It’s cold, we’re staying in.
Hello! Sorry for the long delay, but thanks very much for saying nice things about my hat. I’m actually reaching near total happiness with it. And look!
I haz a pom!
It’s scraggidy and a wee bit more oblong than round, but it’s as cheerful and charming as a pom can be and I love it.
I hope all your holidays were wonderful, that you are fully recovered from them, and are now happily crafting only for you (if you want to I mean, no pressure.) Right now Bri and I are very into staying cozy and doing domestic things like decorting, cooking and playing video games. We comb Craig’s List furniture listings together, send each other links from Apartment Therapy and Design Sponge, we’ve learned to appreciate the humble staple lifter. We’ve even cleaned and reorganized the closet, which is how I came across this.
This is the last little bit of the very first yarn I knit with in what I think of as “my knitting: modern era.” As opposed to “my knitting: crap era,” which was 20 years ago and eventually resulted in a renewed devotion to my first fiber craft love, crochet. No, this comes from years later when Brian got so bored of me mentioning that it might be cool to try knitting again, he hauled me down to Michael’s, convinced me to get a Susan Bates starter kit, complete with instructional booklet (heavy on 80’s sweaters and garter stitch pillow covers,) two skiens of what I believe was Red Heart, and exasperatedly told me to just try it already.
An important archeological find if ever there was one, but what to do with it?
This jack bugs me, it’s right next to the sink and it ruins my view while I’m doing dishes, chopping vegetables, or squeezing a lime wedge into a can of Modelo. Usually I try to cover up ugly things on the wall with framed pictures, but I couldn’t decide what belonged here. I’ve got the two Nikki McClure prints right over the switch and some photos on a wall close by, so I didn’t want anything too similar, and it had to be red, and graphic, and not too representational.
I tried cutting out a blowup of a section of a suzani from a catalog, which I should have known wouldn’t work. That paper’s wooh(!) shiny, even if you throw a mat and frame around it, it still looks like you cut a picture out of a magazine and framed it because you are lame and couldn’t make the effort to find some real art, or a real piece of fabric for that matter. Still not wanting to leave the house, or wait for shipping, I tried getting out some pens and making myself a little masterpiece, something that’s hard to do when you lack direction, inspiration, or even skillz.
It was a while before I remembered that hey, I’m skilled at making things with yarn! I should make something red, graphic, and not too representational out of yarn. This thing will be flat so I can put it in a frame that will cover up the jack. This thing will be a doily!
Now my taste doesn’t really run to the lacy, flouncy or frilly, but I do have a couple flowery things lurking around the house:
Maybe I could find a not very victorian doily pattern that had something in common with the shapes I already had goin’ on? And maybe I could use up the very last of The First Yarn, because for all its acrylicness, it’s actually a very pretty shade of red. Plus it’d be ironic (satisfyingly cyclical?) to use it for a crochet project.
Ok, so not much of a doily, more of a coaster I guess, or a potholder, a yarny trivet, whatever.
It still makes the kitchen prettier right? Even though it’s a bit small for the frame, and would probably have turned out more graphic if I had used a larger hook, I still dig it.
Pattern: Some sort of variation on Kimberly’s Flower Coaster by Kimberly Andrew.
Yarn: I’m thinking Red Heart Classic Solid
Hook: 3.75 mm/US F, maybe.