One of the items in my ridiculously long UFO list is Jasmine, a cardigan in Rowan 4ply Cotton from Rowan 39.

I started this in the Spring of 2006 thinking it would be perfect for the summer to wear over little cotton dresses….unfortunately I didn’t read the pattern fully before I started and after I had knit all the panels I got to the bit of the pattern that said “with crochet hook pick up along left front, round back of neck, down right front and across back and crochet the lace border”

Hmmmm, slight problem, I can’t crochet. I have never been able to crochet. My grandma, who was a great crocheter, tried to teach me and failed. Jasmine was put to one side. I tried to follow the crochet instructions using some unwanted yarn and it looked awful. I really didn’t want to ruin this cardi so I put it to one side…I have friends who crochet so I thought, when I see one of them I’ll ask them to show me…..it got forgotten.

So now it has reappeared in my UFO list and I have to do something about it for THIS summer. So this weekend I taught myself to crochet. One of my crocheting friends gave me a book before Christmas “Learn to Crochet-A Beginners Guide” so armed with this and various internet sites I produced this -

My first ever crocheted granny square!!! It’s about 2″ square and knit with some left over Opal sock yarn.

I’m so proud of it! In the past when I’ve tried to crochet squares they’ve ended up like hats….no idea what I did different this time but it stayed flat - amazing

 

Spurred on by this success and having just signed up for the Crazy Afghan Squares swap on swapbot.com I looked for some more crochet square patterns and (not one to start with something easy) I have managed to produce this in just two days

This was crocheted with the same Opal sock yarn leftover, a UK no 11 crochet hook and the pattern was Granny Rose square motif at Patty’s Patterns

Once blocked it will be almost exactly 7″ square and so perfect for the swap….although I’m not sure I want to let my first ever successful crocheted item go…and being a harsh critic of myself I’m not sure it’s good enough to be sent to anyone as it was only knit with leftover yarn and the variegation makes it look odd. I may get some yarn in several colours and re crochet this motif in stripes however…

Anyway, it was only unpicked about 6 times before I got it right so that’s not bad is it - I learnt some lessons along the way…mainly that US and UK crochet terms are completely different - we say double you say triple, we say single you say double - I also kept forgetting to put in turning chains at the start of rounds…but I’m almost feeling confident enough to tackle Jasmine now.

Moonwalk training

The marathon training continued this weekend, today my mum and I went over to West Wycombe and walked from there along the valley to Saunderton and then back along the other side of the valley. It was a perfect winter day - amazing blue skies, sun shining and really cold. The walk was 7 miles and we finished in about 2 1/2 hours so not tremendously fast but we enjoyed it.

Finally, a gratuitous picture of my cat, Simpson, enjoying his Sunday

His favourite place - asleep on his cushion but close to the patio windows in case something occurs in the garden which needs his attention….

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 1:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Knitting, WIP, Moonwalk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.