In Which the Pirate Crochets!

Today is my birthday! I am 33 today. Happy birthday to me!

I’ve been saying for a couple of weeks that my birthday present to myself was going to be teaching myself to crochet. After doing the edging on my Winterlude Hat and then making some bobble-buttons bigger by single-crocheting around them, I thought it might be time to work on an actual crochet project.

And then I thought, hey, I have to make something for friend Gwen’s baby who is due in May. So I started looking through the pattern browser on Ravelry, and came up with this awesome hexagon tutorial. There are nearly a thousand projects to look through, and I got inspired! This, I ran to tell Pirate-Husband, would be the blanket I would make!

Because Pirate-Husband is absolutely awesome, he said “Hey, I have to go to Michael’s anyway. You could get the yarn for the blanket today!”

So that is what we did.

Seven skeins of Red Heart Soft and one scrap wool practice hexagon later, I am *ready*. I am stupidly excited about this new skill – and also because Pirate-Husband said that he’d check out this crocheting stuff with me, probably because I showed him some neat gears and cogs patterns, and he digs the steampunk aesthetic. (Admittedly, neither of us think that crochet is going to really be his thing, but he wants to learn anyway, just so he can say he knows how.)

The practice hexagon I made started out slowly, but picked up speed as I got the hang of pulling loops through other loops with a hook. Having a copy of The Happy Hooker was definitely helpful as I needed to refer back to it a couple of times, but then I began to remember what I was doing from stitch to stitch. Also helpful: the fact that I knit Continental and I’m already used to holding the working yarn in my left hand!

I got some other things while we were at Michael’s, including foamboard and oaktag to make a photography lightbox, and a set of many markers for colouring on Shrinky-Dinks. Yes, I said Shrinky-Dinks. What? They’re fun!