Too many projects? NEVER!!!

I haven't written anything new in a while. I have been looking for new things to start crocheting, thinking about starting a crochet class here, and I am teaching my daughter Yani how to crochet. I am currently working on my hubby's blanket, my blanket, and trying to finish one row of my hair pin lace. My husband is constantly telling me, "You have way too many projects going on at one time." And I do,but I have never been able to complete just one project at a time.
 He doesn't understand how much repetitive patterns starts to fry your brain. Take my hubby' s blanket for instance: it has 9 separate rows of what I call "on top cable" stitches and I HATE them! They are the bane of my existence. I would rather do an entire blanket of ribbon stitching than to do another row of those cables. Don't get me wrong, his blanket is going to be awesome. But it will be completed with my sanity at risk. My hair pin lace is repetitive, but I love creating the loops and sliding them down to make more room on the pins. As for my blanket, I am going to finish when football season starts. It was a family tradition that my dad started. We would all get out our crochet hooks and while the games where on the TV.
 Despite me having a love hate thing with one of my projects, I wouldn't trade my talent with the yarn for anything. There is no such thing as too many crochet projects. The more you have the better you will be. The practice and learning of stitching various warm and beautiful items give me a joy that will never die.
 Get you a bunch of projects and crochet a few of them everyday. Find your love through too many projects :0)

The Bates and Boye No-tell.

I went to Michael's on Monday to get a new hook and some stitch markers. Normally I shop at Hobby Lobby but I needed to get my daughters guinea pig some goodies, and Michael's is right next to the Pet Smart. I could go into a rant about how they are so very limited on chunky yarn but I will save that blog for another day. This blog is about my hooks and what the people at the Bates, Boye, and other manufactures are doing to us crocheter's and knitters.
 I bought a size N 9.00 mm Boye crochet hook. When I got it home and tried to size it using my Susan Bates Knit Chek. To my horror my new hook fit none of the holes but one: 8 mm knitting needle size 11, and the kicker ladies and gentlemen, crochet hook size L! "How can this happen?" I asked my husband. He said different makers have different ideas on sizing. But why? Why would they not standardize the industry and make all of the hooks the same? It makes no sense and is highly annoying. Clearly no one in the industry today crochets and knows the importance of GAUGE.
 Without gauge our projects can not come out right. Without gauge we end up with short blankets and hats that don't fit. Gauge is everything in knitting and crochet. We who create and craft need a certain standard to go by. Call it a star to guide us. Without this star we get left to our own devices and try to compensate for not having the proper materials. Susan Bates, Boye, Yarnology these are just to name a few. These are the companies that we count on to bring us accurate and precise materials. If each one of these companies has a different idea of what needle size is correct or what crochet hook size is right, then how are we supposed to have accurately sized projects? The answer is: we don't and can't!
There is a small light at the end of the tunnel though. I bought, three years back, a hook from Yarnology. This hook is a K, 6 1/2 mm and it fits the Susan Bates Knit Chek. Yarnology apparently is in tune with Susan Bates' Knit Chek. And so I can tell you that I will be buying only Yarnology hooks. They are cheaper, yet well made. And they are the only hooks that are true to the Bates No-Tel.

Crocheters of the world unite!!!

So in 3 days it will be March. March to my utter enjoyment, is National Crochet Month :). In honor of crochet month I went to Michael's and bought a new pink N hook (aluminum), and a pack of beautiful stitch savers. My husband hates when I go into hobby store because he says I act like a kid in a candy store lol. But it is a candy store for serious crocheter's. I will never apologize for wanting every skein of yarn I see or lusting for every hook in every size.
 With our month up coming I am proud to have the blood of the Irish in me from whence our trade of crochet came. Ireland gave us crocheting and the CGoA (Crochet Guild of America) is reminding us all that crocheting is a beautiful hobby and skill to learn. So it is our duty to teach the kiddies, or even your friends that have asked about crocheting. Get the word out there and help encourage the wild growth of the crochet craft by teaching the young, and I mean boys as wells as girls :o). Make sure that the art of crochet does not die out. Google has reported that the words "How to crochet." is in the top ten search list for 2012! That means there are are tons of peeps looking to enter into the vast yarn land that is crochet :o).
As for me, I am going to continue to teach my neighbor how to crochet, remind my daughter to finish her crochet project this month,  shred on in my projects that I started, and continue to post on this blog, no matter if I have 1 or none followers. I LOVE CROCHET! And I will sing it from the moutains.... If north Texas had mountains lol. Crochet is not old, nor is it an old woman's craft. The possibilities of what can be made with a hook and a skein of yarn is limitless and the sooner my generation remembers this the better my daughters generation and her children's generation and so on, will be. Happy Crochet Month to all my fellow Hookers. Make it great, make it right and always make it with love. :o)

Is this where the Heart is??

So a little while ago I posted about how horrible the Red Heart Super Saver yarn is. It is scratchy and super coarse and has to be soaked in conditioner to soften it. Well I went to Walmart to pick up hubby's next color in his afghan, (I want to stay with this yarn because a switch would be noticeable) and I got a shock. The pumpkin color that hubby chose is super soft like Hobby Lobby's "I Love This Yarn!". I do mean really soft. How can this yarn come from the same company?? The difference is night and day!
It is super frustrating to have to deal with that Brillo pad like plum color yarn and then to buy the pumpkin and it be so soft. Consistency is a must Red Heart! You used to be the top dog in the craft world, but then you fell off the wagon and started not caring about consistency.  And of course I am unable to find the plum yarn because it is no dye lot yarn. All I ask for in crocheting materials is that it is consistent throughout, not feel like steel wool or saw through my hook. Is that too much to want?
Now my hubby's afghan will feel completely different.and I am going to need a ton of conditioner to soften the completed work. Red Heart you have lost me. :o(

Class is in session! Can you show me that again??

By now all should know that I am mainly self taught. I take pride in all I learned and I am quite eager to give back. So I offered to help teach my neighbor to crochet.
 She tells me half laughing and half disappointed, that she had paid for knitting lessons in the past. That she had paid for lessons was not the shock, people do it everyday. What upset me was what she said next. She said that the room was full and that the "teacher" never came to give her help. That not once did she come to my neighbor and see if she needed help.  My immediate thought was that this "teacher" got paid by every student and spent no time with any of them. I am pissed off with this! As women and men in the craft world it should be our first job to help our students! If the idea of getting a couple of hundred bucks out of a knitting class makes you happy, then you are definitely not in love with your choice of craft.
I strive to be the best crochetier that I can be. And this means being the best teacher I can be. I will go to every student and answer every question, sit in front of them for one on one demos, anything to help them learn.
 I spent about 1 1/2 hours with my neighbor and at the end before I left she could successfully crochet a chain. It was not perfe t but I didn't require that it should be. I just wanted her to get comfortable with holding the hook, pinching the chain and getting her to pull the loop straight through. She was happy that she could even do that. And I was proud that I could teach her anything at all.
I left her with homework. And I will see her again on Tuesday. And I didn't even ask her for a single dime.

The beauty of books :o)

I am a multi project type of crafts woman. I love doing two items at once. So I am doing hubby's Aran Afghan and "I Love This Yarn"'s Cables Afghan. The Cables Afghan was one of the first patterns I had ever done on my own. Everyone in the knit and crochet world knows that reading patterns and performing them correctly as read is not always easy. So imagine me with my Rosey Cheeks skeins ready to give this pattern a shot.
Let me say now that I had NEVER learned to read a pattern. My neighbor Miss Mary taught me how to do patterns. But she would crochet it and I would video tape what she was doing in my head. I would then go home after her lessons and recreate what she taught me from memory. She didn't do "patterns". She created her stuff from her imagination. So me not knowing that a treble is a series of yarn overs was the first problem I ran into. I know now that the number of YO's depend on what you want to achieve. But I didn't know that when I started lol. So I had to Google it. Ok I got that down. Next after the 10 dc's is a fpdc. Huh? What the heck is that? Ok Google didn't have a vid at the time so I begged (yes I said it begged) hubby to please help me. And by help I meant let me buy the help if I could find it lol. So I go back to Hobby Lobby an start looking for any help I could find. I found this: Crochet The Complete Guide by Jane Davis.
 This book has almost everything! This book taught me how to read patterns. It taught me about yarns, threads, ribbons, textures and more. I know reading is fundamental but knowing how to read patterns for crocheting is definitely a must. I now know how to treble :o)  I can make an Irish sprout, berry, leaf, and rose! Woohoo go Ireland! :o)
 Buy it, read it, learn from it. It saved my projects and has taken what Miss Mary had taught me and enhanced it :o)

They are killing.....my crochet hook??

So I am using Red Heart's Super Saver Pale Plum yarn for an Aran Afghan that hubby wants me to make for him. This yarn is so rough that it feels like I am trying to crochet with a Brillo pad! I looked at my aluminum crochet hook to see scratches. What?? Scratches? I was confused. How did they get there? "Hun, did you use my hook to get something sharp out of a hole??" Hubby gives me the "You're joking right" look telling me instantly it wasn't him. Can't blame the kids cause Bree and James love their hands too much to touch my hooks.  So I start back up on the afghan and something says look at the hook again. And I see that the scratches are deeper and snagging on the yarn! If Red Heart knew this yar was horrible, why would they keep it on shelves even if it is cheap? Next thing I do is start looking for a way to soften this yarn but I am dismayed that the only way involves lots of cheap hair conditioner. Ok when I get some cash I can visit the Dollar General. But why didn't Red Heart make a yarn softener since they know the yarn is so course??
   Next time I will spend the $4.99 plus tax to get Hobby Lobby's " I Love This Yarn!!". It is so darn soft my Bree Bree cuddles at night with her blanket. I know this much, I need a new hook :o(