The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. I thought it was kind of interesting so here it is!
Here's an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
My mom expressed a desire for some pot holders for her kitchen. I happened to have some suitable cotton on hand to make some. She likes frou frou things so I thought I’d look up some fancy pot holder patterns on Ravelry. This led me to the conclusion that many people don’t know the difference between a hot pad and a pot holder. Either that or they’ve never actually cooked anything.
Clue: if your design has LARGE HOLES IN IT, it will be useless as a pot holder. You might as well grab the dang pan with your bare hand. Though on the bright side, the resulting burn from the holey pot holder will be an interesting pattern…
I’ve always been a little bit ambivalent about yarn bombing. One type I like–the one where people run out at night; leave gloves, scarves and hats; and the items are taken by people who need them–usually within hours. The yarn bombing where people go out and cover things with yarn looks kind of cool. But a year later when it’s still hanging there looking bedraggled it’s a bit of an eyesore really. At that point it becomes more vandalism, or littering, than art.
Agata Oleksiak is a Polish yarn artist who is known for covering things with crochet. Most notably she’s covered a bus and a bull statue on Wall street.
Now she’s in trouble with the Mexican government for covering some underwater sculptures with crochet in order to call attention to the plight of underwater species. The thing is, the sculptures she covered were homes for underwater animals and by covering the sculptures she’s managed to kill the wildlife.
The Mexican government is preparing to bring charges against her. If that weren’t bad enough, her attitude in the article comes across as clueless about the issue she’s trying to bring attention to! She states that her intentions were positive and that’s all that really mattered. And wants to pay them back by covering even MORE underwater sculptures. 😮
It really does pay to have a clue about your issues before you mount a protest.
I started a second version of my little bag that I just finished. Not much to take pictures of yet, though. I decided to get fancy so it has a polka dot scheme. I have a bunch of the dots made and now have to square them up. I think this one will look much better!
I’m feeling a bit unfaithful. In another awesome random act of kindness, I was given a Clover Amour hook to try. It’s the one on the left in the picture. On the right you see my long-time hook. It’s a Susan Bates style that I picked up in a box lot on Ebay a few years ago. I fully credit this hook with getting me back into crochet in a big way. It’s like a Bates Quicksliver–very slick with a gray coating. I’ve crocheted so much with it that the gray is starting to wear down to the silver underneath. I modified it with grip tape to keep my hand from cramping, and because in a marathon crochet stint I made a bruise on the side of my finger!
I am a roller when it comes to crochet. I tend to roll the hook back and forth between my fingers as I work, which means most ergonomic hooks don’t work for me because of the shape. But the Clover Amour is a dream! The grip is very comfortable. It’s flat on one side and has a corresponding rounded part on the other. It’s almost as if it had been pushed on one side and it bulged out on the other. It works. It’s comfortable! I used it all day yesterday and today while my faithful gray hook languished on my table, reproaching me.
The only downside to the Amour is that it’s got a shallower throat than my usual hook, and an more rounded hook. It’s about halfway between a Boye style and a Bates style. I think I might even be able to use smaller hooks with this brand, if the throat thing doesn’t start tripping me up. I think more experimentation is in order.
Meanwhile, my trusty gray hook sends out “trip her up!” vibes while I’m using the Amour.
Got a few more of my little squares for my next gift box done. It was grocery day. I never get much done on grocery day. I took my crochet with me to work on while waiting for the bus. A lady walked up to me and just stood gawking. I finally said “Hello?” She expressed astonishment that I was crocheting by saying “wow, I thought people quit doing that in the sixties!” I told her she might be right, I could be reviving a lost art! She wandered away looking a bit impressed. I am a bad, snarky person…
I made a little gift box with RHSS Teal. I use a “G” hook for these and it really does a number on my hand. I used to use that size hook all the time–maybe that’s why I never entirely embraced crochet before. The combo of using an “H” hook and switching to Bates style made all the difference.
But I digress. I’ve made a few of these little boxes and I like the way they look. It’s basically a hat. I make increases until the base is the size I want. On the next row I SC in BLO to give it a defined edge. For the sides I just freeform–alternating between rounds of SC, DC, or HDC. The lid is just the same, but including one extra round of SC to make it slightly larger than the box.
My slide protectors that I got on Listia arrived today and it looks like they are going to work like I wanted!! At the top of the picture you can see (kind of) several pages laid out with a few squares in each one. At the bottom is a page flipped over showing my little cards with info on them. I’m keeping like kinds of yarn together, thus the reason for the squares spread out in different pages. So far I have a page for RHSS, RH Classic, RH Soft, RH Fleck, TLC Essentials and Misc.
This could turn into one of my oddball extreme projects that I come up with from time to time. My original intent was to swatch only yarns that I might use regularly. But now I think it would be neat to get swatches of any kind of yarn to have it on hand. I’ve already decided to limit it to worsted, DK or sock weight though! One must draw the line somewhere. Now I’ll be that annoying person bugging people I know: “Could you send me 5 yards of anything you have lying around? But be sure to include Brand, color and weight!” 😀
Today was spent on a variety of crochet things, with nothing actually completed. But I kind of like days like that. I’ll work a little bit on this thing, a little bit on that thing, and then play with yarn for awhile. It might be said that I get far too much enjoyment out of my yarn winder…
Time was spent formulating an idea for an object for a gift. I think I’ve decided how to go about constructing it, now I just have to get a start on it. It’ll be a quirky thing but that’s all right! Hopefully the recipient will appreciate quirky as much as I do.
I just got my latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine. I didn’t look at it too closely at first because I thought it was a needlepoint piece. But when I looked closer, I realized it was crochet!! The piece is called “Wool Chow Mein Fake-Away” and is by Kate Jenkins. You can see more of her crochet food creations and another article on the Smithsonian Magazine website.
Craftaceous Period 