Crochet Surfing

In surfing the net for crochet-related information I made some fascinating discoveries. Here are a few of them: SHIRRETT, CROCHET BLOGOSPHERE, FRACTAL CROCHET, HANDITOOL. These are words with which I am not familiar. How about you?

In brief here are the meanings I gleaned from the websites referring to them. Shirrett is a technique which combines crochet and fabric. If you have crocheted onto a sweatshirt, does that mean that you SHIRRETTED? Sounds like a bad word to me....

CROCHET BLOGOSPHERE seems to refer to all the blogs about crochet. I like this terminology a lot. We all know what a blog is by now -- and a sphere is usually a circular object, also can be used in reference to a discipline, area of specialization or expertise. We crocheters often go in circles -- those who go in the biggest crochet circles are called BIG WHEELS.

FRACTAL CROCHET is using mathematical concepts to design crocheted fabric. There are actually books written about crochet and math! I think Fractal means a piece or a part of -- like a fraction. So we take a lot of triangles and crochet them together. The examples on the net of fractal crochet were awesome and breathtaking, and definitely a challenge. And yes, some crocheters FRACTAL a lot. Some crocheters just go to pieces (fractaled?) when they have to frog. I wonder if my yarn stash might be considered FRACTAL, too.

HANDITOOL looks like a psychotic crochet hook too me. However, Susan Bates makes it. In the website it is described as a crochet hook and knitting needle on the other end. If any of you want a psychotic, crazy, mixed-up crochet hook, go to www.yarn-store.com and look for HANDITOOL.

Here are some crochet related sites you might want to research when you run out of crochet ideas or need to be motivated. They all begin with: http://www. so in the interest of space and time you will just have to remember to type that in before you type in the site:
crochet-mania.blogspot.com -- youcanmakethis.com -- crochetuncut.com -- crochetgypsy.blogspot.com -- crochetmemories.com/blog/ -- crochetsal.com -- crochetnmore.com -- christinascrochethaven.com -- and of course, my very own blog, crochetkookie.blogspot.com.

If you learn of any rather unusual terms which might be applied to crochet, will you please let me know?

Crochet Hooker Murdered

I just read about a woman who was killed, shot in the back, by police officers who thought she was going to attack them with an ice pick. The ice pick turned out to be a crochet hook. what a tragedy! This happened in Monterey, which I guess is in California.
If you subscribe to Google Reader, and type in CROCHET for your searches, you get all things crochet to read, even unfortunate news such as this. I'm all for police officers defending themselves, but I have a hard time believing that the police officers who shot the woman in the BACK more than once, could see what she was holding with her back turned to them.

DOUBT aka Crochety Crocheter

Mary, one of my crochet students, attends Country Thunder every year. This involves camping out and a lot of country western themed activities. When I came across a pattern for a cowboy hat, I just knew it was meant for Mary. I saw that the pattern was not for a beginner like Mary, but just knew how much she would like to wear a cowboy hat which she crocheted for herself to Country Thunder. The pattern was complex. However, I, wearing my own imaginary Wizard in Teaching Crochet" hat figured I (that's a capital "I") could teach her. While I know my crocheting skills are good, I also know that they pale in comparison to the skills of Gwenn and Marge and BJ at the crochet guild. However, when it comes to TEACHING -- well I say from on top of my WIZARDry Stool, ( where I am ignorantly precariously perched,)" I can teach anybody to crochet anything." Hah!

When Mary started crocheting the hat, under my "expert" tutelage (Hah again), it didn't go so well. After the first so-called lesson, I took the pattern home and tried to crochet at least the first few rounds so that I could show Mary how to do it.
"There's something wrong with this pattern. I'm sure this pattern wasn't tested before it was published. This is too complex. I could do a better job of writing this pattern. There are mistakes in the way it is written." and so on, and so on, I told Mary, who listens to her crochet guru!!!
Mary keeps plodding away and doing some frogging under my expert tutelage using a "BAD PATTERN." I, too, crochet, frog, crochet, frog so many times, saying bad words until I begin to DOUBT not the pattern this time but me. With the help of Mary and Donna who each hold a ball of pink yarn, (this is a two strands together pattern) and roll the yarn back into the ball while I rip out the stitches, this time to the very first slip knot. The expert crochet teacher has alas and alack become the crochety crocheter!
In the quiet of my recliner, with the TV turned off, I try once more from the very beginning - and low and behold, the pattern works! Complex, yes! Wrong, no!
I type out the pattern for Mary, eliminating the abbreviations which she finds confusing, and add a few words of explanation in RED type, and we start over again.
I guess the moral of this story -- is to SHUT-UP about the pattern, and stay off high perches of Wizardry. Granted some patterns are poorly written, but more are even poorly interpreted. And I am -- your not so wizardry Dorothy who is clicking her heels and returning to KANSAS.
Don't give up Mary! I may not be wizardry nor the expert crocheter of my dreams, but I don't give up. You will crochet your cowboy hat, and I will crochet mine, and Iwill take pictures of you wearing yours and publish it on this very own blog (I hope). : >}