Crocheting

I've had several friends over the years who have done reenacting of one sort or another, whether of the Civil War variety or as members of the SCA (or even other sorts that I don't really know as much about).  Maybe it's a girl/guy thing, but honestly I don't always understand the appeal of the fighting, particularly in the Civil War reenacting.  I don't think I would enjoy dressing up in layers of costume and marching out in the sweltering heat to pretend to shoot people.  Not really my thing.  But I do understand the other side of it, where all the women get to make fun crafts and then go buy them from each other.

Crafts are fun, plain and simple.  There are a lot of creative crafting techniques I wish I knew, but I just don't have the time to learn them all.  Can't be good at everything, I guess.

The one that I do know well is crocheting.  When I was in middle school my grandmother taught me to crochet.  The challenge was that she's left-handed and I'm not, so I had a little difficulty following her steps in reverse.  Even now I'm not sure my stitches are all correct.

I find it dreadfully difficult to follow a pattern too.  Not really sure why—they are generally straightforward enough.  I prefer to make up my own though.  That's the fun part for me.  Instead of hunching over the instructions, trying to make sure I'm doing exactly the right stitches, I get to sit back and design my own.

Over the past few years I've gotten into the habit of making baby blankets for all my friends and family who have had babies.  (I didn't really know what I was getting myself into at the time—I didn't realize just how many of my friends at church would be bringing little ones into the world this winter/spring.  I've been in the middle of a crocheting frenzy.)  But now that there's a bit of a lull in the baby production I'm still wanting reasons to work on blankets.

Lucky for me a friend of mine came up with a very nice idea.  See I've been feeling a bit bothered lately by the fact that I don't make the time to do as much volunteer work as I feel I should.  I would like to go help serve meals at the homeless shelter, but it's too far away to be practical right now.  I mentioned this to my friend who does go serve, and he said that the shelter would probably appreciate having blankets to give out to the people staying there.

Yay!  Solution!  I can keep crocheting and do something useful at the same time!

Anyway, as you can probably tell by now, this post has nothing to do with writing.  But I did mention crocheting in my last post, so I felt like elaborating on the subject.  I'll leave you with a few pictures of the blankets I've done lately.