January 16, 2008
Dear Everyone:
Some
years ago, I discovered that our mother was frequently cold when she sat
in the Mount Hood Dining Room at
Mary’s Woods.
So I bought some yarn and
crocheted a triangular
shawl for her.
She liked it very much and frequently wore it to dinner.
The only problem was that I had purchased far more yarn than was
needed.
A
couple of years ago, I realized that it sometimes got a little cold in
the office (we were in Building K then).
Since I still had the leftover yarn from Mother’s shawl, I
decided to crochet a shawl for myself.
It was very simple, double-crochet, about 24 inches by 70.
For the most part it hung on a hanger in the closet.
When we moved to our current quarters in Building E, I again hung
it in the tiny space designated the “closet” in the “storage tower” in
my cubicle.
Last
October, one of my co-workers complained that she was cold.
I wasn’t feeling cold, but I loaned her the shawl from my
“closet” in hopes that it would help.
She fell in love with it.
“It’s
so soft. And it’s so warm.”
I think she may even have come right out and said, “I want one.”
Four
female co-workers looked at me.
I looked back at the four of them and said:
“I can’t even think
about crocheting until after I take the CRM Exam.”
They all nodded. The
CRM Exam was in November.
When
I returned from a week off at
Thanksgiving, I saw something in her
cubicle that looked familiar.
After a moment, I realized that it was the same shawl.
She had borrowed it all the week before.
And I
started thinking. I couldn’t
just crochet a shawl for that one co-worker and ignore all the others.
That would be rude.
The question was: How long
would it take to make shawls for all six of them?
I
considered the fact that I had some time away from work coming up in
December. And I would be
spending a lot of that time with family either at “Jeannie’s” place or
on the road to and from
Once
I’d finished the first one, I went back to the craft store to get
another four skeins in a different color.
They were having a sale.
I bought four skeins each in five new colors.
I saved $1.00 on each skein.
And I had a lot of crocheting to do.
The
hardest part about a crochet project is the first row.
Once that’s done, it’s easy and fairly quick, since there’s no
counting stitches or following a pattern.
I discovered if I did nothing else, I could process one skein in
about three hours.
(“Jeannie” says that I go much faster than she can.
That’s because I hold the hook “wrong”.)
Every
time I sat in front of the TV, I crocheted.
When I was at “Jeannie’s” place with the rest of the family, I
crocheted. On the trip to
Evenings and weekends. I
went through “Colonial”, “Montana Sky”, “Cobalt”, “
By
last week I had only “
The
yarn I used was called “Homespun” although it was clearly machine-made.
It consisted of various threads in different colors and
thicknesses. Technically,
this makes the yarn difficult to work with, but I find it easy enough as
long as you keep the stitches especially loose.
I had chosen the colors, mostly variations on blue, with specific
persons in mind.
I had
checked everyone’s schedules last week and Monday or Tuesday afternoon
looked best if I could finish the last shawl in time.
As it turned out, everyone was in the office Monday morning and I
was able to call them all together for a “short meeting.”
There is an empty office next to ours right now, so we gathered
together and I poured shawls out onto the table.
It
was interesting to see who picked which shawl.
One person made a beeline for “Colonial”, a dark blue that I
thought she’d like. However,
the person I thought would want the “Grape” (purple) chose “Montana Sky”
(a blue-green). Someone else
grabbed the “Grape”, and the person I expected to want “
In
return, they all took me to lunch that day.
So
now everyone, except the two guys in our group, has a shawl and I have
time to read until I get the urge to crochet again.
Remember the year everyone got an
afghan for Christmas?
Love,
as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |