Knitting & Crochet Blog Week: Day 1 The House Cup #4KCBWDAY1

The House Cup

Eskimimi has created a house system for Knitting & Crochet Blog Week inspired by Harry Potter. I remember having houses in every school I attended and so do my children except we didn't get to choose—the house was assigned upon entry to school. No correspondence will be entered into.

It feels a bit weird to have the privilege of choosing a house to represent me for the purpose of this week. The house descriptions are here: http://www.eskimimimakes.com/2013/04/knitting-and-crochet-blog-week-2013.html and you can view the results of a poll showing the numbers of blog week participants in each house if you visit http://www.eskimimimakes.com/2013/04/choose-your-house-re-poll-is-in-order.html and click in the sidebar survey gadget.

I have chosen The House of Monkey:

Intelligent and with a fun loving side, Monkeys like to be challenged with every project presenting them with something new and interesting.

This is the approach taken from the very start of my crochet adventure, working on a series of small projects, with the proviso that each one presents a new technique to learn. Very soon I was introducing new techniques to long-time crocheters at my craft group.

Crochet offers such a wide range of tools, techniques and types of projects, it's kept me going for almost 8 years now with no sign of boredom on the horizon at all.

Recent challenges have been to broaden the outlook and find other people that are as passionate about crochet as I am by exploring the online world of crochet on the internet and participating. The first step was joining Ravelry in 2010.

For someone who had a lot of computing experience in the past (including the setup and running of interstate video conferences across different platforms using DOS commands long before anyone had even heard of "Skype" and chatting on 'irc' (internet relay chat) when only geeky university people knew what the "internet" was) I had failed to consider the modern internet as a source of crochet information!

At the time crochet seemed to be a forgotten art that was rarely mentioned, and if so, in passing as a poor second to knitting. Jokingly, people around me compared me with elderly "grannies" as I sat in my wheelchair with my busy crochet hook. I didn't help the image when I added a knee rug while crocheting doilies…and I was only in my thirties! (Granny squares are not called "granny squares" for nothing!) Therefore it never occurred to me that anyone interested in crochet would also use the internet.

Books had sufficed during a time when my circumstances left me no time to keep up with advances in technology. I had been out-of-the-computing-loop (can you see the two puns there?) for years until my tech-savvie neighbour reminded me that there were crochet resources online. Why didn't I think of that?

Now I have a lot of work to learn about social media, the blogosphere and other new trends. Last year's challenge was to use the internet's resources more often. This year's challenge is to maintain a blog about my crochet adventures after much encouragement from friends, family and colleagues.
These are ways in which I am continually learning and challenging myself.

As for the fun-loving side of crochet, I enjoy a bit of whimsy and silliness.

• A local yarn bomb was a lot of fun, meeting all sorts of people and bringing a smile to passers-by with the cheerful colours and patterns.
• The addition of googly eyes to projects immediately adds character and appeals to the fun-loving child in all of us.
• I will make (and wear) crazy items like extra-long thigh-high garishly stripy legwarmers which look ridiculous when worn anywhere except at the footy (they are in my favourite team colours).

Bunny making friends...
with a googly-eyed phone cover.

Bright stripes turn heads but I have
the last laugh with warm legs!

My hope is that the humorous relief of fun and bright coloured crochet can provides some respite and restore strength to anyone going through tough times.

I like to crochet in public and enjoy sharing the craft. It has helped me enormously through the trials of illness. My wish is for others to enjoy the benefits too.