Learning from Mistakes

This week was one of learning from mistakes.  I was unable to meet with my “crochet elder” as I was in clinical all day last Friday-so decided to take matters into my own hands and tackle my big project on my own.  I decided to forgo a pattern and just wing it with the stitches I have learned.  I went ahead and did the chain stitch for the first row and then I did two rows of the double crochet stitch.  The double crochet stitch is two stitches high and to me speeds up the process of making something-so I saw this as an easy way to get ahead faster–remember this….good things don’t come easy

After the two rows of the double crochet stitch, I did two rows of the single crochet stitch.  The look of the two varying stitches looked good…at least for the first couple of times I alternated.  It started to look almost “frilly” and wouldn’t lay right when I put it down.  I asked my office mate who has just started crocheting and we decided together that it would eventually lay flat and that I should just keep going.  So-keep going I did.  I would sit quietly in the morning and do a row, I would sit quietly when everyone had gone to bed to do a row and the relaxation of just crocheting became a touch addictive.  

Bowling Bag

I even took my bowling bag of yarn and hooks to a Professional Development workshop offered by our nursing program and sat at the back of the classroom crocheting while the presenter discussed Cultural diversity in our classrooms.  At one of the breaks, a crochet guru came over to look at my project and asked to see my pattern.  After explaining that I am a true diy’er and made up my own pattern, he explained a few things to me….

• beginners should never not follow a pattern
• I wasn’t taking from the right stitch on every continuing stitch 
  you should always count how many stitches you do on your first row of chain stitches and count that many stiiches on every subsequent 
• my blanket was never going to lay flat
• I had “created”, unknowingly, a beautiful SCARF 😦

Looking out the front windshield…not the rearview mirror

I am usually the optimist in the room-so I decided that this first official scarf would be given to my niece as a little early birthday gift. She lives in Calgary so I won’t be too disturbed by my failure and if she doesn’t wear it-I likely won’t know 🙂

The week ahead

This week my goals include:

• exploring podcasts related to crocheting
• exploring Wakelet – Can it work for me?
• figuring out how to insert a time-lapse video on my blog
• what else?