Crochet!

In the past few months, I've started to grow an interest in crocheting.  Although I still prefer knitted fabric for garments, nothing beats crochet for certain types of lace, household items and little accessories.  I've tried teaching myself numerous times and it always seems to end in frustration, and yesterday I finally figured out why:

I am a huge freaking yarn snob, that's why.

I was trying to teach myself with scraps of kitchen cotton in my leftover stash and kept on getting frustrated with how splitty and uneven my stitches were and how uncooperative my fingers were being.  And then I grabbed a little extra ball of Madelinetosh Vintage left over from a little scarflette I knit a while back, and suddenly everything just clicked.

It's an interesting experience to go from a craft where I feel very comfortable doing more advanced techniques to a craft where I am apparently made of thumbs.  I see the little tricks that should make things tidier and I get frustrated easily because I'm thinking beyond my actual skills.  In the end it really doesn't matter that you can do a slipknot-free crochet cast-on if you can't hook an even chain to save your life.

This little motif was for practice, and I'm reasonably happy with how it turned out - although I have to say, it's pretty much the yarn's fault that it turned out at all.  I read the instructions wrong and ended up with twice as many outer petals as I was supposed to, but I actually kind of like it.  I'm definitely going to try blocking it and seeing what happens.

And then, to what purpose?  Doily?  Wall hanging?

Maybe I'll frame it and put it on the wall as an example of my first non-crappy crochet.