It had been a busy week this one just gone. I was undertaking the most ambitious & productive reading week since my studies began which meant five days of work experience at a newspaper followed by a weekend of working at the bookshop. Looking ahead to a seven day week, perhaps I should have anticipated my being slumped against a Northern Line tube carriage just a touch tearful come Sunday morning. It still felt good to have made the most of the time & actually prove that I'm not as habitually lazy as I had come to fear that I, err, was. One of the best things about busy weeks is also the not-so-busy weeks that often follow, when the focus of my frequent to-do lists shifts from dashes to Tesco Metro for milk on the way home & topping up my Oyster card to replying to long emails from friends & completing long-lost projects such as this.
Crochet isn't something that I've talked a lot about on this little blog (& I understand that it doesn't correlate exactly with the books & broccoli manifesto that I put forward since the name change) but I feel as if it's earned its place. Unlike some of my crafty friends, crochet isn't something that I've inherited as part of a family tradition, far from it in fact as I, modern gal that I am, taught myself from a series of YouTube videos, building up a tester swatch of stitches that I still hold dear. Although it seems a while ago now, I suspect that I took up my hook while looking for distractions from university work but it's a hobby that has really stuck.
The first Christmas since I took it up I perhaps predictably crocheted woollen scarves for everyone, family and friends alike, as my confidence grew. Soon I was fast making my way through the pattern index of numerous creative bloggers & pledged my allegiance to Ravelry, through which I was able to find patterns to make things like this amazing crochet turban (it's so cosy) Soon enough I was making crochet collars, triangle bunting & floral coasters in numerous hues & with varying chunkiness, likely enough to stock, say, an Etsy shop. I put a lot of time & heart into my short-lived Etsy venture 'SewKitschCrochet' but alas sales weren't spectacular & my time was increasingly taken up with other things (like the university work that I had been, ahem, avoiding) I hung up my crochet hook for a while but not before my Grandy had lodged one last order. She wanted a crochet blanket comprised of the larger squares that I'd tried out & shown her (this brilliant pattern here, if you're curious!) My Grandy promised that she would be the one to put them together (the least fun of any crafty project, I think fellow crocheters will agree) & I said I'd do it, happy to receive a bag full of wool & something to keep in mind over the coming weeks.
Well, weeks soon turned into months turned into I-don't-know-how-long. There was an initial burst of enthusiasm as I got to grips with the pattern but that soon waned as I wasn't used to the sheer repetitiveness of making something on such a scale. 21 white, 21 blue. The blanket was mostly forgotten about although it occasionally cropped up in a family joke e.g 'Liv'll probably have finished that blanket before she tidies up that bedroom, ha ha ha'. When I went back to university recently & found myself uncharacteristically organised with my course reading, crochet seemed like a great way to fill the gap again. I worried that I would've lost the stitches, that I would encounter the same boredom. Thankfully, not so. Determined to finish it before Christmas as the best of surprises for my Grandy, I diligently picked up my hook again a month or so ago & watched as the tally of the squares went up & up. 21 white, 21 blue - ta dah! Here she is & ahead of schedule too.
I've always thought that there are many ways to chart progress - updating your CV with work experience, for example or endlessly photographing your dinners, of which I'm also guilty - but there's something special about wool. You can hold it in your hands, up to the light that it stencils, feel the stitches beneath your fingers, see where you've tiredly woven in the ends, where the edges are wonky. This blanket is by no means perfect. The squares are different sizes - large, loving, loose stitches & tiny, taut ones - some are lop-sided, others evidently earlier than others. That's the best thing about this blanket. It holds within it the last two years of my creative life & will soon go onto my Grandy's bed, at long last.
Now to keep it wrapped up until Christmas...!
Do you crochet? What've you been crafting lately?
Speak soon - O.
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