Did you ever think you would be obsessed with yarn?

On Friday, my best friend and I went to Joann’s to see what kind of sales they have… Okay, let me be honest.. I whined and whined about wanting to go until she offered that we go, haha. Now, I promised myself that I wouldn’t go shopping on Thanksgiving or Friday for two very specific reason: 1) don’t spend anymore money 2) I used to work retail and I know what that craziness is like and figured I could be one less person to make a retail workers day hectic. But, as we all know, I still went to Joann’s.

Now, the whole point of going was to look at knitting needles. Lately, I’ve been wanting to learn so I have one more thing to add to my list of “Random-Stuff-I-Know-How-To-Do.” Needless to say, I never bought the needles. Instead I got distracted with the yarn — all the wonderful, beautiful, colorful yarn!

As I’m moving back and forth between the aisles like a mad-woman who just forgot the promise she made to herself about not shopping on Black Friday, my best friend is walking behind me watching with both amusement and a bit of boredom, I’m sure — it’s not easy staring at a bunch of yarn when, you know, it’s not your interest, after all. Anyways, I start stressing about finding the right skein of yarn for a cowl. After setting it down, and picking it back up, then setting it down again, and repeating with a different color, I finally just opt out of buying yarn, because.. Well… A promise is a promise no matter how much I love to hoard yarn: I wasn’t going to shop!

So, out of nowhere, my best friend laughs at me and asks “Did you think a few years ago you would have imagined yourself being so obsessed with yarn?” The question made me stop — I think I even ran into a peg full of pipe-cleaners or pompoms or.. something. Now, it’s funny that she would ask me because let’s face it… No one knows me better than my best friend.

The truth is, no, I never thought I would be so obsessed with yarn… not in a million years. Although I’ve known how to crochet for a long time, I’ve usually only bought yarn for the current project I’m working on. My interest in crochet has always been present and a part of who I am, but frankly, I’ve always been too busy with other “hobbies” to really give myself a chance to explore and really get yarn-crazy.

In the past year, I have become completely obsessed, which is true enough. More importantly, I’ve been thinking about my grandparents and my family in Puerto Rico more and more. Unfortunately, I am not great at calling and keeping up, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love them or miss them or think about them any less. Crochet.. Yarn… Creativity… It’s something that I feel will always be connected to them and my dad. When my grandmother taught me, she did so with so much love and patience, I feel like it would be a crime not to want to get better and use the craft she passed onto me — a craft I would love to teach to my children, and their children as well.

Do you have a craft/hobby you are currently “obsessing” over?   

Lost and Found

I can’t even remember how old I was when my grandmother taught me how to crochet. It was well over 10 years ago. I remember that when she taught me, she took me to this little fabric store in the “pueblo” and bought me a pretty powder blue crochet hook. Before that, she gave me one of her pink ones… Well, somewhere along the way, I lost them, bought other hooks to replace them, got rid of them or gave them away, and repeated until I bought my wonderful set of Susan Bates hooks — for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why I was so drawn to them…

 

…Well, last week I was going through my stash and reorganizing and guess what I found at the very bottom of one of my containers!?

 

 

Yep, those are my very first two crochet hooks!!!

Of course, they are S. Bates hooks and completely priceless to me. :] I’m so delighted to have found them after not seeing them for such a long time! (When I was younger, I used to cry when I couldn’t find them, haha) Now, they’re safely in my little case with my other lovely hooks (though probably a little more loved than the others, but we won’t tell them, will we?).

Inspir-motivation!?

I’ve had trouble deciding what exactly to post lately… Not so much for lack of ideas, but more so, lack of crochet-time! However, my little “block” vanished after buying a couple of baby afghan pattern books. Oh man… and I have to say… I was pretty excited to have soooooo many wonderful patterns to work on!

….Wrong! I absolutely hated all the patterns in the book! Don’t get me wrong, they look beautiful in photos, but really, not for me. I ended up frogging all of my work. I had even worked on one for two weeks before frogging it! I feel like it wasn’t just the patterns, but the yarn that was uninspiring…..

I took a trip out to Galena, IL last week and found this wonderful little Knit and Yarn shop… And gasp! Found the most wonderful, soft yarn to play with!  I purchased 6 skeins of Berroco Comfort Yarn – 4 in Robin’s Egg (9714) and 2 in Multi-Baby (9811). It is knitting worsted weight, but I find it wonderful for my project!

Take a peek at my work so far!

 

 

For this project, I used a series of single crochets, and double crochets. I did not use a pattern from any book, and decided to just start working double crochets and see where it took me! I ended up making these beautiful little bobbles across the blankie. I think it looks sweet and fun…. And most of all, perfect for a baby blanket!!!

 

 

Ironically, enough, it reminds me of the very first “afghan” I crocheted waaaaaaaaaaaaay back whhhheeeeeeeen. I made one huge granny square for my grandmother and it was in the same pastel blues, whites, pinks, greens, and yellows as Berroco’s Multi-Baby yarn. I thought it was the best blanket ever and it felt like I worked on it for eons! ….And well, the truth was that it was only big enough to cover my grandma’s feet!