Knitting?

One of the things I figured I'd better do, before dropping lots of hard earned cash on the yarn for Lucie, was to figure out how to crochet.

You see, I learned to knit from a magazine a few years (eight, I think, now) back. Oh, sure, my mother had done the obligatory attempt to teach me when I was six but I wasn't terribly motivated or interested, and hadn't picked up yarn nor needles since. She had better luck with sewing -- I sewed things well into my teens -- but yarn craft was missing entirely from my childhood.

Until now, my entire experience with a crochet hook was using one to pick up stitches in my knitting. I think this is not entirely uncommon amongst knitters. The knitting needles are instruments of great worth, items that create works of great beauty, but the crochet hook is merely for fixing mistakes.

But Lucie's edges are done in a lovely crochet, and I think it adds a lot of charm to the piece. And let's fact it: I think that if one is a very serious crafter, one ought to at least know the basics of many yarn techniques. (I plan to try spinning next!) So I got out some older yarn (some Lorna's Laces sheperd sport, poor me!) and a crochet hook and started experimenting. 

My first swatch of crochet looked very much like my first knitting swatch of old: lumpy, misshaped, and full of increases and decreases that I didn't intend. But once I was done I had a reasonable idea of the basic stitches -- not the complicated stuff, just the basics -- and felt pretty good about myself. Not so bad for an hour's work! Crochet! Taken care of! Cross that off my list!

I had intended then to cast on more crochet and learn the actual stitch that is needed for Lucie. That is, after all, what this whole project was about -- learn enough crochet to make that edging as nice as I wanted it to be to finish off the sweater. 

Instead, I took the yarn and cast on a long chain. Long enough to fit around my head. And then joined it up -- awkwardly,  admit, since that hadn't been on my list of learned items -- and started crocheting a hat. I had originally bought this yarn to make a nice little hat, and I just hadn't managed to find a knitting pattern -- online or made up -- that worked. The temptation was just too great.

So now I've abandoned the sock yarn and sock knitting AND the Quest for Lucie, and am busily crocheting myself a hat. 

I may somehow lose my knitter credibility with this one.