Crocheted hat

This is a hat that I started back around the beginning of August. I was bedridden for a few days after receiving four dog bites (you can head over to the Antiquity Oaks blog if you're interested in what happened; in short, I was trying to get him to do something he didn't want to do when he wasn't feeling very well - it is now forgiven and mostly forgotten). One of the bites was on the pointer finger of my left hand, so I only crocheted (no knitting or sewing or anything) for about the first week after the incident.

This is a Boye crochet hook that I was using, and I would like to make a comment about those. They are the brand sold at Wal-Mart and probably a few other places (I think JoAnn's sells Susan Bates). I do not like Boye crochet hooks for two reasons: 1) they are metal, so they're very slippery, and 2) the actual hook part (the head) is a lot larger than the shank (the part that determines the hook size) and I have trouble pulling stitches through the work without catching other yarn. (Check out crochetmonkey.com for the anatomy of a crochet hook.) But it was the only hook I had at home, so that's what I used.

The yarn is handspun Antiquity Oaks yarn from Minerva the sheep. (Both the roving and yarn is sold in the shop.) It's a beautiful steel gray spun to about bulky/chunky weight (2-ply). I used a size L-11 hook and started at the brim. As you can see, I don't have much yarn left and still need to close up the top of the hat. I worked it in half-double crochet.

I much prefer crocheting hats to knitting hats. It seems to go SO much faster, and they're still very pretty! I still knit hats, though, because you just can't create the same look with each craft.

First post & chunky-weight socks

So this is the first post of the Fabrics & Fibers & Frills blog. It will be somewhat about the shop (such as new items in stock), but it will be a lot about what I do when I have free time (which is a lot). Sewing, knitting, quilting, cross-stitch, and crochet is just the tip of the iceberg.

On Saturday I finally gave into temptation (I've been considering this for a while and I actually am in the middle of another pair of socks right now) and started some chunky/bulky weight socks using Plymouth Yarn Encore Chunky with 8-inch US size 8 double-pointed needles (Crystal Palace Daisy needles; they are plastic, and actually rather bendable, which is nice with socks).


It only took about 3 hours of non-stop knitting to make one sock, which thrilled me (I usually top 10 hours on a single sock using fingering-weight yarn and size 1.5 needles). So I think I might end up making a few more pairs of the chunky-weight before I get back to fingering weight. Makes me feel like I've accomplished something!