Crochet away!

I may have mentioned my fabric explosion. Sewing is great for keeping hands and body busy. But the machines are noisy, meaning I can't use them at night, and they are big and heavy, so I can't take them with me when we go to hospital or away.

I have a wonderful knitting box. It was my grandmother's, and still has many of her old patterns and women's magazines from the '60s and '70s. I can't imagine ever wanting to knit up a pair of woolly britches, and I cannot figure out how to do cable stitch either. But I love the smell which greets me when I open the box; slightly musky, wood and wool and paper and just the faintest hint of Grandma. And I love the fact that my needles were her needles. Her fingers flew across the wool; whether she was knitting or crocheting even the biggest project visibly grew through the course of the afternoon. I'm a lot slower; I have to be content with measuring my progress in inches rather than feet. But I still enjoy it.

When Goldy died, I reached for the needles and made a very boring plain brown blanket. I don't know what we'll do with it; it's long and narrow, too wide for a scarf, too thin for a lap blanket, too ugly for a baby. Little Fish will probably annex it for her dolls. Or possibly to carpet a pretend play house.

Over the weekend, Trina sent me here. And here. And here! And we sent each other to lots of different places courtesy of You Tube (search on crochet, far too many to list). Which inspired me to put my knitting needles away and dig out the crochet hook. This lady's you tube video clips were really helpful in helping me figure out what I'd forgotten (turns out I was trying to knit with a crochet hook. It doesn't work.

Inspired, I went off to our local wool shop to pick up something yummy. I don't have a wool stash (yet!), so am forced out to the shop. Oh the hardship. Forced to go shopping. In a craft shop. Awful! Imagine my feelings when I discovered the shop had a sale on all their wools. All their discontinued ranges were marked down. A lot. I now have the most yummy Rowan plaid yard, seven 4oz balls for the price of 2, five balls of pale blue alpaca silk for the price of 2, and two packs of ten balls of baby double knit, one cream, one white. We have a lot of babies due in our family over the next six months or so, and these wools will be perfect. Not right for crocheting, but hey, can't have everything, right?

So, do I go back to the wool shop and fill another bag with bargain wool, running the risk of finding even more knitting projects, or do I give up the idea of crocheting for now, and run with the knitting instead? I definitely want to have the crochet down pat before Little Fish's hospital trip - a ball of wool and a hook take up less space and are less pointy than a pair of long needles. But if I go back I just know I'll end up with more packs of bargain knitting wool. I wonder if I should just risk playing around with the silk - it's so soft.

Watch this space!
Tia