Happy 2026.
Wow, hard to believe it has been so long since my last post. It's been a pretty busy time with all the holidays in there, and some really CRAZY weather, so I have been getting lots done inside.
In the successes list, I took an online crochet course, when I stumbled across a "free range" crochet artist named ALUMA.
Here is a link to her website Aluma Fashion I purchased the course for the Dreamcatcher Neckpiece. It is one of the best online courses I have ever visited. Not only were her instructions thorough and engaging, but she also had videos for "Left Handed" folks. I didn't see this until I was well into the course, but it was a bonus for me for sure.
With limited crochet experience, I learned so much in making this one piece. (Who knew there was a "quintuple" crochet stitch?) Lots of fun mixing textures and thicknesses and seeing how all of this came together. I see many more in my future. I have worn this neckpiece, to great acclaim, a number of times. It can be worn with with the long red piece at the front, or the purply blue section at the front.
In the Flops section, I realized after many attempts to master it, I seem to be totally incapable of doing an Italian bind off. This was the recommended bind off in the Lulu Vest that I am nearly finished. Back to my favourite, far less humiliating bind off, the Elizabeth Zimmerman Sewn Bind Off. Here is a link to a video for that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibn-01Ilxpg I really like VeryPink's tutorials. (I will share the Lulu slipover soon, hopefully in my next post.)
This next project straddles both Success and Flop, since it definitely began as a flop, but I somehow managed to pull it over into the success column. Here's the story:
If you are a knitter, you have probably played "yarn chicken" a few times on a few projects. If you are not a knitter, this is the term used when you are running out of yarn while you are at the very end of a project. It either turns out that you win, with mere inches of yarn to spare, or you end up buying another skein of yarn, of which you only need a few measly yards.
In this story, I played a dangerous game of "backing chicken". the hooking equivalent (sort of) to yarn chicken. I have no idea what I was thinking when I started this project, but I obviously wasn't thinking that I hadn't left enough backing around the edge of the project, which was an online Zoom workshop with Cec Caswell, based on this design.
Cec had us use a plate to draw circles on our backing, which we "wonkified" and then filled with bright colours. I was gaily hooking along when all of sudden I realized I had virtually no backing around the design. Yikes. Such a rookie mistake for someone who is 23 years past being a rookie!!
My first thought was to add something around the outside, and made the second rookie mistake of sewing on extra linen. It didn't hold and I ended up with a hot mess of new stuff that kept pulling away from the old stuff. Plan C was to sew on binding twill tape, which would fortify the edges and hopefully let me get into the corners of the design. Here is a picture of WHAT NOT TO DO!!
Luckily, I think I will be fine to finish now and when I fold that tape over, it will hide the humiliation. lol. The project itself has been lots of fun, and a lovely break from the grey-scale, value-based portraits that have consumed the last while.
One more success story. It is also a crochet story, which is not my forte. My wonderful granddaughter loves, loves, loves to do crafts, and she got a Mastermind gift card for Christmas with which she got two craft kits. One was a stitching kit, and she sailed right through it. The second one was a crochet kit, which the package indicated was for 8+ years.
When I looked through the directions, I thought there should be a caveat on that age identification. Perhaps "if you have been crocheting since you were 2", or "if you have an older relative who can do this for you".
Here is the result of me "helping" (doing) the cherries. They basically took an entire afternoon, and I had to do a few google searches to find a better description of the double-sided leaves. Evvie loves them, but I have advised keeping the craft activities in the "stitching" column, not the crochet column.
