Free Hooked for Life by Mary Beth Temple

crochet-wise for the longest time was welcome new
cars
into the family with throws for the backseat or trunk that color-coordinated with the automobile’s paint and upholstery. If any of her family suffered through a car’s breaking down, they were going to stay warm in style. And the vehicles didn’t complain about the extra weight.
    Now my sister has discovered quilting and the rest, as they say, is history. Her quilts are truly works of art and the best part about it is: no gauge is required.

The Great Finishing Fake-Out
    O ne of the things that always throws me when I am trying to figure out when a crochet project will be finished, either because I have a deadline coming up or my daughter wants to wear it to school, or even just because I am sick of it and want it to be done, darn it, is the actual finishing part. I can’t tell you how many times I wind up swearing in the middle of the night because I want to finish something before I go to bed and the lightbulb goes on in my head and I realize the darn thing is taking longer to finish that it did to crochet.
    More than likely the pieces have to be blocked, because a lot of crochet looks like a damp dishrag between the time you end off the last stitch and you get to actually wear or use it. Then it has to be stitched together if it was made in pieces. Sometimes I whipstitch garments or afghans together and sometimes I crochet them together—I find the crocheting finish goes faster but I often prefer the look of the sewn one.And of course, there are ends to be woven in—sometimes lots and lots of them.
    I hate, hate, hate weaving in ends. Hate it. I am compulsive about it, too, because I hate little cut endies sticking out even more than I hate weaving them in. So I am always pondering just where the best place to hide an end is. At least once a year, I threaten to design something in which the ends turn into a decorative application of some sort (fringe? bows?) just so I could get out of the “twelve hours to finish this piece” jail. Actually, my loathing of end-weaving-in is probably a major part of my felting obsession. You do have to tuck in the ends before you felt, but you don’t have to be compulsive about it because the ends will felt in along with the rest of the piece.
    The other thing I realize when I go into finishing mode, is how very not portable it is. Since I crochet all the time, a lot of my crocheting projects are portable. If I only got to crochet when I was home, days would go by when I didn’t have a hook in my hand, and that’s no good. But I can’t weave in ends on a moving bus, block in the parking lot outside of dance class, or sew seams at a party while people are talking to me. Finishing requires too much attention and too many tools to be a go-anywhere stage in your project.
    But ah, when the finishing is finished—what a rush. I am happy each and every time I finish crocheting something, but when it is all pressed and sewed up and I am wearing it or displaying it—wow. I feel so enormously clever. I feel like I have accomplished something. I am supercrocheter!
    If only the feeling lasted longer than the finishing time…

The Day I Ran Out of Yarn: A Horror Story
    W hile I am a big supporter of ideas such as the Worldwide Knit/Crochet in Public Day, around here every day is crochet in public day. I am not as organized as those women I have heard about who have a crochet project in the car, one in the den, and one in the bedroom so they can work on whichever one is handiest, but I do tend to have two or three project bags sitting by my chair and I grab one whenever I go out the door.
    But last week, the unthinkable happened. I grabbed the bag I wanted but had forgotten to “reload” the night before when I finished off a skein of yarn. Here I was, trapped, in a government office that gives out numbers like they do at the deli counter, only with
no yarn.
You can’t imagine the cold chills that ran through me when I realized