Latest Crochet Project

Last week I started working on one of the projects from Amy O'Neil Houck's book Crochet For Bears To Wear. After a couple of false starts and a lot of help from some of the local knitting group, it's going pretty nicely now. The project in question is the Long Winter's Nap Nightshirt and Cap.

This pattern is considered to be intermediate, which might have been some of my problem with it - it's assumed that the crocheter can do things like crochet in the round etc. Actually though, it's surprisingly simple now it's gotten started. I'm down to the colour-band change - another first for me, working with two colours, and most of that's been done in the last two days.

There are a couple of places where I think the pattern could have been clearer - doing the armholes for example. It says to slip-stitch to the next marked stitch. Did that mean to slip-stitch along the edge until you got to that stitch, or did it mean to join the two corners together? After a false start where I thought it was the former, I figured out that it was the latter instead, just by how the photo looked. Aside from that kind of quibble, I'm quite enjoying this project, and am already planning to do several more from the book.

In terms of the current project, I've still got the "skirt" as she calls it, and the sleeves for the nightshirt itself, but there's also a cap as part of the set. That I have yet to start.

I love the idea of learning to make clothing in miniature like this. My next planned project though is a pair of socks that I hope will fit me - I'm being lazy and not doing the gauge swatch again. For the nightshirt it seems to have worked. I figured that if the neckband fit the listed measurements, the gauge would be more or less right, and that's how it's turned out.

Yes, doing the crochet is taking away from my reading time a bit - as is the spinning I'm doing on the wheel as well, but I'm still doing plenty of reading as well. Just started with A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, so I'm glad to have something to give me a break now and again.