Today I came across a new-to-me crocheter – another American, as are so many, but one who has opened my eyes !
Her name is Doris. She has a YouTube channel, a husband and a pretty impressive craft setup. She also has a kind heart and a generosity of spirit that I’ve found rewarding, so far, at least three times:
- how to stop my crochet fabric from gradually widening as it gets longer
- how to use my swift gainfully, so that a skein doesn’t keep jamming the yarn-winder
- how to design a cardigan or jumper that really, really, REALLY fits me.
Christ on a bicycle ! – all this from one small (5’4″, she tells us) woman !
As I have (1) skeins I haven’t wound into balls because I’m sick of the tangles I get myself into; (2) a half-made cardi I haven’t finished because I’m sick of the way the back at its top is about 5cm wider than it is at the bottom; and (3) a deep-seated yearning to just MAKE A CARDI MYSELF, regardless of yarn, weight, colour or anyone else’s directions regarding any of those .. why, I have to bless Doris and her Rose Cottage YouTube channel (not to mention again her big heart) !
This may all seem so, so boring to you lot who never pick up a crochet hook from dawn to dusk, 24/7, right ?
To me it’s a really important part of my pretty solitary life, my crocheting; so that my continued lack of FOs, coupled with my ever-improving ability to frog at speed and re-wind by hand, has needed some kind of injection of DIRECTION for longer than I can recall. Doris gives me that.