Let's Hook Up!

I'm having a reading and study day today, working on more ideas about yoga and how it applies to authentic teaching.  During breaks, I'm working on a project which combines destashing yarn and improving my crocheting skills.

There was a granny square frenzy at the store on Saturday.  Mar is exploring colour and value by making many, many granny squares, from carefully dyed yarn.  Mar is perfection personified and so are her squares, which are beautifully crafted and sorted according to gradient scales.  I'm sure note taking is involved because that's just the way Mar rolls.

So impressed were others by these squares, that granny squares became the test pieces for the new crochet hooks which had just arrived at Golden Willow.  Some people made squares from scrap yarn; one person had a large granny square blanket on the go.  Donna talked about how her friend used up all her scraps by crocheting them at random into an afghan.  Sharon and Mar helped Karen build a square that didn't turn into a flower.

They seemed to be having great fun.  I was working, or that was the theory, so I didn't think it fair to be crafting for my own amusement.  Besides, the thought of sewing together a batch of squares, or sewing anything for that matter, makes me cringe.  (I've mentioned my allergy to sewing, I'm sure.)

Still, the granny square challenge called to me.  The next day, while I was clearing out yarn, I came across a bag of hand spun and dyed Romney singles I'd spun years before for an unlikely-to-be-woven tapestry.  Donna's words about her friend's scrap blanket came to me and I had the solution!  I would crochet one granny square using the singles.  The square would be as large as the yarn allowed.  The only sewing involved would be darning ends.

I'm discovering that crocheting has a rhythm all its own.  It's also quick, so I'm caught up in the ever-changing colours as the square progresses.  I like the sturdy texture of the Romney yarn and, with crocheting, I don't have to worry about biasing from over twist in the singles.  I still have to count stitches; I've begun to connect the "one-two-three-one" count of the triple stitches with my breath, so there is a bit of meditation and pranayama involved in the process. 

Gandhi frequently spoke of work as worship, in practising devotion in whatever we do.  I'm not sure that I'm devoted to the work of granny square making, but this single square is coming along nicely, I think: