Today the Boys learned hide and seek and tag. It's amazing to watch two small smart dogs make their own games, and watch how they play - like children. In the photos I could not upload there are pics of hide and seek under the bedskirt. (With any luck, by the time you are reading this you will have seen this pictures above.) They played this forever, then switched to a crazed game of tag/chase me. The great thing about little dogs is they can have an absolutely wild and crazy indoor running fit and no furniture is overturned in the process. They RAN - tongues flapping, eyes bugging, panting, growling, skidding, falling over, barking - until I had to break up the game and force a rest period. I'm SO glad they are getting along like this, it's truly wonderful, and even better than I'd hoped!
I also tried to upload some scans from crochet magazines of the 80s-90s. Back in the Day, it was often possible to weed through the
Anyway, about, uh, 13 years ago?? I made a crocheted jacket from Herrschner's Crochet magazine (which I still consider the gold standard of crochet mags and why the hell did they quit publishing it, I'm still nursing a grudge) for my then (very tall for her age) 9 y.o. daughter. The magazine was the casualty of one of our many moves, and the jacket was the casualty of a playground rip that could not be mended - an enormous gaping wound, allegedly the BITE of another child. Anyway...some months ago I ventured onto eBay, a place I normally avoid like the Satanic Pit of Temptation it is, and bid on and won some lots of old Herrschner's crochet mags, and lo and whaddya know, I hit on the issue with the long-lost jacket. And I want to make another one. I've been blathering about a soft cosy dog walking jacket for years, and damn, this would do it, and I have a boatload of Patons Classic Wool in olive green that would be so nice in this pattern. And of course, nothing eats stash like crochet. Heh.
And I've been turned onto The Crochet Dude via the fabulous Crazy Aunt Purl, and though I've been walking the straight and narrow knitting needle path, you can't reform an old hooker. So after the boys have another mad play session and I park Dudley in his little bed until his mother gets home from work, I will drag out that vintage mag and the wool, and let the Hooking Begin.
I'm a relative amateur when it comes to hooking, but I've always wondered why there are so few decent-looking garments in crochet. I concluded (perhaps incorrectly) that the crochet stitch is more limited with regards to shaping because it's inelastic.
ReplyDeleteI may be jaundiced by the books I have collected from the 1970s, but so much of it seemed to have been cobbled together out of granny squares into some ill-fitting monstrosity.
Mind you, there are some nice things in the books, too, but they're rare.
I have some gorgeous patterns for crocheted lace.
Nicely fitting crochet is rare, but not impossible. Crochet is thicker and somewhat less flexible, but I've seen very cute crocheted jackets and baby things. I prefer making crocheted lace to knitted by a long margin - part of this is ingrained, I as raised in a family of Crocheted Lace Goddesses and the entire concept of knitted lace is vaguely suspicious to me - lace is crocheted. IT just IS.
ReplyDeleteBwahaha! I have the opposite prejudice, having been raised in a family of knitters. Crochet, because it is thicker, always looked a little clunky to me.
ReplyDeleteBut I do have some breathtakingly beautiful patterns for crocheted lace. Such as a rectangular table runner in a "Harvest" pattern.
Technically, both crocheted and knitted laces are "pseudo-laces", that is, they're imitating true laces, which are needle laces or bobbin laces.
One of these days, when I have a LOT more time on my hands, I'd like to try bobbin lace. Looking at the patterns (say, Honiton or Chantilly lace) and all the bobbins hanging down from the WIP, I think I'd need complete solitude. Perhaps I'll hang a sign on the door warning that those who dare disturb me risk a messy and horrible death.
I also have a feeling it would take me some years to complete a single project.
Ain't no way I'm doin' Bobbin Lace in this lifetime or any other. I love crocheted lace because when you fuck it up you can rip it out ONE stitch at a time, no need for a lifeline! I remember visiting a yarn shop and listening to one of the locals describe a project she was doing - she had to have Complete Silence. Her family was Warned Not to Disturb Her. It required Total Concentration. And this is what she does for fun??? I'll totally concentrate when I'm really motivated, and I'm really motivated when I'm getting paid to produce or somebody's life depends on it.
ReplyDeleteI don't totally concentrate while crafting, and that's just How It Is. It's my fun time, I don't want to stress over it.
That is true about it being easier to fix mistakes in crocheted lace. I made a mistake in some lace I was knitting and didn't notice for several rows. I had to rip it back, figure out where I was in the pattern, then carry on. That took a few hours.
ReplyDeleteI didn't need absolute solitude while knitting lace, but if I was disturbed too much mistakes like that happened. And I couldn't work on it for more than an hour or so at a time.
I use crafting to unwind, but it's also my "me" time. One of the reasons I don't KIP much anymore. I get too many strangers who insist on talking to me just because I'm knitting. I find it irritating because they don't seem to get the hint to go away--will, in fact, labour through a conversation I am obviously unwilling to have. It obviously never crosses their mind that the 20 minutes or so in the coffee shop or whatever is the only alone time I have that day.
Maybe I'm being hostile, but what in Hell makes them think I want to have a conversation with them?
Bobbin lace may not be for me either as I'm not a great multi-tasker and I'd get bored with too much solitude. I knew someone who made bobbin lace, and she insisted it was easy and she chatted to people all the time while working on it.
A better woman than I.
Once a hooker always a hooker.... ;)
ReplyDeleteDamn right, Dude!
ReplyDelete