Learning from my mistakes

Happy Valentines Day! I got a lovely card from my husband and that has put a smile on my face. Just the fact that he remembered it was Valentines Day is enough. And yes, I remembered too!

While I sit and wait impatiently for my new fabric (with ideas of how to sew it growing in my mind daily) I have kept my fingers busy with my crocheting projects. I only picked up a crochet hook recently - to make those animal pillows for Helen's birthday party. It has been over twenty years since I crocheted anything else. The last time I took up the hook it was to make throws for any family and friends who would have them. It was my idea of a diet. If I was busy then I wasn't eating, so I kept myself busy. Only now in my wisdom do I know that I didn't need to lose weight back then.

Picking up a crochet hook again has been a joy. I love the motion of it. The pull of the wool. The quickness with which a project grows. The way I can just make things up as I go along. There in lies a small problem and where I am learning from my mistakes. Picking up a crochet hook after so long and never having looked at a crochet pattern means that my improvising throws up some interesting dilemmas on occasion. Like this -

If you want to put a rectangle into your crocheted baby blanket you have to think of the maths and your corners will no longer grow in that same regimented easy 45 degree angle. This is something I realised belatedly and, having fallen in love with way it looked despite the flaw, I persevered. The bamboo yarn feels amazing and the blanket has a real weight to it (almost 300gr) which makes it drape in the nicest of ways. So what if the blanket will never lie perfectly flat as demonstrated here -

Babies aren't flat. Blankets don't cover them in a flat manner. Now would someone do me the courtesy of having a baby. I have a fantastic gift for a new born!

The other project I have been working on is with all those little granny squares that form the background photo to this blog. They have gone from that to this -

I would like to thank Lucy at Attic24 for her tutorial on how to join up the squares as you crochet because that is just what I did. There are several wonky, misshaped squares because, again, my lack of patterns, practice or planning means I retaught myself how to do granny squares by making the first three or four wrong. I still put them in because I am not a perfectionist and this throw will be for the girls to use and not ever be foisted upon someone who might actually expect it to be make correctly. And, Lucy at Attic24, you have no idea who I am but I am about to put your other tutorial on how to have crinkle free granny square borders to good use. Maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks (or something along those lines). Thank you. This tutorial can be found here and I would like to say that I love this blog because it is fun, colourful with great photography and is well written.

Final word of this post goes to Emily, my eight year old, who can put so much more into a few words by injecting them with a huge amount of skeptisism. When asked if her father could help with something as I was busy she replied, "I don't know. Can he?" Maybe you had to be there, but I laughed long and hard.

Enjoy your own Valentines Day.
Susan