Spring!

Florida doesn't have a dramatic spring, where one day you wake up and the world is suddenly green again. It's always green here. But we do have a subtle spring, when overnight the trees sprout these baby green leaves, and the sky is the color I tried to capture on my bedroom walls.



I am not a big fan of Daylight Saving Time, and definitely not a fan of mosquitoes. I am covered in mosquito bites - yes, already, and yes, it is early in the season even for FL - and the damn bites have a built-in timer, right around 4:30 a.m. for the last three days the Benadryl spray I bathed in before bed has worn off, and I wake up clawing at my forearms with both hands. This morning, of course, the clock said 5:30 a.m., and my body was not fooled and I wanted to go back to sleep, but Murphy would not let me, so I really did lose an hour today. Bedtime will be early tonight.

I had one of those huge duh moments today, while looking at the bazillion hexagons I've made for my guest room afghan. I was laying them out on the bed, and I was disappointed and dissatisfied. It did indeed look retro and granny-square-ish, not that I have anything against either retro or the noble granny, but it wasn't what I was trying for here. I've crocheted a ton of hexagons, in cocoa and a coffee with cream lighter shade, and edged them in an off-white. And therein lies the problem. The white edging screams RETRO AND GRANNY. A hexagon by itself is a hexagon. Put all those neutral hexagons together without edging and it's subtle and modern. Edge it in a contrasting color and it's suddenly retro, and not in a good way. So I'll be removing all the white, and I may just make some white hexagons to add to the mix, or I may just leave this afghan as a very neutral tan and cocoa guest room throw. I'm leaning toward the latter course at the moment. And this is why I do love to just mess around with crochet and make things up as I go along, while I would not have the same casual attitude toward a similar investment in knitted stitches. Imagine knitting something similar in scope, say a huge circular shawl with a bajillion stitches on the last row where you then added a border. Then imagine that upon further reflection in the light of day, you really hate that damn border and it looks like shit, and imagine the thought of painstakingly removing it, and carefully capturing and picking up all those live stitches, only to bind off all over again. If I'd hated my design decision this many stitches into a knitting project I'd be horrified and deeply depressed, and then I'd stuff the whole damn thing in a Hefty bag and bury it at the back of the closet and hope that in two or three years I won't hate it so much, but I probably would. But this is a snap to fix. Crochet is so much more suited to impulsive choices and abrupt design decisions - I can zip that white row off each hexagon in a minute without having to crochet so much as another stitch to fix my bad design impulse.

I do love this Cottontale 8. It's fingering weight and as light and as soft as its name suggests, and is just the right weight for a light summer throw, and would be perfect for a cute little summer cardigan. I am going to accumulate more, much more, in richer colors, for a second afghan, big enough for a queen-sized bed.