Old Friends

Some old Art School friends, A lovely couple, got back in touch recently and came round for the first time in two years to catch up on all that's been happening in that time. Co-incidentaly a similar period of absence to my hiatus here. It was an interesting experience to look over how much I've done, made more prominent by the diversity of my activities and outcomes. It was nice to find that we could fall into an easy companionship after this long period without contact and it was inspiring to hear all their struggles, triumphs and dreams. She's very stylish in that casual, effortless and understated way, with a wardrobe full of neutral colours and nice natural materials that drape beautifully. She was wearing a flip-flop with leg warmers and wide leg trouser combination that made these fantastic shapes - and inspired me to design a piece of tatting (pictured above). I made it with very little preliminary work or calculation. All things considered it's an awesome prototype although it could do with beads being added and some tweaking to help it lie flat more naturally.

I also found time in one of those precious quiet moments to go through some of my 'Art Room Junk'. I'm lucky enough to have a corner to fill with my various bits of craft detritus and like many creative people I tend to start many more projects than I seem to finish. One of these abandoned treasures recently re-discovered is a purple and black stripy chevron top that I started in 2008 (bless Ravelry for keeping track of these things!). The design is loosely based on a jumper I saw worn by a girl on a ferry journey from southern Spain to the African continent - with alternating red and yellow zigzags going from wrist to wrist across the chest.

The piece was relegated to hibernation when in my exuberance and without any forethought I bodged a black body onto the chevron arms in a yarn far too chunky and with no real transition from the zig-zag pattern to the straight, leaving it bulging unattractively. I have now frogged this yarn horror and come back to it with more black DK (the stuff of which the main is constructed). I enjoy crochet and it makes much more sense to me than knitting, probably because I only have to concentrate on one point at a time and that level of focus appeals to me. I'm not adept at multitasking. I hadn't picked up my hooks in a while having gotten carried away with tatting, and while I've previously tended to work and design in a basic double crochet* I've decided to work in trebles. It's a taller stitch which works up faster. I've evened out the wobble by slip stitching into the points and doing trebles into the troughs which is probably not technically correct but is certainly an improvement on the last attempt! *(annoyingly american and english names for crochet stitches are different and yet use the same terms to mean different things, but I'm in the UK)