Back to the basics

Most of you know that I am a very cre­ative per­son. I love to cre­ate things. As I tell peo­ple, “If I am not cre­at­ing, I am grumpy!”

But I don’t just cre­ate things on the com­put­er. I like cre­at­ing things with my hands. I love to paint, to draw, to cook, to bake, to sew (which I haven’t done in years). As well as unique art forms like Origa­mi and Kiriga­mi.

But recent­ly I have gone back to an old favorite that I haven’t last done since Riley was born 4 years ago! I’m talk­ing about Crochet.

When I was very young my sis­ter and my mom used to cro­chet. Being the young curi­ous kid I was (and cre­ative in the mak­ing) I want­ed to learn to. So it was some­time in the ’80s, that I learned to make my first scarf. I strick­ly kept to any­thing straight. Scarves, afghans, blan­kets, dish­clothes, etc. I nev­er learned to “work in the round” so to speak.

I also learned the basics of knit­ting, but I did­n’t like using two nee­dles, and I can be impa­tient and cro­chet­ing was much quick­er for me and I could breeze through a project quicker.

I have made baby blan­kets for each of the kids, and after Riley’s blan­ket I just stopped. I don’t know why. I think it was because I did­n’t know what else to make and I was tired of blan­kets and scarves that looked plain. I only ever learned sin­gle and dou­ble cro­chet stitch­es, so they weren’t very cre­ative (although Mikay­la’s was an inter­est­ing pat­tern I had found somewhere).

It was­n’t until recent­ly, while lis­ten­ing to iPad Today in the TWiT net­work, that some­one called in and men­tioned Rav­el­ry. This com­mu­ni­ty-based web­site has both knit­ting and cro­chet pat­terns of all sorts of stuff. I real­ly want­ed some fin­ger­less mit­tens to replace my old ones, and sure enough, there was a pattern!

So I bought new yarn and all new hooks (I have no idea where my old set is) and I got to work. Below is a gallery of all the items I have made so far in the last half of 2010. I am real­ly excit­ed to be cre­at­ing things with my hands again. Espe­cial­ly items that my girls just love!

Now, my goal is to get a bet­ter han­dle on knit­ting, and learn­ing how to work in the rounds, so that I can make real­ly nice fin­ger­less gloves for Amy and I, and some skull caps for me…and Mikay­la wants these boot/looking leg warm­ers (the lit­tle fash­ion­ista that she is).

So, if any­one wants any­thing. Let me know, maybe we can work some­thing out!