Basically, teaching a child to crochet can be summed up in five “rules of thumb” - (1) Don’t force anything, (2) Keep it short and sweet, (3) Keep it simple, (4) Allow for exploration, and (5) Keep it playful.
I don’t think Natalie’s got the dexterity yet anyway, regardless of anything else, but she’s occasionally shown interest in knitting and/or crocheting. Things for me to keep in mind.
Or you could try this one.
Day 12: Where do you keep your stash? Post pictures!
My main stash is in a dresser drawer, with anything I need for current or about-to-be-current projects stuffed into my knit bag. The drawer has started to overflow a little, so I’ve moved some yarns that I don’t particularly care for and thus don’t expect to use very soon to a nearby box.
To be fair, the main stash is sharing drawer space with a few miscellaneous sewing/crafting supplies—thread, needles, fabric, ribbons of various kinds, assorted small bags which might be useful for storing some notions in at some point, a little bit of embroidery floss, that kind of thing.
Almost immediately after posting the link about recycling yarn from thrift-store sweaters, I took it into my head to try that very thing for myself. Fortunately for me, thrift stores are not subject to the same seasonal trends as other retail outlets, and therefore I had no problems finding suitable candidates. I chose two: a purple-and-black-twist acrylic/wool/polyester blend made with a fairly chunky yarn ($2.15) because it seemed like it would be good practice, and a red children’s sweater made of a lighter-weight lambswool ($1.00) for advanced practice once I’d gotten a feel for the process. And then I got to work.
Taking the sweater apart was not bad once I got the hang of it, although I did manage to partially or completely break the yarn in a few places trying to get the seam undone. The actual unraveling was tedious, and a little frustrating at first, but then I figured out the yarn had been held double and I was dealing with two strands instead of one, and that cleared it right up. It was pretty satisfying to watch it build up, row by row, ball by ball.
It was after that things got actually painful. Winding all that yarn into two-yard-loop hanks using two back-to-back chairs turns out to involve a lot of repetitive motion and an angle of the spine that is not exactly comfy. Washing it mostly is a question of finding something big enough (bathtub!), but then there’s the drying. When reviewing the procedure the first time, I had missed a step. Rinse it out, squeeze (don’t wring) it out, wrap it up in a towel and stomp a little more moisture out. And then the part I missed:
After drying, to get the yarn all even and help with the kinks, whip each hank in the air or against your leg, or spin quickly over your head, and repeat a few times holding the hank in different spots.
If you are in halfway decent shape and/or have been regularly exercising your core and upper body, this might not be so bad. Neither of those things describe me, however. Swinging that yarn around “quickly” requires some endurance in the forearms, even if only doing a few swings per holding position. Then, particularly when holding the hank at the very end and swinging the whole length of it, you need some core stability to keep you from just wobbling all over the place. Not bad for a single hank, but I had twelve to go through, ranging from 12 to 86 yards each, and I haven’t been exercising much lately. It was a small workout.
And then the kinks didn’t even get all the way out. My current theory is that this has to do with the fiber content—it’s mostly acrylic, which I don’t think is as good at bouncing back as natural fibers. It doesn’t bother me much, though; the worst of the “wobbliness” (as Natalie calls it) is out, and I think it will still be quite usable.
Is it worth it? $2.15 for 624 yards of approximately worsted-weight yarn, time and labor intensive, but involving a workout I needed anyway. Overall, I’d call it a win.
Now. What am I going to DO with this stuff?
(Source: craftystylish.com)
Day 10: Do you have a favorite pattern or designer?
Day 11: Do you have a “Knitter Hero” or someone that is just way too awesome for their own good? Do share!
Squishing again because the answer to both of these is “no”. I’m rather interested in Stephanie “Yarn Harlot” Pearl-McPhee, but that’s likely got something to do with her Knitting Rules! being my first knitting book and thus helping form my perceptions of it. It’s a self-reinforcing thing. As patterns go, I don’t even have that much to go on. I’ve done a LOT of little projects, and have managed to run into relatively few patterns so far that I’m not fond of.
Day 9: What fiber or yarn do you love working with?
Malabrigo. SOFT SQUISHY GOODNESS OMG.
But anything soft and nice to touch, really.
Day 7: Your least favorite?
This one’s a lot easier. There are only two candidates, really. This one wins because the other one was a good execution of a good pattern, it was just bad yarn choice. This was supposed to be a bookmark to be given to Dad as part of his birthday present, but I was having trouble with the yarn-over-in-stockinette thing and I think I lost focus on the pattern near the end. It was functional and not the ugliest thing ever, I guess, but it was sufficiently fubared that I didn’t feel right giving it as a gift.
Besides that, it took me about ten bazillion false starts, at least two or three different needle sizes, and two different yarns even to get the screwed-up version done. An “ugh” all around.
And I’ll again lump two days together, because:
Day 8: What’s your most challenging project?
This one wins for Day 8 as well. It isn’t the most complicated or demanding thing ever, but it’s the thing I frogged and re-did the most, and involves the most effort to figure out a new technique. (Because it was something so basic that no one felt the need to spell it out as they do with other things.) It gave me the most trouble, even if other things were more involved, so…
An Igloo made of Books by Miler Lagos
(Source: fer1972)
Day 6: What is your favorite piece that you’ve knit?
This is a tough one, because “favorite” encompasses so many possible attributes. There’s the one I feel I did the best job on, the one I feel I really exercised my creativity on, the one I felt best about giving to its intended recipient, the one I was proud of my execution of a new technique on, the one other people have complimented me most on… They’re all different things.
I guess I’ll go with my hat. I unfortunately haven’t gotten to wear it yet, because I completed it just as the weather started to warm up and I didn’t need a hat anymore. However, it was the first thing I made that was more complicated (if only slightly moreso) than “knit back and forth”, and the yarn (Malabrigo Merino Worsted) is FABULOUS.
"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced."
