It's all in the family :o)

Not this past weekend, but the weekend before (Feb 8th to Feb 12th) I took a quick trip to visit my family in Kansas.  My sister (who lives in Virginia) also flew in to visit over the same time.  Prior to this trip, my sister and I discussed teaching my mom how to crochet.   We came armed with our crochet projects and a couple of crochet hooks for her to try out.  I even bought another hook from her local yarn store, The Yarn Barn, as a third candidate for her to try.  

Mom's first attempt at crochet!

The crochet got off to a little bit of a bumpy start.  Somehow, I'm still not sure how, her crochet ended up going in a circular but at the same time not going in a circle.  Instead of having the tail of the yarn at the bottom corner of the dishcloth, the tail ended up in the middle.  Mary and I had no idea what happened, but she was being a little bit crazy while learning.  And by crazy I mean not really listening...  In the photo you can see how she's using it as some sort of top of bottle warmer.

My mom's second attempt at crochet

She decided not to keep the bottle warmer, pulled it out, and started again.  Her second attempt went much better and she was crocheting away.  We all worked on a dishcloth using single crochet.  I started mine by chaining approx. 20-22 stitches.  I'm pretty sure my mom started with a similar amount of stitches, but my sister started with a lot more.  Either that or she is a very loose crocheter.  All of her dishcloths turned out very wide, much wider than mine or my mom's.  

Mine is the yellow one; Mary's is the orange

We all got a dishcloth done during the course of the visit.  Mary decided to leave her's with my mom and I ended up doing the same.  It was hard to part with the yellow dishcloth, as it is my favorite color despite what my sister will try to tell you (she claims my favorite color is orange), but I'm glad it went to a good home.  The second one I started there was with half double crochet (hdc).  I tried to convince my mom and sister to learn hdc, but both refused.  Hopefully I can convince them to learn it someday.

I'll end of a series of shots of my sister crocheting that I think are pretty cool:

I can crochet!

I can no longer say that I don't know how to crochet.  January saw a lot of raining days down here in Houston, which I took advantage of on one particularly rainy and dreary afternoon.  I taught myself to crochet!  I started by following the directions for a sample granny square in the book Granny Square Love by Sarah London.  I used scrap yarn leftover from my potato chip scarf and a size G (4.0 mm) hook.  It was somewhat frustrating at first because, well, I was learning something new.  

Next up I crocheted a dishcloth using some really old stash yarn.  The yarn is Tahki Cotton Classic and the stitch is half double crochet (hdc).  The pattern was from the Granny Square Love book and is simply called a dishcloth.  I'd link to the pattern but it's not listed on Ravelry or anywhere else that I can find.  I've put the dishcloth to use since making it and while I love the look of the stitch pattern, the yarn isn't that absorbent of a cotton yarn.  I think it would make a better washcloth or scrubby towel.

I can honestly say that I am enjoying crochet.  Enjoying it enough that I'm jumping all the way in and am crocheting a cowl.  Yes, I am crocheting a cowl as part of the shop's (Park Avenue Yarns) first CAL of the year.  It's been a little bumpy crocheting the cowl, but I'm making progress and trying not to worry too much about my mistakes.  The hardest part so far has been joining in the right spot at the end of each round.  I may have accidentally decreased stitches, but I'm considering it all part of the learning process!  And until I get an in progress photo of the cowl, my project bag will have to do :o