Speed Crochet

So, my birthday was this Saturday. (Pause for cheering.)

Among the various things the boy and I did that day was to visit The Naked Sheep, one of my favorite places in North Portland, which is now, sadly, quite a long way away from where I live. But we had to be in that part of the city for other reasons that morning, and so, knowing that I would get a birthday discount, we headed over. He decided that whatever I wanted to purchase there that day (within reason, of course) would be my birthday present. Isn't he sweet?

I walked away with the Harmony Guide for Cables & Arans (which I've wanted for ages, along with the Lace & Eyelets Guide) and a single skein of blue-and-copper self striping Wisdom Yarns Limerick. I would have gotten more - it's a nice, soft dk merino - but this lonely skein was all there was left in the sale basket, and I just knew I could do something small and lovely with it.

After riffling through and discarding several ideas, most of which got discarded because they contained interesting and beautiful cables which would have been totally lost in the striping, I finally settled on the Clapochet by Crochet Kitten. This crocheted version of the very popular Clapotis Scarf is, like its knitted counterpart, designed to be shawl width, and therefore normally requires something in the neighborhood of 800 yards of fiber. Having only 175 to work with, I narrowed it down a great deal, and only made it about 60" long.

I chose the crochet version over the knitted one, not because I haven't learned how to do drop stitches (how hard can it be to learn?), but for the much more important reason that the crocheted version stripes with the grain of the diagonal, rather than across it, and I much prefer this look. Cross-grain striping, in my humble opinion, distracts the eye and obscures the stitchwork.

The most amazing thing about this project, though, is that - and anyone who has done one-skein projects will understand - I did the entire project in one afternoon, the very afternoon after I bought the yarn, which means this project wins the prize for fastest progression from yarn purchase to project blocking I've ever accomplished. And the weather is just perfect to wear it to work today!