Cotton Dishes?

While practicing round crochet, I realized it was starting to look VERY familiar! The twin to my Fiesta dishes!

I don't know if any dishware match the next practice pieces, though! They resemble little Japanese kites. They're a joy to make, and with a bit more practice, I ought to be able to get one made that's perfect.

Frankie will like these socks

Not being experienced enough yet at knitting to be able to estimate how far the yarn will go, to be safe, I started striping the toe. Then just went with the lime yarn to finish. Of course, the second sock was halted when I got to the lime heel, since there's just the one skein to share between the socks. So I still have to finish the second sock.

March is for Socks! (apparently)

Another pair of Eesti Hiking Socks, and this time I'm knitting both socks at once, and skipping the snowflake border, for lack of wool.

Stitch Student

Got some much-needed practice this weekend, trying Granny Squares in cotton, wool, and acrylic. Cotton can be quite a workout, and wool has a nice stretchy quality that lends itself to the process of crochet. And acrylic! Gak! It surely has its uses, but I'm pretty sure I've bought my last skein of it.

The Grannies were coming along fine, I thought, until I realized I'd forgotten to 'chain 3' at the beginning of new rounds, so a lot of my double crochets were looking quite hunchbacked.

Then I tried Lucy's Hexagon How-to at her cheerful, colorful, helpful blog, Attic 24 and forgot the 'chain 1' between the double crochets, and it looked like I was making a bowl. So out those stitches came. But it wasn't discouraging, and I continued on.

Yellow, Squared

After watching some videos on YouTube and reading some needlework books and blogs, I tried my first attempt to crochet a square. I was totally lost for about the first hour, my hands had no idea what I was trying to get them to do. But once I ripped it out and started over about the seventh time, it was easy!
Compared to knitting, crochet seems very carefree. No stitches lined up on the needles. It's as if you make it up as you go along, as if you're creating something out of nothing.
I think BLUE would look wonderful alongside the yellow!

Knitting finished. March first!

The hiking socks (march-ing socks?) for Frankie are done, ends woven in, handwashed and blocked and air dried. They turned out nicely, and I'm keeping all my notes in an envelope in the book for the next time. It sure beats doing housework!