afghan | 365 Days Handmade

March 12, 2015
by FC5 2 Comments

Day 70/365: Crocheted Afghan Still in Progress

Every Wednesday morning, my colleagues and I meet for IDTT: Interdisciplinary Treatment Team. An IDTT generally consists of a psychiatrist, a couple of psychologists, a social worker, and a correctional counselor. It’s basically a weekly committee where we review different patients’ treatment plans and meet with the inmate and discuss his treatment plan with him, including progress and goals.

Today one of the scheduled patients was a 23-year-old African American inmate with tattoos all over his face and the slouch and demeanor of a juvenile delinquent. He was assigned to my colleague Dr. Y’s caseload, and during our meeting with him, he sat with an air of indifference toward the whole process.

Upon the conclusion of our little conference, the kid got up to leave and started heading for the door. Dr. Y said (as he said to each and all of the inmates who came to IDTT), “Have a good day.”

The kid passed through the doorway and, to our surprise (and immense amusement), he casually tossed back, in a manner that he might reserve for wrapping up a phone call with his granny, “Love you, too.”

March 11, 2015
by FC5 6 Comments

Day 69/365: New Crocheted Afghan

I finished this little yellow afghan and sent it to a friend yesterday. (And in case you were wondering what I decided, I went with no edging.) I am still on a mission to use up yarn from my stash, so I decided to crochet another quick baby blankie to give away.

I crocheted a chain of 145 stitches and started a lacy strawberry pattern that incorporated a scalloped edging.

Like so.

Then I decided that it wouldn’t do for a baby afghan. So I ripped it all out and started a new pattern, this time with a shell stitch. It actually turned out kind of nice, so I think I’m sticking with it. For now.

Pretty, right?

Oh, P.S. I used my KnitPicks ballwinder to change that skein into a more attractive flat-bottomed ball. In case you noticed the difference between the two photos. Because I’m a little compulsive like that.

March 9, 2015
by FC5 6 Comments

Day 67/365: To Edge or Not to Edge?

Yes, I know. I should have been resting the arm and shoulder when it hurt from so many hours of knitting and crocheting, but I was so close to finishing my project. Well, actually, I was so close to running out of yarn that I figured, what the hell, I’m gonna keep on truckin’ until I finish this thing.

My primary intent in starting this particular afghan was to quickly use up yarn from the stash and turn it into something useful. This particular yarn is Caron Simply Soft, and the name of the color is Sunshine. I had two 7 oz. skeins that I knew would produce something the size of either a baby blanket or a small shawl.

After I ran out of yarn, I thought it looked kind of plain and needed something to fancy it up a little. So I added a simple shell border. But now I don’t know. Do you think it looks better with or without the edging?

Before: Without a border. I think it looks clean and simple this way.

After: With a white shell border. Now it looks a little more old-fashioned, I think.

March 8, 2015
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Day 66/365: Not A Nothing Day

“I don’t have anything to write about for tonight’s blog post,” I told Sean. “Today was kind of a nothing day.”

“You could write about how you got up this morning and your husband made you breakfast,” Sean said. “And then how later on we walked down the hill and went to the Otter Rock Café and had lunch with a view of the bay, and we watched a sea otter cracking open an oyster. And after that we walked down to the library and found a couple of good deals in the used book sale, and afterwards we went and got some really good frozen yogurt downtown. And tonight we went out for a delicious sushi dinner. Today wasn’t a nothing day.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Thanks for writing tonight’s blog post for me.”

And I got this much done on the afghan, along with everything else we did today.

March 7, 2015
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Day 65/365: Counting Down to the Time Change

Over these last few months, I’ve been staying late at work and typically leaving the prison between 5:30 to 6 PM. Normally I have no problem being inside a prison, unlike Sean who absolutely does not enjoy the idea of being locked inside a penitentiary surrounded by electric fencing, barbed wire, and gun towers with armed guards. But when it’s 5:30 PM in late November and outside of my office it’s like night time and I have to navigate my way through a prison yard where inmates are freely walking to the chow hall– I become acutely aware of my environment and the fact that I am a petite woman walking outnumbered among convicted felons who are potentially violent. It is a downright creepy, nervous-making feeling.

Now that it’s March, the days have started to stretch out longer so that it’s still bright outside when I leave my office, and I’m easily spotted by the correctional officers as I make my way through the facility. It’s also nice to get home and still have enough natural light to take a photo for the day’s blog post and show you a little bit of our view from the deck.

Ahh, fresh air and the ocean. Such a contrast to the work environment.

March 5, 2015
by FC5 4 Comments

Day 63/365: Letting Go of Perfectionism

So I was crocheting along last night, and I stopped to look over the rows that I’d completed so far. That’s when I noticed something about one of the shells. The pattern calls for shells that consist of three double crochet, a chain, and three more double crochet. That chain space is where you would insert a single crochet in the following row. Anyway, what I noticed was that I’d messed up the placement of a single crochet. Rather than insert it in the chain space, I’d crocheted it between two double crochet.

The crochet hook is pointing at the misplaced single crochet. See if you can spot the mistake.

I despaired for about a minute. I thought, I’ll rip it all out and fix it. But as you can see from the photo, I was already up a few rows. Fixing the mistake would have meant frogging half of the already completed afghan.

So then I had to ask myself: How important is it to you that this afghan be perfect? Do you really want to undo all of the work that you just completed, in order to fix a mistake that no one else would even know was there? In the grand scheme of things, is that one little imperfectly placed single crochet going to make a huge difference?

My younger and less-experienced-in-life self wouldn’t have had that little talk in her head. Upon noticing the flaw in her work, she would have immediately started ripping out the stitches to get at that one single crochet and fix it. My younger and less-experienced-in-life self was a little bit of an uptight perfectionist.

My older and current self is a lot smarter. (And really, lazier.) It just wasn’t worth it to me to undo the last hour’s worth of work just so that I could have all of my single crochets in all of the right chain-one spaces. Because even if all the stitches were where they were supposed to be, so what? This afghan was meant to be used and enjoyed, not put up on a wall for display.

So I made the decision to leave the stitches alone and to let my little mistake remain. In time, I’ll forget it’s even there, and I’ll have moved on to other projects and other concerns. Because that’s how it is in life sometimes.

March 4, 2015
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Day 62/365: New Crocheted Afghan Project

On Sunday I decided to put my newly upcycled shabby chic bureau in my craft room. (By the way, that particular room will have its own little makeover this summer, so stay tuned for that!) Of course, in order to make room for the bureau, I had to move a bunch of other stuff around, and this led to me sorting the yarn stash and realizing that I had accumulated an incredible amount of yarn that really needed to be put to good use.

It occurred to me that one way I could quickly use up some of the yarn would be to crochet an afghan and then donate it to charity or give it as a gift to someone who wanted it. And truth be told, I was getting kind of bored with knitting socks. So yesterday I pulled out the crochet hooks and started three different patterns of afghans. One was a strawberry lace pattern, the second had a popcorn stitch design, and the third was a basic repeating pattern of single crochet and treble crochet. I decided I didn’t like any of them and frogged each one (now I realize it would have made this post more interesting if I’d taken photos to share before taking them apart). I knew I really wanted to make something with a shell stitch, and I went back to a pattern that I liked.

This whole crocheting experiment took up a good deal of my afternoon yesterday. I’d set aside my work-in-progress sock, leaving it on the floor near the couch. Naturally I forgot it was there and then stepped on it last night, breaking one of the wooden needles in half and effectively putting an end to any further knitting on that sock.

So it looks like I will be working on my new yellow afghan for a while, or at least until this weekend, when I get sick of it or finish it or my new KnitPicks needles arrive, whichever comes first.

February 8, 2015
by FC5 2 Comments

Day 38/365: Crocheted Coast Ripple Blanket

A Deliberately Messy Pile so that the After photos will look that much more impressive.

This weekend I’m down at the Ventura homestead instead of Morro Bay. I brought my knitting with me, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I’m honestly bored with the monotony of knitting around and around and around in stockinette on this sweater. I’m thinking about changing it up and switching to a crocheted lace pattern for the remaining two-thirds of the body, but it’s more work than I want to get into right now.

Luckily, I have another work-in-progress here: I’m crocheting my own Coast Ripple Blanket, as designed by Lucy from Attic 24. The colors really do capture the feel of the coast, and it’s an easy ripple pattern to remember. And this time I’m getting better about weaving in the ends as I change colors, having learned my lesson from The Secret Ugly Side that this afghan is still sporting.

February 2, 2015
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Day 32/365: My First Completed Quilt

I knit a lot today. I worked on finishing this second sock, and I added several more rows to this sweater. The problem with knitting, though, is that it takes a lot longer to finish a knitted project than it does a crocheted project. It took me about two weeks to crochet, join, and finish this afghan, but I’ve lost count of the number of hours I’ve already put into knitting the aforementioned socks and sweater.

Anyway, rather than show you photos of my two current WIPs with one of them looking like no progress was made, I am sharing a photo of my first quilt instead. This is the patchwork quilt that I made in my Beginners Quilting class back in September and wrote about in this post. And that is our deck that needs painting and where you can see this view. Today was a really beautiful day with a clear blue sky and a flat, glassy ocean. If you’re ever in town, let me know and we can visit on the deck and enjoy the view. We’ll talk, knit, or crochet. I’ll pour you a glass of iced tea.

January 30, 2015
by FC5 7 Comments

Day 29/365: My First Post Featuring a Crocheted Project!

I know, I know. Almost a month into this blog, and no pictures of anything crocheted yet. So I present to you:

Ta-da!

(Click on any of the images to enlarge.)

A bit of a corner detail:

And another corner:

So pretty, right? So nice and neat and perfectly aligned.

But, ah, this afghan holds a secret.

Behold the back view:

Auugggghhhh!!!!! Unwoven ends!!!!!

Look, even closer:

Yes. It’s shameful. All those loose ends need to be cleaned up. I started and got some of them done. But it’s just not fun, man. I’d rather be doing something else.

Anyway, there’s an easy solution.

It’s like when Sean was a little boy and he and his family went out to eat, and he made a big mess and got spaghetti sauce all over himself, and then later on, after they left the restaurant, his mom happened to glance over at him and noticed his white shirt was spotless, and she said, “How did your shirt get so clean?” and he said, “Oh, I just turned it around, see?” and then he turned around to show her his back, and sure enough, there was the dirty spaghetti sauce part of his shirt, just on the other side.

So, yeah, like that.