In The Beginning

My first attempt at lace crochet was a "Scalloped Edge" lace that I found in a book called The Complete Guide to Thread Crochet by Rita Weiss. The book is very useful for me, since it's pictorial diagrams of all the different types of stitches are easy to understand at 3 o'clock in the morning when I'm half-catatonic from the lack of sleep due to coming off of night shift on the rig, and I can't for the life of me remember how to do a slipknot.

Unfortunately, the instructions they give for various projects seem to be riddled with mistakes and typos. I sat with my mom for hours back in March trying to decipher what they were telling me to do. This was only possible if my mother read the instructions, tried to work through the mistakes in their directives, and then perform the crocheting herself. I would watch what she did and make occasionally successful attempts to replicate it myself.

But my vacation ended and I went home to Louisiana, where I no longer had my mother to show me what to do. Perhaps this would have been a good time to get a webcam?

I was sent offshore in April (which you can read about here), and although I brought my crocheting with me and occasionally took it out of its bag, I made not a single stitch in the weeks I was there. After a long stretch on the rig, I came home and decided I wasn't going to do anything work-related for a week. So because I wasn't forced to be awake during the day, I had no impetus to switch off my night-shiftedness, and through mere inertia I remained a night-owl for nearly a week and a half. I quickly realized that the Scalloped Edging was a lost cause, for there was no way I was going to be able to continue it on my own.

And thus began a crocheting marathon, and the project which I cut my teeth on. I spent the ensuing nights on the "Simplicity Doily"; perhaps a misguided idea since it also came from the same book notorious for the poor instructions. The doily is shown in the bottom left picture on the cover.

The nights continued slowly, as I would struggle through row after row of the project, occasionally trying to guess what the author actually meant to say, and often completely bewildered at what I was actually supposed to accomplish. In comes Mom to the rescue again! I would work until I was completely stuck, and then wait for 5am Eastern Standard Time (4am for me in Louisiana), at which point I would call up my mother and explain my dilemma. After describing the dilemma, we would have a long discussion about what the instructions said, what I thought they meant, and what the picture looked like, and eventually I would have a reasonable approximation of what I was supposed to do. The rest of the early morning hours would continue like that, with my mother receiving about 2-3 calls daily. I would go to bed sometime around 12pm, sleep till evening, and make one more quick phone call before my mom went to bed and I continued on my project.

The employees at blockbuster started to recognize my car as it pulled up when I would make daily visits to rent the next season of Desperate Housewives, or whatever other TV series was providing background entertainment for my crocheting that night. Eventually, I finished!! I actually completed a crocheting project!

It only took me another month or so to go out and buy the stainless steel pins I needed to block it. Here is what it looked like while blocked:

Unfortunately the foam piece that I bought to provide the base for blocking was too thin for the fully stretched-out doily, and I sort of fudged the edges. I'll probably re-block it again one of these days (which probably translates to roughly a year from now). I used a stiffening solution at half-concentration, mostly as a test of the solution itself. And here is the final result of the doily, adorning my dining room table.

I might still revisit the abandoned Scalloped Edging now that I have gained sufficient proficiency in lace-making such that my mother rarely gets the early-morning calls from me anymore. It looked lovely in the picture and would make a perfect edging for a handkerchief.