I'm becoming more active in an online community for crocheters, Crochetville. They have a Secret Pals program that they start up every couple of months and I decided to join. This is soo fun. For two months I get to spoil another crocheter with little e-cards, postcards and a small package or two - have to see how much I can cram into little packages since my pal is in the USA!
Anyway, I was telling Stefan at work about this program and he started cracking up. He's calling us the "Anonym Haeklern" - Crocheter's Anonymous. "Hi, my name is Anna, and I crochet too much". "Hiiii Anna!". LOL. Silly man.
Then this afternoon -- on my break of course ;-) -- I discovered another topic on the board about a lady who's going through her old patterns (3 plastic tubs full!) and offering to ship out a few random ones to whoever is interested. I asked her about her feeling of shipping internationally, and before I could say boo, another lady who's stationed here with her husband offered to forward any patterns for me. Since she has an APO address, shipments there cost the same as to the US. That was nice! I offered to pick up the patterns in person and next thing you know, we're arranging to meet next weekend. How cool is that? So next Saturday (the 5th) I'll be travelling to Stuttgart to meet her. That's great because I haven't been to Stuttgart yet. I'm not sure what all there is to do there, but I'll do some searching, ask Neil, and just generally wing it. I'm glad to 1) meet an another American, 2) a crocheter to boot, and 3) in a new city!
I thought about putting this on the crochet blog, but it doesn't really have so much to do with crochet as meeting other people, so it's here.
I've gone and created a Crochet Blog. So my crochet posting will be done there now. I mostly did it because I'm hosting a Crochetville crochet project. Gulp!
For the project I installed a Photo Gallery on my site, so once I get more familiar with that, I'll be posting my photos there too and probably try to integrate a random rotating photo on the side somewhere. That would be cool, huh?
Sorry I've been so silent lately. I have two big crochet projects to finish by Christmas (argh! Just three weeks away!!!) and a few smaller projects that I want to do to. So my life is crochet, work, eat, crochet, work, sleep, etc. at the moment. I would post photos, but that would spoil the surprise for those that will be getting the gifts, right? And if that isn't enough, I keep getting ideas for more!! As in "If I finish these two in enough time, I could do that for somebody else". And I've just volunteered to host a "crochet-a-long" for a thread crochet group at Crochetville starting in January.
But, I have been doing other things too. For example, I went to a disco Friday night (see previous entry) and yesterday I went to a Christmas market. One of my co-workers grew up in a small farming village in Rhein-Hessen & they have their Christmas market on the 2nd Advent Sunday every year. Just one weekend. The small village of Ober-Hilbersheim (pop. 800) has about 18,000 visitors on this one weekend. My co-worker's mom is a member of the Farmer's Wife Club (Landfrauenverein) & they run a stand selling Sauerkraut, Brat-Kartoffeln (fried potatos), & a couple of varieties of meat. She herself is a chef & co-ordinates all the cooking. Mmm....lecker (yummy). She's a really nice lady too. The market & very picturesque & sells the standard things plus a couple of unique items. I didn't buy anything though, just food. Sorry, no photos.
Alrighty - back to crocheting. ;)
My second doilie. At first I wasn't sure about the verigated yarn for this, but now I like it. It's the same pattern as the first. Argh.....silly
template is
messing up
the spacing
with the graphic
on the left. Have
to do silly tricks to
make it look right. Sigh.
After I was finished with the doilie (see below), I wondered what I should start as my next project. Katies Christmas present? Another doilie? Something else?
In looking through my collection of scrap yarn, I found about 8 big granny squares that I'd completely forgotten about. At one point I was going to make a blanket out of them, but after those 8 squares it was pretty apparent that my guage wasn't consistent enough to keep them all the same size. They're all the same pattern, same number of rows, but they vary in size by about a half inch from the smallest to the largest. Sigh. I could make them into potholders - the only problem is making a backing for them (of the same size), especially since they are holey granny squares. At this point I've stuck them back in the pile. Maybe I'll come up with something cool for them at some point. Later.
My first doilie is finished! And I am soo pleased with the results:
Isn't it lovely?
Here's my first doilie, still in progress. Only two more rows to go!
Yesterday I brought it into work with me so I could work on it on the train (the blanket's getting too big for that). However, after showing it to Stefan at work, I realized my rows were off. Ie, I thought I was on row 7, but when I counted I was starting row 8. Hmmm.....it makes a difference in the pattern. When I was on my way home, I realized I'd crocheted row 7 twice! Which meant that I was further along than I thought, but also meant the last row had to be reworked. So I pulled it all out 
, and started redoing the row. I actually had half of it done by the end of my ride! And last night I finished it and the next row.
I swear that for every ten stitches I'm putting in this thing, I'm pulling five out. 1) it's small, so even if I only mean to pull out one stitch, I pull out three usually. And 2) it's a new technique. I'm liking how it's working out though. 
A handy Stitch Guide - the stitches you commonly use, all in one place. I linked to the crochet stitches, but they have knitting, cross-stitch and others available from the menu drop down.
Can you tell I'm really getting back into crocheting? I'm still on the same two projects I was last week though.
I was tired reading political blogs (there's only soo much jaw dropping reading about Dan Rather/CBS/Bush's AWOL - falsh false but true! - story you can do), so I started going through the crochet blog ring.
I immediately found this crazy crafter's blog: Craftster.org. Here you will find all kinds of crazy projects from customer eraser's, crochet'd ipod covers to interesting clothes/bags people have made out of thrift store pillow cases.
This weekend I was itching to continue a crochet project I stopped a few months ago (finishing a project for somebody that's died lost meaning for a while), esp. after reading the blondelibrarian's latest cross-stitch adventures. So I picked Grandma's polish blanket back up and while I was thinking about crocheting, I thought about some Christmas thread I have and how could I use it? It's too small for crocheting big projects, but probably the right size for doing doilies. Which I've never done before. I went hunting on Google for crochet doilie patterns, found a couple I liked, and sent them to work for printing out. This evening I sat down to try the first one. The description said medium difficulty, but also something about good for beginners. It also said to use a hook (1.25mm) much smaller than my smallest (2.25mm). So I used a 3.75mm hook and went at if for a couple hours - in between eatting dinner, cleaning up dinner and watching CNN. That was a mistake. First of all it was more complicated that I was ready for, and the larger hook really does make a difference.
So I found an easier pattern that I printed out, actually used my smallest hook, and this one seems to be going much better. I'm actually enjoying this, and even though the stitches are much smaller than I'm used to, I'm not really having a problem with them so far.
Below I have a photo of the Polish flag blanket (obviously only the white part is finished) and the start of my first doilie.
Notice the difference in hook and thread/yarn sizes!
I think if I switch off and on between the two (half a doilie here, two or three rows on the blanket there), I'll actually keep interest in both projects long enough to finish them both. Of course, as is par for me, once I get started crocheting I get all kinds of ideas for other projects to do, and then I never seem to finish the currect project. Just ask Janine how long she's been waiting for her wedding present!! :)
Update: Hey cool....I just found a webring of crochet blogs. I'm going to have to surf through these later. 1:30am is way past my bed time. Off to bed.