Not Your Mother's Crochet

My mother taught me to crochet, but I didn't do much with that knowledge until I was an adult, when I started making afghan after afghan after afghan. This was back in the day of all acrylic, all the time. Occasionally, I would seek out non-afghan crochet projects, maybe even start one or two, but they always looked too much like, well, crochet, either too country or too counterculture to appeal to even my undeveloped fashion sense.

I still tend to reserve crochet for afghans, but recently I discovered filet crochet. I tried my hand at it, using a sport weight yarn. I liked it. I even bought a giant spool of crochet thread and a set of minuscule crochet hooks, girding my loins for a major project of some sort, but again, most of the filet crochet motifs I found looked horribly dated or too cutesy or just plain dull.

Enter the summer, 2008, issue of Interweave Crochet, specifically the Diamond Sage Wrap. Not only is this filet crochet, it's in sock weight yarn that is weighted down with 800 glass seed beads. Sage yarn and gunmetal beads. This wrap is the kind of project I envision to thwart cabin fever when snowbound or on short term disability (too sick to work, but not too sick to crochet). For the first time ever, I purchased a crochet magazine.

OMG. Just as knitting has benefited from the plethora of new yarns, so has crochet. Plus there are new techniques and fresh ideas. Even the standard crochet vest is born again. Wow. Nobody told me. I guess I've been too busy knitting.

While we are on the subject of Interweave, I received an email from them in response to my crabby complaint about my new subscription. They agreed to start my subscription with the Fall issue. Yay! The squeaky wheel got oiled.