Crochet: The Scarf

Believe it or not, my creative life isn’t just an endless obsession with all things watercolor. Ok, it mainly is, but as an aside, I also make a habit of putzing around with different crochet projects during the winter times. I’d never tried my hand at any textile artform before taking up the hook three years ago, and while I haven’t created an impressive body of yarnwork since that time, there have been scarves and hats.

Towards the end of last winter, I’d bought some gorgeous red merino wool yarn and it’d been sitting in a box ever since. But, the time came, after the holiday madness, when the yarn began bleating out to my heart “crochet me!”. Full disclosure: Since I’m hardly a passionate student of the craft of crochet, this is not the blog to read if you’re interested in taking it up yourself. My knowledge, skills, and experience are all limited–but I made a MAGNIFICENT scarf!

Here’s the almost finished project, just awaiting me to hide the loose yarn ends:

I followed a Youtube tutorial on how to crochet a ribbed scarf pattern, which creates more of a knitted or heart look to the stitches. I made mistakes, including one that I didn’t notice until I was nearly done that required I pull apart 75% of the work I’d completed to fix that one little stitch. I thought unhappy thoughts while pulling apart my work, but this is also one of the reasons I love crochet: it’s so forgiving when it comes to taking it apart. Simply pull on the end of the yarn and the whole thing unravels and returns to its original ball-of-yarn state.

Here’s a really lame gif I made all by myself to show this miracle of unraveling:

Here’s a close up on the pattern of stitches that make up my amazing and red and thick and warm and lovely scarf:

Wow, look how old-timey and functional we are with our creative projects this last week Claire!!!