Crochet Kismet (boy I’ve missed creating)

I love arts and crafts. All of them. If I had the money, I’d be handmaking anything and everything. I daydream about having a booth at the renaissance faire with all the handmade costume and décor pieces I can think of. Buuuut, I don’t have the time or money to devote ALL my time to crafts, and I wind up hoarding supplies and have a ton of works in progress stashed around the house.

On my 2^nd deployment to Iraq in 2009, a charity care package came with a bunch of yarn, a crochet hook, and some knitting needles. As a girl, my Grandmother tried to teach me knit and crochet, but I didn’t have the attention span for it. Well, working 12-18 hour shifts at an aid station on an Iraqi airfield left me with a fair amount of idle time if you added up all the 10-30 minute stretches of nothing (hard to read or have many other pastimes in such little chunks). I claimed the care package yarn and used the Lion Brand website tutorials to resurrect and expand upon those childhood lessons. Turns out I preferred crochet to knit, and a new craft habit was born in yarn. I won’t even try to estimate how much money I spent on yarn while in Iraq and a few years later deployed to Afghanistan. A lot of that same yarn bought overseas I still have! I’ve moved so many times that boxes just retained balls and skeins of yarn as packing materials – and of course through me being unwilling to get rid of it because “it’s still good, I’ll use it someday, it was expensive.”

So I’ve now been crocheting on and off for over 10 years. I call myself a beginner/intermediate-level due to motivation/attention span restraints but have had success with advanced patterns (no garments beyond winter accessories and shrugs so far though) by grinding away at them over time. One afghan I can honestly say took more than 3 years because it was kinda hard and SUPER tedious to tie loose ends. Granted, it would have been done faster if I didn’t start – and finish – other projects while still working on it, but things get boring… (if you imagined that in a whiny voice, you’re right)

I haven’t been able to crochet much since my Deedee learned to walk 2 years ago and I’ve been kinda chomping at the bit to create lately. Facebook has been primarily doom-scrolling, which is wearing on me, so when I went looking for crochet artists to follow and pretty up my feed, I was thrilled to come across https://moralefiber.blog/. Her catchphrase “Until morale improves, the crocheting will continue,” plays into my current mood… my morale certainly needs improvement. It also hooked me (hahaha…. Unintentional) because I have nostalgia for the KMFDM song Free Your Hate which includes the lyric “the beatings will continue until morale improves,” and we Soldiers used variations of the phrase snarkily while commiserating. She also plays right into my love of the ren faire and so many of her posts that I’ve seen in just one day of browsing are things I’d love, love, love to make and wear. Sure, I’d have to give birth and lose another 30 pounds, but that’s motivation, right? Anyway… her most recent post is what inspired me… The Kismet Poncho. https://moralefiber.blog/2020/08/07/kismet-poncho/

It’s beautiful! Done in the round, which means I could put it down at random and not really lose my place when picking it back up. Important feature with a toddler. I did several rounds in admittedly the wrong yarn because it was easy to find – too bulky and more appropriate for a winter hat or more rugged blanket… But Deedee left me to it!! Excited, I took the time to dig my old yarn stash out of storage and immediately knew… some hoarded since Operation Iraqi Freedom 2009-11, that the has since been discontinued, finally had a purpose! Call it kismet.

There is a catch – 10 years ago I pre-wound several skeins into balls of two strands together to make it thicker because at the time, I wasn’t comfortable using DK weight yarn… my skill level found itself discouraged by anything that was smaller than a J/6mm hook. Because of its kinky nature, this DK yarn (which typically calls for a smaller hook) seems to be performing just fine with the pattern’s recommended I/5.5mm, and I’m working on multiple squares at once while unrolling the double-wound balls. The potential tedium of unwinding balls is a testament to how inspired I am. Here’s hoping that motivation holds and Deedee doesn’t change her mind about letting Mom crochet. I’ll keep you posted!