Edging back in

So I was talking to Ancient Mother on the phone at the weekend, as I do, and I got onto the subject of portable crafts... probably because the netting I've been doing of late is not especially portable (although the jury is still out on that one; if I can find a way to anchor it somewhere on my mobility scooter, believe me, that's happening). When I lived in Sheffield, I used to take crafts on the tram at least as often as I brought a book with me. I lived half an hour or so out of the city centre, so it was possible to get quite a lot of crafting done en route from A to B and back to A, and even more so if I had to go to Meadowhall for any reason. (I avoided Meadowhall as much as possible, but very occasionally I had to go there because they'd moved whatever shop I needed out there from the city centre. And if you have to go to Meadowhall, you'd better bring something calming with you, because it is a horrible place. It's huge, it's crowded, it's disorientating, and the floors are slightly slippery... which was, apparently, a deliberate policy to encourage people to go into the shops as much as possible rather than walking around the mall areas. They clearly didn't foresee that it would help to discourage people from going there at all if they could possibly avoid it. I'm not the only person who referred to it as "Meadowhell". But, anyway, it was the other side of the city from my house, so it was quite a long tram journey.)

Possibly the ultimate portable crafts are lucet and kumihimo. A lucet, in particular, will just slip into your pocket, especially if you have one with a keeper bobbin that goes over the tines. And that made me think it was about time I replaced my lucet. I went straight to Ziggy's lucet site, which was where I bought the original one; they are excellent and I would highly recommend them, but, sadly, they did not get my custom this time, because at the moment they're out of wooden lucets and I didn't want a plastic one. (I will probably get a wooden lucet from them at some later date, because they do keeper bobbins with them, which are hard to get elsewhere.) So I ended up getting a wooden one from eBay, without the bobbin. Well, you never know. I might be able to improvise one. I'm not bad at improvising things.

And while I was there... yes, well, just having a look for things while you're on eBay is always dangerous! I thought to myself, "I'm getting a lucet, so I had better get myself a crochet hook or two to go with it."

This is the point at which Ziggy would be raising their eyebrows. Ziggy does not sell crochet hooks to go with lucets. But then, Ziggy probably doesn't get sore fingers hooking the thread over by hand, which is an issue if you use very fine thread on a lucet... and, besides, it's fiddly. I don't mind fiddly as such, but it does make things rather slow. So I hook my yarn/thread over the lucet with a crochet hook, the size obviously depending on what I'm using, and that works very well for me.

One set of wooden-handled crochet hooks later, my brain's shooting off in all directions again. As I have mentioned before, I don't really do crochet. I can crochet, at a fairly basic level; I know how to do chain stitch and treble crochet (hence granny squares, which are more useful than they first appear), and I can kind of work out on the fly how to do single or double crochet if I need to, which I don't often. I'd need a bit more information and practice to be able to follow a crochet pattern, unless it was a very simple one. But if I've got hooks, then crochet does become an option; and I am planning to net a shawl using Twilley's Goldfingering in spruce green (which, to my great delight, I could get on a cone, thus saving myself a packet!), and I had been wondering what to do about the edging. And, of course, crochet is excellent for that.

I also bought lollipop sticks, in two sizes, for use as mesh sticks for the netting. Meshing over a 3 cm folding ruler works fine for jute twine (though I do rather wish it didn't fold; I bought it a while ago because I needed a little ruler for the maths, and this was the only one Ocado had that didn't come as part of a school maths set), but that's much too wide for something like Goldfingering.

So, at the moment, I have the following on:

Knitting - the usual weekly baby hat, plus jumper for The Translator's baby. Socks are next in the queue (and I've just heard from the nice lady at Vegan Yarns, who's custom-dyed me a lovely batch of Kelly green).

Sewing - a Southbank (the construction process of which will get blogged as soon as it's finished); lined up immediately behind that is the Lahja dressing gown. After that I think I need to start on the toile for the embroidered waistcoat (take two); I haven't been in a massive hurry over that one, as I have no idea when I'm next going to see d'Artagnan to fit it on him. (He's always singing somewhere, but it doesn't tend to be anywhere near here. They really love him in Canada!)

Weaving - just practice pieces at the moment, but I do need to get Alice set up, and once she's ready to roll I have plans for a divided shawl (I have this amazing grey viscose/linen blend, also on a cone). Think elven-cloaks of Lorien. Seriously.

Netting - the Goldfingering shawl, eventually, but there may be one or two more twine pieces first to help me learn new techniques. (Plus if the string bags go down well at the food bank, there will be more. I suspect they will.)

Everything else - well, there's that code wheel to paint, or possibly I'll just paint in the lines with a very fine brush and then stain the rest light oak, since I've got the stain; I want to make a pair of olive/peridot bead earrings at some point, though it's not urgent; and as far as the non-craft-related stuff is concerned I need to fill in what could turn out to be a fairly lengthy form from my counsellor, catch up on my Italian, practise the music from the choir I've just joined... it goes on. You get the picture. I am never bored. (I sing tenor, incidentally; which is just as well, because we don't have half enough blokes.)

So this is probably not the moment to start work on improving my crochet skills in earnest. But one edging, though... I can just teach myself enough to do that. Right. Right?