So there are times I forget my project bag, or suddenly have an unexpected wait and didn’t think to grab my project bag. The horror. I have found that having a small ball of yarn and a crochet hook stashed in my purse has come to the rescue on several occasions. I currently have some green fingering weight merino that I am using to learn a new shawl pattern. It is just a wee bit of wool so doesn’t take up much room, and a mismatched crochet hook so I don’t break up a set. Phew, yarn.
I bought some beautifully dyed yarn from a hand dyer. In the dying process, the yarn is left in skein form, which is basically a large circle secured in several places with twists of yarn. To store the skein it is twisted and one end tucked into the other. The skein form is beautiful, and shows off the dye, but is not friendly for direct use. It must first be wound into a ball or cake to be nice for crochet or knitting. You can have one person hold the skein open on their hands, and hand wind a ball, if you have someone with extra patience. Or a swift does the job of holding the skein open, and there are many types. I have an umbrella swift (named thus because it opens like an umbrella). I also have a ball winder (sometimes called a new wool winder), that has a rotating handle and makes center-pull yarn cakes. The sound of the Swift and ball winder turning makes a nice swoosh and clickty clack I find soothing.
I hand-carved a crochet hook out of cherry wood from my Dad’s woods. I turned it on my lathe, carved in the ergonomic thumb indent, and the hook. After sanding it down to 400 grit, I painted two cherries on it (because cherry wood). When the paint was dry I started coating it with tung oil. The hook has actually been done since December, but I finally made myself make the Etsy listing. Honestly, making the hook was easier than putting together the listing with the pictures, video, and descriptions! (Yes, I even did a video, Missy makes a cameo.) I really need to do more of this so it isn’t so daunting. Oh, the hook? It is very nice, a smooth finish without being slick, and fits nicely in my hand. It is a size M, so for use with chunky yarn, and the short neck works well with single crochet stitches. The Etsy listing is here.
I finished the small bag I started. The initial ball of yarn was spun on a drop spindle using scraps of green colored roving from my Mom’s old stash. After spinning the single, I doubled it to make a 2-ply, fingering weight yarn (about 20 wraps per inch). I started with the opening using a single crochet, made ribbon holes by alternating single crochet and chain stitches, then the body of the bag is made of five chain lace with some picots. It only holds an apple, but its worth is more in the process, which showed me that my handspun, even with rougher wool, does fine as lace. And I still enjoy crochet.
Crocheting in a hammock while my youngest plays in the sunshine is a rather nice way to spend a spring afternoon. We’ve been cooped up for awhile, and the weather was great, so I grabbed a ball of yarn I spun a while ago and a crochet hook as we headed out the door. The plan is to make a small bag, because there isn’t much wool, using crochet lace stitches, so I can experiment with more lace.
