“Finishitis”

Posted on March 29, 2010. Filed under: crochet and knitting |

Crafters in general I believe will know exactly what I’m talking about:) You (**start an intriguing project, it doesn’t look right, you pull it apart, re start it, it still doesn’t look right, you pull it apart YET AGAIN repeat from *** ad nauseum).

This is the category that a pattern I bought from a Crochetville class for a Tunisian Short Row scarf (Kim Guzman is the designer) falls into; I’m still trying to find the right size afghan hook that will give it the right look. The yarn I’m using is from Article Pract in Oakland, CA, Crystal Palace Mochi Plus. I tried to find it at Piedmont Yarn & Apparel first; it is a very nice yarn shop which kindly hosts the Crochet Guild chapter I’m a member of, Men Who Crochet (which despite its’ name welcomes women, if you are local to the SF East Bay area, they meet at PYA the third Saturday from 11/12 to 2). But evidently she doesn’t carry Crystal Palace yarns, at least I couldn’t find any.

Crochetville perhaps requires some explanation. Before Ravelry was HOT, Crochetville, started by Amy Shelton, provided crocheters with a warm friendly online home, setting up different forums for different crochet subjects, provided a classroom forum that allowed designers to teach, receive payment for their patterns, and provided a place for crocheters to chat and “interface” with one another. Not as rigid or as “MOM’d” as some of the YahooGroups crochet groups are, it is a much more easygoing community (in my opinion). I don’t read it as frequently as I’d like.

This means Ravelry.com also requires some explanation, at least for the “uninitiated”; Ravelry, an online knitting and crochet community (dyers, spinners, etc also “hang” out there) embraces knitters AND crocheters, although if you read posts at random, you might think it was a bit “knit-centric”. However, if you search the Groups tab, you will find crochet DOES have a large presence there.

I also bought a pattern from yet another Crochetville class, Toe up Socks by Karen Ratto-Whooley. I haven’t started this yet, but just bought some nice sock yarn from Bobbins Nest Studios, a yarn / fabric shop located in Santa Clara, CA (on Homestead near Jackson, for anyone “local”). It is a very friendly shop which I appreciate because it doesn’t look ‘down its’ nose’ at crocheters. (Some crocheters get “attitude” from some yarn shops, because crochet is the project in mind, as opposed to knitting.) Bobbins Nest is “dangerously close” to where my local Crochet Guild of America chapter, Southbay Crochet, meets (at the Santa Clara Senior Center on Fremont St @ Monroe Avenue, the last Saturday every month from 10 to about 1 or 2).

I am actually “almost” finished with an afghan (want to make it a BIT longer first). The pic below was taken quite a while ago, it is MUCH longer now. This is an old Columbia Minerva pattern a friend helped me find, Stadium Robe #783-3. This is done in Caron Simply Soft Brites, the yellow is Lemonade, the pink is Watermelon, and the orange is Mango (most of the yarn I got online from Knitting-Warehouse, which is located just west “over the hill” from me in Capitola, CA, I believe they are an online only store; if the owner reads this and this is incorrect, please correct me!