More Intimidation

The crochet cardigan has been waiting patiently for me to add the finish stitches around the armholes, fronts and neck, but it required learning a new stitch plus "guessing" I was adding the right number of stitches "evenly" along all those edges since the pattern didn't give exact number and placement. I indeed was feeling intimidated. But eventually, I had to face my fears, look up how to do that new stitch since it wasn't in that booklet I've been referencing, and trust I could get the right number of stitches everywhere. The new stitch was a little tricky because it required going in from the front behind the "post" and back out the front while the next stitch did the opposite. It's a clever way to make a finish that looks like knitted ribbing. I often think that crocheters feel like the red headed stepchild of yarn manipulation so are constantly working to make their results look more like knitting that is held in higher esteem. I really like this ribbed looking edging. 

Here's it is finished and how I hope to be wearing it - over sleeveless tops and dresses. I'm of an age when cap sleeves look better than short sleeves on my arms, and I'm hoping this will help extend my current wardrobe. I learned quite a bit making this cardigan and, like with my knitting, stay interested in working on projects because there ARE new things I have to master. And apparently that's a good thing as we age, according to this tidbit I ran across:

What the hands do for the head

A Mayo Clinic team followed around thirteen hundred older adults and found that the ones who made things — knitting, quilting, that sort of thing — were meaningfully less likely to show signs of mild cognitive impairment than the ones who didn’t.

That’s an association, not a promise, and we’re not about to suggest a scarf is medicine. But it makes sense when you look at what knitting actually asks of a person: planning, counting, sequencing, catching your own mistakes, holding a shape in your head that doesn’t exist yet. Plus two hands doing different jobs at once.

Here’s the part we didn’t expect. A Harvard neurologist who studies this makes the point that the benefit lives in the learning, not the doing.

When I bought the kit for the crochet cardigan, I also bought a kit for a crocheted bag. Before I forget all my crochet skills, I decided to move it up the priority list and am hoping for a relatively speedy finish. The kit included this ribbon "yarn" which is worked double using a really big crochet hook, hence my belief this will go quickly. You make the base in the round first, something I probably haven't done since I tried a doily pattern from my reference booklet when I was first learning back in the 70's. And I learned yet another new trick of the "magic ring" that the first stitches are made in which allows you to pull up the stitches tight into a ring, leaving no hole in the center as other methods do. It's been a bit tough going, pulling that doubled ribbon through the tight big stitches, but I can see this will make a very sturdy bag.

On another note, I had a birthday this week. Nothing special this year, just not feeling up to my usual tracking down of a take-out dinner and bakery dessert or going someplace special to spend the day as we are still dealing with enough smoke that I shouldn't spend time out in it. However, I did remember that I'd bought a box of fudge brownie mix on sale when I had a chocolate craving, then left it there because I'm constantly trying to get my weight down. Well, birthdays are great excuses for splurging so I bought some icing like you put on German chocolate cake and baked it up. Good lord, what a sweet treat! With a banana and plain yogurt on the side, it's been my lunch all week.

I did make one other splurge with a trip the day after my birthday to the local yarn shop that carries Marlabrigo yarns. I'd been looking at one in particular via their website and was teetering on the edge of treating myself when an unexpected birthday check from a brother arrived. He said he had a feeling a needed a nudge to do something special, so off I went. I bought more than his check would cover, but it was the deciding factor in my taking the plunge. Enough there for a sweater I have the pattern for (the "buy with intent" method) plus an impulse buy of a single skein of the variegated one called Fire Agate, the colors of which kept calling out to me as I studied the various choices on the wall (might have been my choice for the sweater except there was only a single skein which I'm thinking will end up a scarf or shawl). Susurro yarn is particularly soft as it is 50% Mulberry silk,25% Merino wool, 25% linen. This color reads a beautiful dark brown but changes to something almost dark purple in different light, which the store owner attributes to the silk. Longtime readers will no doubt remember that I have a difficult time passing up anything with silk in it! This is going to be so lovely to work with and then to wear, but I have three other sweaters on the needles to finish first. Still making steady progress on all of them but this new yarn waiting in the wings . . . THAT should push me along - lol