Yarn and hooks and needles, oh my!

I first became interested in the idea of using yarn to make things about a year ago. I first tried knitting.....that ended horribly. Somehow, I kept adding stitches to each row and ended up with a very very curved start to my first scarf. I found the needles quite unwieldy to my small (and I mean small) hands.

But, I didn't give up! At least, not on the idea of creating things out of yarn. I moved on to trying crochet. I got the hang of that in no time! I was quickly able to make some great things to wear, like fingerless gloves and socks!

You might now be wondering WHY I so wanted to be able to create things out of yarn. Well....for one thing, it is kind of hard to find wool socks or hats these days. We do a lot of SCA camping in cold weather (you can find out more about that here). We were getting ready to go to Gulf Wars, which is often a very cold event. And I wanted to be able to create wool socks, hats, sweaters and other warm things that also looked somewhat period.

Also, I'm a teacher, and I love the idea of handmaking things for people I care about. Last Christmas, when my (then) 6 year-old niece saw me working on the pair of fingerless gloves pictured above, she declared she wanted a pair to match mine. My nephew also declared he wanted a pair to match his uncle Mike's scarf. And so, of course, I lovingly obliged. Apparently, they didn't take them off for WEEKS. <3 When I was home a few days ago for Thanksgiving, my sweet niece said, "Aunt Lah, I still have the gloves you made me!" She went and dug them out and put them on to show me!

So...here I am. Since that time I've actually become much better at crochet-  better than I thought I would be! Stitches I tried a year ago and bungled are easy to understand and do now. I rarely follow patterns anymore, just use what I've learned from other projects and generally create my own pattern. Sometimes I write it down....sometimes I forget!

When I write it down, I'll share it here with you and on my Ravelry store. I'm also learning nalbinding, so you might see a few posts about that, and I love felting my crochet for projects and doing needle felting, so I'm sure that will slip in from time to time as well! In my next post- the Sunny Kitchen Hot Pads I'm crocheting for my coworkers as Christmas gifts.

Thanks for stopping by, and until next time!