Orange You Glad?

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but just to ensure that I've covered my bases: The Happy Hooker by Debbie Stoller is THE book for crochet, and if you don't already own it, go run out to the store RIGHT now and buy it. The beauty of it is, it doesn't matter if you've been crocheting for 10 years or if you've never picked up a hook in your life. The patterns are enticing and attractive, with easy to follow, well-written instructions. If it hadn't been for this book, I doubt I would be able to do much more with a crochet hook than weave in ends. The price is a bargan, because I garuntee that you will refer to it endlessly like I do, even when you're not working on one of the projects included within.

Finally working through some of the projects that I marked over vacation, I decided to first tackle something relatively easy (all single-crochet) but still challenging. The Orange You Glad bag fit the bill perfectly.

At first, I was a bit intimidated by the color changes, as I'm still not very skilled at making them appear natural in knitting.  Nonetheless, I decided to give it my all.  Funny enough, the hardest thing for me in this entire bag was just the first row.  It's always difficult for me, and ends up taking rediculous amounts of time, especially of I inadvertantly chain too tightly.

But anyway, even while on the train to New York, I figured out how to create a picture in crochet stitches!  It was so exciting, I had no idea it would be so easy!  So while it's not perfect… I'm really pleased with it.  Not to mention how beautifully it used up some of the scraps of yarn I had in my stash.  Don't tell anyone, but that green is actually the same one I used in my Skully sweater ages ago!