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My adventures on the hook

 

I have always wanted to be a great knitter. Problem is I’m not even an ok knitter. A few times in my life I’ve gotten all inspired and started a scarf. But then the edges are wonky and it looks VERY home made and I’ve always given it up.

Recently I’ve read a few comments on posts where bloggers have said they are terrible knitters but they are good at crochet and more importantly that they enjoy it. Thus my adventures on the hook began!

I was inspired by Kate’s cowl and she gave me some words of encouragement so I borrowed a how to book from the library, a hook from my mum and bought a ball of cheap yarn to experiment with. I did a few small samples and thought they looked good enough to indulge in some lovely yarn. I think it is actually the yarn that I’m drawn to – all those gorgeous hand dyed colours and yarn is so lovely to touch and handle. I bought 2 skeins of Madeline Tosh DK in turquoise. I love the subtle variation in colour of the hand dyed yarn. I really love the fact it is 100% wool but is not at all scratchy!

I started with 2 strands of yarn, a 10mm hook and chained about 20 stitches before doing treble stitch. After I’d done about 20cm I decided I wanted it to be more of a wintery scarf that I could bundle up under my parka so I didn’t want it to be as open weave as it was. So then I undid it and tried a smaller hook. Wasn’t happy with that either, so I undid it again. Third time lucky?

I stuck to the 2 strands, the 10mm hook but changed to a double stitch. I had still chained about 20 stitches and started to realise that because the double stitch is a tighter weave my scarf wouldn’t be very long… Mr Tortoise thinks this is the best value project I’ve ever done and is quite happy for me to knit a scarf, unravel it and start over with the same yarn. So I unravelled it yet again, started over with 12 chains and hey presto fourth time lucky!

It ended up lovely and long which I like because now I can wind it around my neck more than once. Since it was my first crochet project I can’t say I found it entirely relaxing. I did get into the swing of it though and I can do it in the evenings; whereas my brain is always too shot from work to quilt in the evenings.

I thought it would be a good idea to get comfortable with this same stitch by doing another scarf. Then I think I will be ready to move onto other stitches and of course, more yarn!

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