All Tied Up

Last week, I cleaned out and organized one of our kitchen cabinets. In one of the multiple piles of crap I pulled out, I found a crochet hook. I have no idea where it came from, if it was left behind by the house's previous owners, or if we brought it with us in one of our boxes of crap.

At any rate, when I was at Joann a few days later, I passed by the racks of yarn and did a walk-through. So many colors and textures and thicknesses. I admit it, I'm a sucker for tactile diversity. And the yarn was on sale. So I picked up a ball of "Woolish" yarn in "yellowish" and decided to make myself a scarf.

I used to know (sort of) how to crochet. My grandmother taught me the very basics when I was, I don't know, 8 or 9 or 10 years old. Whether I realized this would only set me further back on the nerd scale, or if I grew frustrated by my lack of ability to create anything more than...a whip, I don't remember, but I gave it up. Despite all the sewing I've done in the last two years, I've stayed far, far away from yarn. Knitting just scares the crap out of me (okay, not knitting so much as having two pointy sticks in my hands and a ball of string--that couldn't possibly end well). And when I think of yarn, I think of wool, which makes me think of itching until I scratch myself to a bloody mess.

Did you know they make yarn now that's as soft as a kitten's burp? They do. I don't know how, but they do.

Anyway, the other night, I picked up my Woolish yarn and my hook and my phone and Googled "learn to crochet." I taught myself the chain, the single crochet AND the double crochet. And I got about 2/3 of the way through my scarf before I ran out of yarn.

And realized I was doing it entirely wrong.

<Sigh.>

I kind of wondered why my scarf was curling up like it was. And I thought it was kind of a pain in the ass to have to cut the yarn at the end of every row and start over from the bottom again. Apparently that's not how it's done at all. I guess I should probably not read tutorials on my phone's li'l itsy bitsy screen. At night. In poor lighting.

So today I took a ball of new, delicious yellow-and-white cotton yarn, my hook, and my netbook (which has a slightly larger screen) and found some very good instructional videos to help me correct my mistakes. Right now I'm working on a lovely...square. Perhaps I'll use it as my own personal washcloth.

I'm not sure what I'll do with my curly woolish yellowish 3-inch-wide scarf. Maybe I'll make it into a festive dog leash. Or use it to tie up the toddler.