Read Online Hooked for Life by Mary Beth Temple - Free Book Online
Authors: Mary Beth Temple
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it made me crazy. It’s making me a little bit crazy just now writing about it. So I am guessing that making my own Magic Ball, which iswhat many contemporary crocheters call these tied together yarns, is not the answer.
I decided that I had to have some standard—a firm mathematical concept that would guide my bits storage. If a ball of yarn has less than X yards remaining, it is no longer a ball of yarn, it is trash. I had to be able to think of something I could actually do with the yarn or it had to go. Of course it doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot of yarn to do the first round or two of a granny square, so the smallish balls didn’t really go anywhere but back in the box.
Recently I was finishing up a bunch of afghan models for a pattern book. I had left way long ends on the squares because I wasn’t sure how I was going to assemble them, so I figured the ends would make good stitching-up yarn. It turned out that I didn’t need a foot or more of yarn dangling in every color, so some colors I used to assemble and some ends I had to weave in, cutting off an eight- to twelve-inch tail when I was through. The tails started to pile up, and I had to do something with them. Had I finally reached my mathematical limit? Could I throw away a foot-long tail? I decided I could, and was heading off to the kitchen trash can when my daughter stuck her head in the doorway. “Hey, aren’t those wool?” she asked. “You know, I could needlefelt with those, you should keep them.” And then she went on her merry way.
I grabbed a ziptop plastic bag and threw them in, collecting more and more as I finished the afghan, until there were at least a hundred pieces in there. I looked, and I thought, and I pondered, and then I went to the trash can and threw them all away. Apparently I
had
found my limit and twelve inches was it. I was even good enough not to separate the longer tails from the shorter ones. I just threw caution to the wind and chucked the entire contents of the bag.
I am kind of hoping though that the seagulls and other nesting animals that hang out around the garbage dumps will snag these little woolen bits and take them home. Just think how soft and warm their nests would be. And then the strands would not have gone to waste. Maybe I should take up needlefelting …
No Brain Cells Required
I love all of the many forms my crocheting can take—from delicate lace made with a tiny hook and cobweb-weight cotton to a thick scarf made from bulky-weight wool. But sometimes when I am picking a project, I am less interested in what it’s going to turn out to be than in how it fits into my available crafting time.
If I am home my comfy corner chair with my special light on and every tool I could ever want on hand, the sky’s the limit so far as technical challenge goes. There is something incredibly satisfying about working on a very complicated pattern and watching the results grow under my fingers. Even if I have to frog my efforts twelve times, that thirteenth time, when I win the battle of crocheter vs. crocheting, at least temporarily, can leave me grinning for days. And while I am working on the piece, I am totally involved in it … counting stitches and rows, working for hours to get an inch of fabric, trying to imagine how this puzzle piece isgoing to fit in with all the others and give me the end result that I want. My crocheting absorbs all of my attention—in fact, requires it, lest bad things happen.
But if I am out and about with only short spurts of time to crochet or in the company of people who are likely to want me to listen to them while they speak to me, I want brainless crochet. I want something that I could pretty much do blindfolded and standing on my head without messing anything up. In short, I want chimp work.
I cannot take credit for “chimp work” as a descriptive term, although I wish I could. I vividly remember the first time I heard it. It was the wee hours of the morning and I was
I decided that I had to have some standard—a firm mathematical concept that would guide my bits storage. If a ball of yarn has less than X yards remaining, it is no longer a ball of yarn, it is trash. I had to be able to think of something I could actually do with the yarn or it had to go. Of course it doesn’t take a whole heck of a lot of yarn to do the first round or two of a granny square, so the smallish balls didn’t really go anywhere but back in the box.
Recently I was finishing up a bunch of afghan models for a pattern book. I had left way long ends on the squares because I wasn’t sure how I was going to assemble them, so I figured the ends would make good stitching-up yarn. It turned out that I didn’t need a foot or more of yarn dangling in every color, so some colors I used to assemble and some ends I had to weave in, cutting off an eight- to twelve-inch tail when I was through. The tails started to pile up, and I had to do something with them. Had I finally reached my mathematical limit? Could I throw away a foot-long tail? I decided I could, and was heading off to the kitchen trash can when my daughter stuck her head in the doorway. “Hey, aren’t those wool?” she asked. “You know, I could needlefelt with those, you should keep them.” And then she went on her merry way.
I grabbed a ziptop plastic bag and threw them in, collecting more and more as I finished the afghan, until there were at least a hundred pieces in there. I looked, and I thought, and I pondered, and then I went to the trash can and threw them all away. Apparently I
had
found my limit and twelve inches was it. I was even good enough not to separate the longer tails from the shorter ones. I just threw caution to the wind and chucked the entire contents of the bag.
I am kind of hoping though that the seagulls and other nesting animals that hang out around the garbage dumps will snag these little woolen bits and take them home. Just think how soft and warm their nests would be. And then the strands would not have gone to waste. Maybe I should take up needlefelting …
No Brain Cells Required
I love all of the many forms my crocheting can take—from delicate lace made with a tiny hook and cobweb-weight cotton to a thick scarf made from bulky-weight wool. But sometimes when I am picking a project, I am less interested in what it’s going to turn out to be than in how it fits into my available crafting time.
If I am home my comfy corner chair with my special light on and every tool I could ever want on hand, the sky’s the limit so far as technical challenge goes. There is something incredibly satisfying about working on a very complicated pattern and watching the results grow under my fingers. Even if I have to frog my efforts twelve times, that thirteenth time, when I win the battle of crocheter vs. crocheting, at least temporarily, can leave me grinning for days. And while I am working on the piece, I am totally involved in it … counting stitches and rows, working for hours to get an inch of fabric, trying to imagine how this puzzle piece isgoing to fit in with all the others and give me the end result that I want. My crocheting absorbs all of my attention—in fact, requires it, lest bad things happen.
But if I am out and about with only short spurts of time to crochet or in the company of people who are likely to want me to listen to them while they speak to me, I want brainless crochet. I want something that I could pretty much do blindfolded and standing on my head without messing anything up. In short, I want chimp work.
I cannot take credit for “chimp work” as a descriptive term, although I wish I could. I vividly remember the first time I heard it. It was the wee hours of the morning and I was
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