Art & Books: September 2004 Archives

I spent some time working on my crochet problem this evening, after having a mild epiphany about double crochets, in which I figured out that I'm not just supposed to be pulling loops through each other: the point is to yarn over and pull that through. Well, the diagrams I have are highly suspect, let's just say that.

Anyway, this is where I started, with a very tight circle I made, apparently entirely with slip stitches. Beats the heck out of me how I did it, but at any rate it's very tight and tends to cup.

Then I tried my hand at a simple yo-yo, which got kind of messed up because the yarn I'm using has a tendency to come untwisted in very uncool ways. On the other hand, it was cheap and it doesn't feel totally unpleasant for a synthetic yarn, so I've kept it instead of just throwing the whole ball away.

I've been thinking about making a yo-yo afghan for Casa Decrepit, to keep us warm on cold winter evenings, so I'm going to have to have another go at that one.

Then I decided to try out double crochet, and that's when I had my minor epiphany, although of course James Joyce would just about piss himself if he heard me use the word that way. Anyway, I figured out the double crochet, but the pattern I worked with it still came out looking like something was wrong with it. So I went back over it and found out that she neglected to mention a chain 4 somewhere in there, and had me do an extra double crochet, which makes the whole thing look kind of buck-toothed.

For my next trick, I worked a circle with single crochets, and I had some trouble following the instructions (reading patterns SUCKS but I suppose there's no other way to learn how to read them than by reading them), but it still seemed to come out OK, so I went on to the next row of double crochets alternated with single chain stitches. Very fancy.

I was going to continue on to the next row of the pattern but I couldn't figure out what she meant by "Sl st into next ch 3 sp" because doing what it seemed to be telling me caused the whole thing to curl up into a tight leetle ball rather unattractively. (I have since figured it out, but I'm done fiddling with my hands for the evening.)

On the other hand, it looks quite nice as-is, an worked in a less finicky yarn would be quite easy.

Who needs a pattern to knit a scarf?

No, seriously. Even the lacy ones. It's just the same thing over and over, right? You cast on until it's about as wide as you want it and a nice tidy multiple of your pattern, then you knit until you run out of yarn or the scarf is long enough. I don't get it. I've read four scarf patterns online, and none of them contain any seekrit scarf ju-ju that is anything more than "do this over and over until you have a scarf."

Also, I'm completely stunned by knitting patterns for very simple ribbed hats. You don't need a pattern make that! On the other hand, reading one of those patterns helps me understand how to read more complex knitting patterns a bit better, though I'm still trying to assimilate some of it.

In case you couldn't tell, I finished my work in studio early, and now I'm sitting around my room (waiting until Noel arrives for the weekend, yay!) thinking of all sorts of misbehaviour to get up to. I think I deserve it, because I had an incredibly realistic dream last night about fixing the worst stopped-up toilet ever and woke up with this shuddering dread, thinking I had to go back to augering the thing.