Part of This World

I am not a huge fan of making amigurumi. Don't get me wrong...the little dolls are adorable (most of the time), but I just don't typically enjoy the actual crocheting. I prefer to work with bigger hooks and faster stitches. I'm not a huge fan of the single crochet in general. I just takes too long. Granted, I've only done a few of them, but I don't see myself making an army of little crocheted creatures any time soon.

However, when friends look around and find something they want, I usually give it a whirl. A friend went to Disney World with her husband and young daughter and asked me to make an Ariel doll for her little girl. I offered to make a removable tail and a dress so Ariel could be a mermaid and a human.

 

Since I don't do many of these, I didn't have safety eyes, so I sewed eyes on her face. The tail isn't exactly right, and I should have made the skirt fuller, but I like her hair and I really like the way I did the tie for the top. Though you can't see it, there is a loop on one end and a knot on the other, so it connects without having to be tied. I don't plan on listing it on etsy or making another one any time soon, but it is nice to know I have some versatility.

Cooking up a Potholder

Many years ago someone told me how much she loved her crocheted potholders and that she would never use anything else. I could not understand what she was talking about. She talked about how thick and wonderful they were. The only experience I had ever had with crocheted potholders was one that was stuck in the back of a drawer of a microwave stand that my grandmother gave me at least fifteen years ago. I have always assumed that she made it, but really, all of the women on that side of the family crochet, so it could have been made by any number of people. To start off, the color is terrible-- baby poop yellow with a white border. Also, even though it is a double thickness, it is just two granny squares crocheted together, so it doesn't keep the heat away and I have to move quickly to avoid getting burned. I have ended up using it more as a hot pad than a potholder. Sadly, many of the crocheted potholders that I've seen on etsy look like this.

 The other option I've seen for potholders is crocheting a chain, and then single crocheting around it, which creates a double-thickness potholder that you stitch together in the center.

 I like the idea of a double-thick potholder, but I really don't like being able to pull the sides away from each other. Fortunately, I found a stitch that I wasn't familiar with, which is known by several different names: the double-faced single crochet, reversible crochet, waffle weave crochet, honeycomb stitch. It takes a little bit of practice to get comfortable with it, and so far it works fairly slowly, though I'm sure it'll get faster as I get better with it.

 

This stitch is amazing for my purpose. It creates a double thickness without the need to crochet or sew two sides together. You can even use it to create a piece with one color on one side and one color on the other. I made several potholders with this using 100% cotton yarn (another problem with my baby-poop potholder is that it is made with acrylic yarn, which can melt at a lower heat than cotton). I really love them, but have been waiting to use them until I got some good (read "clean") pictures of them.



I now understand how someone could love a crocheted potholder. These are super thick and heat resistant. I don't feel heat at all, no matter what I pull out of the oven.