it was sort of like that. It was very warm as it grew! It sounds very Little House on the Prairie to make a blanket to keep yourself warm on winter nights, but actually I consider that a great idea. One of my aunt Becky’s friends does hand quilting, and I believe he quilts it in the winter as well (he lives in the oft-frigid northern Iowa) but not in the summer.

Anyway, I think that these are pretty awesome, and I wanted to share her hard work and effort with you.

New people, new techniques

A friend of mine is moving and lamenting the loss of friends in her current locale. I too miss people like crazy, and I think that was the most difficult part of moving. I have some very dear friends in Austin, not to mention my parents in Houston, and being far away from them is tough. However. As I said to my friend, whenever you go to a new place you have the opportunity to meet all sorts of cool people you never knew existed who will enrich your life in ways you cannot yet imagine. It’s one of the best parts of moving. Sure, there are a few real losers (my upstairs neighbor comes to mind) but mostly it’s not that way.

My new coworkers come to mind. In getting to know some of them I’ve discovered a fair number of crafters – knitters and even a crocheter. Even my boss is a knitter (and sometimes crocheter), and she’s already added a cute addition to the stack of patterns I want to try. I was talking to another coworker one day, the crocheter, and she was asking me about my hexagon blanket, and asked if I could figure out patterns from looking at finished objects.

I said yes, mostly, and so she brought me a double-sided/reversible baby blanket her mother made in the early seventies. This blanket isn’t like anything else I’ve seen. It has 2 sides but is not attached at the sides. It’s literally two sides crocheted together simultaneously. Not one side crocheted and then the other worked on top of it like intarsia. I mean actually crocheted simultaneously.  When the colors are chosen correctly, the finished blanket has a color-changing ability not unlike iridescent taffeta. Just more, um, fuzzy and cozy than shiny and elegant.

The blanket shown here was actually the second of these made by and from her mother, because of course she wore out the first one when she was a baby! Her mother is gone now, so my coworker really wanted to figure out how her mother had done it so she could make a blanket too. She just didn’t know how to go about that, or how to identify what her mom had done.

Turns out it was a really nifty technique! I was able to figure out how her mom had done it, and give her a couple of patterns. It seems it was a technique people did in the fifties, and then revived in the seventies and nineties, coming and going as these things do. Best of all, I was even able to find a video for her of how to do the stitch. Pretty interesting. I also will have to try this at some point.

This is a small example, but interactions like these with neat people are something I really love. And I love getting to know new people and finding out their stories as well, and the million different ways people live their lives. And crochet their blankets.