Crafts to Soothe the Soul

Perhaps you've noticed that the Reading section of the sidebar has been rather sparsely populated of late.  The most significant reason was the density of Dickens's Bleak House and the necessity to ready 200+ pages before class at 9am every Friday in May.  There's no skimming those pages; tidbits of great importance are hidden deep within the wigomeration.... Dickens's own word for excessive verbiage, though his was of the legal variety. 

Schoolwork has taken over my life before, and yet I managed to sneak in a bit of James Patterson brain candy just to ease the pain.  Not so in recent months.  I find myself racing home not to pick up where I'd last left the heroine but to the couch and my crochet hook and the softest, brightest, loveliest yarns I can find.... as long as they are also washable and hypoallergenic.

I'm missing my pregnant daughter more and more every day.  As the baby grows, so grows my obsession.  TBG has renamed me CrochetZilla; it's apt.

I started with hats that looked like flying saucers.  I ignored the gauge required to make the finished product resemble the picture on the page.  Over time, I've gotten better at making a small square to check for size; usually I'm wider and shorter than required.  I've yet to figure out how to change the size of the hook to remedy that situation.  It's a good thing that babies are short and squishy.... fit becomes fungible.

I graduated from plain beanies to turbans

 

 and frilly sunhats 

I've made matching mittens.... with idiot strings to keep them together. 

Bored with these small projects, I moved on to sweaters.

Here, the gauge became more important.

The sleeves on this sweater are ballooning out at the end.

I paid no attention to the weight of the yarn required, nor the number of stitches per inch.

My guess is that her hands will be somewhere well within  the rose part and her parents can decide to roll up the rest or leave her as a fingerless child.

 

Those parents were amused by our attempts at a beret.

(Our because TBG designs and I work)

 

SIR doesn't think her head will ever be big enough to hold it up.

We all agreed that it is adorable, though.

 

We disagreed on the edging for this one. 

My husband prefers monochromatic visuals.

I wanted to incorporate the white to make a sweater set since I didn't have enough purple yarn left to make a full hat or set of mittens.

I always win.

I do the work. 

This afternoon, on my way home from brunch with Brenda Starr at Prep and Pastry,

I stopped into my home away from home - Michaels - and bought enough pink yarn to finish a striped cardigan and some multi-colored yarn I just couldn't stop fondling.

 

There are certain times that I wish I lived in a place where scarves and sweaters were necessary.