Bad Directions

I've been spending a lot of evenings on the couch with my husband lately. Our more usual evening routine is Jay watching a video from Netflix while I cut and sew in my studio downstairs.

But lately, there have been a number of interesting DVDs coming to our mailbox in those red envelopes.

Now I come from a long line of bustling women. I find it nearly impossible to "just sit." In fact, one of my worst nightmares involves waiting for something to start with nothing to read.

Shudder!

Now quilting and sewing are not exactly the most portable of hands-on activities. Don't get me wrong, I do hand sew from time to time and love it. But I'm mostly a machine girl.

But crocheting—that's another story entirely. To me, this is a craft born to take with you anywhere and to do during town meetings, while waiting for a movie to begin or while sharing couch-time with your beloved spouse.

Crochet is the ultimate in simple as far as tools are concerned—a metal hook of a certain size and yarn. You're done. But there are nearly an infinite number of ways you can manipulate them, many of them incredibly complex, requiring total focus.

But not when you're watching a great foreign film like the just-seen-at-our-house Bread and Tulips (yes, do rent this one—sweet, funny, a bit absurd, well acted) or a documentary called The Human Face with John Cleese (fascinating, by the way). Nope, when you're keeping your hands busy under these circumstances, you need simple and familiar so you only have to pay attention with half your mind.

Enter my hat project. This started life in a book of patterns that I bought many moons ago. I used scrap to make the prototype, and realized I had uncovered one of the worst set of directions ever committed to paper!

But I could see the nub of a good idea among the wreckage so I rearranged the orientation of the pattern and tried again.

Hat number two was OK.

I paged through more books, changed the hook size, changed the stitch, found a very cool pompom substitute, figured out an alternate way to make the hat, and developed a pattern that's simple, interesting to look at, fits snugly without squeezing, and doesn't leave me with dangly ends to weave into the fabric at the end.

I hate weaving in ends. No matter how diligently I apply myself, I'm not happy with the result.

When I'm done, these hats will be donated to the Upper Valley Haven, a local homeless shelter run by a crew of extraordinary people. They have a clothing shelf and I know my creations find good homes there.

The hat is also going to be patterned in a book that I'm producing. I'm fine-tuning the one on my hook now, the simplest version of the hat, for photographing. Then there are a couple of alternatives that are a bit more complex that are next in line.

Not bad inspiration from a set of really bad directions, eh?