Bodyguarding the plants - watch out snails

Well here’s one thing I managed to finish on holiday – Skiff Jnr is dinosaur crazy (no really, he’s obsessed like I’ve never seen obsession before), and I was given instructions of what kind of dinosaur he wanted and what colours. Really he wanted a Spinosaurus but I compromised when I found this great amigurami crochet pattern and ended up with a T-Rex/Stegosaurus hybrid.

Not strictly vintage but could be in the sense that dinosaurs are ancient. Pretty fearsome eh?

L'Aquila

The news from L’Aquila this week continues to get worse as the death toll rises and hope fades for any more survivors. The heart-wrenching scenes of horror and grief were lent a quantum of relief yesterday when a 98-year-old Maria D’Antuono was pulled from the rubble after 30 hours of interment. How did she pass the time? She got busy with her hook and wool and did a bit of crocheting. Not only is this testament to the amazing lady’s strength, but also to the way craft can see us through some bad times. Through every personal crisis in my life I’ve always had some knitting on the go, a way to switch off and produce something positive in a bad time. In fact my craft output often intensifies during dark days – go figure. Don’t need to preach to the converted – anyone reading this probably feels the same and I don’t want to be flippant about a tragedy, so enough said.

Meantime, Red Cross are running an appeal for the victims.

Laura's Left Hook

There aren’t many things that make me want to pick up a hooked needle, but this is one of them – what a cool way to crochet.  I’d like to experiment with these, doing them in different fonts, maybe even some joined up handwriting, but then I am a rotten geek.

Alright I know I said no more trying to be clever with the titles, but it made me laugh. Sock … Rock? Oh forget it, it was tenuous anyway. A friend recommended this wonderful site, Cardigan in Brighton. Seems to be getting a good deal of recognition now – good on ‘em. Check out these gorgeous butterflies – ties in this Wunderkammer stuff occupying a small drawer in my head at the mo.

Off to France on holiday for a couple of weeks – knackered but reinspired at the mo, hope to come back refreshed and raring to craft.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time … I keep reading about crafters re-cycling their plastic bags by cutting them into strips and either knitting or crocheting them into new bags. Great idea I thought, I’ll give it a whirl. Dug out the old crochet stick, found a pattern, off I went.

As a seasoned crafter I’m used to needing a lot of patience and paying attention to detail, suffering for my craft yada yada, but occasionally there are projects when I think life’s just too short and this is one of them. This occurred to me when my fingers were getting red raw from handling the plastic and my right hand was shaped like a rictus claw, it looked like a spat out, splatted piece of bubblegum and I’d only done about … well you can see for yourself.

So, let’s recap … it was meant to look like this:

It ended up looking like this:

And it made my finger look like this:

Recycling as part of your craftery is a very good idea, I’m behind it all the way, keep up the good work chaps … but plastic bags are just horrible, doesn’t matter how you use them. They feel nasty and the end project just isn’t satisfying (well, not when I do it anyway). Having said that, there are some interesting ideas for fusing on the ‘Craft:’ website … maybe my plastic bag days aren’t over yet …

I haven’t crocheted for some time … it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve heard that it’s back in fashion, I think I still view it as a bit of an old-fashioned art and I’m reminded of too many nasty old 70s waistcoat patterns and dodgy tea cosies to entertain it seriously (what a snob).

But I do love the Crochet Me site and its spirit and I particularly love this ‘Lucid’ hat pattern (complete with embarrassed look alongside the Lunatic football fan) so I might just give it a go … better re-learn how to crochet first …