Life can be heavy, especially if you are a snail crawling on vertical glass.
Yes, I’ve managed to slip in a quote from the Labyrinth into my blog. Mwa ha ha.
Glass snail
Worm size
Once again, I have a hard time making many things all the same. What happens if I change stitches, or hook size, or yarn type, or starting stitches, or… well you can see where my mind goes. I did a little experiment with the worry worms and stitch type. I used three different stitches: single crochet, half double crochet, and double crochet.
As expected, the length and width changed with the different stitch types. What I didn’t expect was the neat chain edge on the half double crochet, and it has a nice full squishiness to it. I don’t care for the double crochet worm, it came out limp and floppy, which I didn’t expect from a larger stitch.
Mint top
I finished the first spin of the mint top fiber from my plant fiber sample pack my sister gave me almost two years ago. I am down to three packs from the original set. I’ve spun the rest and made up fiber pages for all of them. I may need another book to hold all the pages!
The mint top is “cellulose fiber infused with mint”, which is supposed to make the fabric feel cooler. I didn’t notice any cool feeling when I was spinning it, and it doesn’t smell like mint. It is a pleasure to spin though, and spins fine easily.
My plan is to three ply the single to give it some weight. I’m contemplating whether to chain ply or divide the fiber onto three bobbins. If I chain ply I don’t have to remove it from the spindle, or can transfer it to a single bobbin if I’m worried about the spindle jumping around. If I divide, I’ll have some single left over and I’ll have to transfer it to three bobbins. The risk of breaking lies in transferring to different bobbins and potentially losing some twist and weakening the single, or applying too much stress when making loops for chain plying. I think I’ll think on it some more.
Chaunacops fish
Scrolling I saw reference to a Chaunacops fish, which is a deep ocean variety of sea toad that can be a lurid red. One of the commenters said it looked like their grandma crocheted it. Hm. Could I crochet one?
I’m in hat making mode, so rather than make a stuffed animal, I decorated a red beanie with fins, tail, and mouth.
I didn’t do a pattern, this just was a fun little experiment. I do like how well a single crochet ribbing does for making fins.
It amuses me greatly.
Spiral start in crochet
Another way to start a beanie is making a spiral. The good part of the spiral is that there is no seam where a row starts, so it works well with variegated yarn with a long stretches of color. The tricky part is you need to use stitch markers to mark the beginning of the round to get your increases correct, and you need to decrease stitch size at the brim before weaving in the end.
Critters and Craft 