First Frost, 5K yards, and Crocheting

The first freeze of autumn occurred this week. I’d already begun the great clothing switch. Such a lot of work and mess, but fun rediscovering clothing items forgotten over the spring and summer. 

I’ve suspended work on the Helen Skirt to bang out a pair of fingerless gloves. It’s not cold enough for the convertible fingerless or the mittens, but there’s just enough of a nip to need something that allows the fingertips to snuggle while waiting at the bus stop. I’m using Knit Picks Wool of the Andes Tonal, a discontinued worsted weight yarn on size 6 dpns. 

 

At the Shirley Paden workshop earlier this month, I sat beside Phyllis, the crochet instructor at Looped Yarn Works. Phyllis gave me a link to a crochet site that explains how to read a crochet pattern. My aunt Fanny taught me to crochet. Not by reading patterns but by teaching me stitches and patterns. In teaching me, she taught me what to do but not the names of the stitches. So in my memory, I have several doily patterns that I can do. I found that I have no difficulty reading and crocheting patterns that are all symbols because the symbols make sense since they closely resemble the actual stitches. But put those stitches into words and I am lost. I was able to crochet the Shell Scarf because there were videos of each of the steps. I’ve been wanting to crochet a Crocodile Stitch scarf and was making no headway with written instructions or pictures of the steps. I found a video on You Tube and by the second row was off and running or crocheting on my own. I’m fascinated by how my learning is so different in knitting and crochet. In the workshop with Shirley Paden, we worked on a smocking stitch. I immediately recognized the process for creating the stitch from the stitch process diagrams in my Japanese stitch book. There was just the tip of how to prevent holes between the wrap and next stitch that will make the process easier when I use it in a garment. What I realized this week, is that with crochet I’m a completely visual learner. In short, I need to learn the way I was taught. 

Toupie had a bit of a mishap this week. I’d put out a string toy for him to play with. It has fuzzy ball at the end. Naturally, he attacked it. The next moment he was sprinting through the apartment. It’s not unusual for him to get a bit hyper when playing and it wasn’t until he made the third sprint from the front door that I paid attention. When he jumped up on the futon, I noticed the fuzzy ball went with him. Upon investigation, it turns out he’d got the string part of the toy wrapped around a hind leg. It took a minute to settle him and a bit for me to work the string loose. He sat there curled up with such a look of gratitude while I cooed and fussed to let him know he was okay. He’s such an odd little boy. Most cats I’ve had meow at the first sign of trouble. Toupie goes completely silent and has done so since he was a kitten. This tendency has made me very alert that when I don’t see him or when I call to him and I don’t get either a vocalization or an appearance, I immediately go to find him. He’s rarely in any trouble, usually curled up in some dark corner or bookshelf.