Crafting Time

Ok, so I've crocheted exactly one thing since I "learned" to crochet last March. I've been meaning to take on another project but honestly I haven't had time to decipher crochet abbreviations (makes me appreciate how foreign knitting instructions look to newbies) and master new techniques. My crafting time has really taken a hit the last year or so because of finishing up my second master's degree and, lately, because I've been ridiculously busy at work. Things have calmed down now so I'm picking the needles back up!

Crochet
Back in October, I bought yarn to make a Moss Fern Wrap and last Friday I went through the pattern and translated all of the abbreviations into words. Monday I brought my yarn, hook, and pattern to work with the intention of starting the project at lunch and thanks to the video at the bottom of this page I learned how to fsc (foundation single crochet). When I actually went to fsc, it occured to me that lace-weight mohair/silk yarn is not the best way to jump into crocheting. Um, yeah. Obviously.

Since then I've searched Ravelry to find an interesting crochet project that could be made with stash yarn. I didn't want to make a scarf or potholder, didn't have enough yarn for a sweater or shawl, and couldn't get excited about making a blanket or hat. Then I found some cute bibs: a frog-faced bib (have green yarn!) and a bib with an elephant on it (have gray yarn!). With any luck, those projects will each get another post sometime soon.

Knitting
After several months of hibernation, Girasole returned to my knitting rotation on February 1st. It sat untouched for many months because I kept making mistakes and because I had some master’s thesis deadlines to meet. (MA conferred February first--hooray!!)

<--I took this pic at lunch today. I'm a few rows into my second repeat of chart E. I was switching from a 32” cable to a 60” cable and the blanket still doesn’t lie flat with 92” of cable. That means it’ll be nice and BIG. Yay! Can’t wait to use this thing :) Since the number of sts increases with each round it's hard to estimate how much longer it will take to finish. It takes about an hour to do one round so I've got quite a bit of work still ahead of me.