Monday, January 13

diamonds are forever...

the weather here is tres pants. tres pants i tell you. it does not make for marvelously brilliant light thus creating marvelously brilliant pictures. nope, it makes for marvelously pants light, resulting in marvelously pants pictures and in turn does not make me wish to dust down my rusty dusty blogging cogs, but dust i must!
oh yes, a dusting we will go...

marvelously pants picture #1
on saturday as i was entertaining Mr Procrastinator for tea i happened upon this. it made my little yarny heart skip a beat, it made my body take a sharp intake of breathe and it made Mr P, find the door and bugger off. thus, as i am apt to do, upon stumbling across such beauty, i ponder, i go away and pottle, i come back, i click off, then i click on, i enlarge the image, i peer closely through my 3 in 1 rose coloured specs and then after what seems quite the while, i decide 'yeh' or 'ney'. this beauty got a 'yeh' and so i paid my few dollars and downloaded the pattern, rather pleased with myself for finding such a thing of splendid crochet beauty when so often the yarny lace shawls i stumble across are knitted. after all just how hard can it be...

on sunday when i should have been home being terribly busy with laundry and such like i played hooky (oh such a brilliant pun is so very much intended!). i was able to play such a thing as my lads of three were out all sing song day at their robotic tournament, battling it out for a place at the State Championships. i reasoned with myself that the brilliance of my 'hooking playing ways' was, no one would know for no one but my critters would see me leave and see me enter again. i have noted many many times before just how spiffy critters are at keeping secrets especially if they know a treat is involved. ummm, no no, that is not bribery, it is merely a reward for being particularly good at keeping secrets and having soft ears.

upon my secretive hooky mission arrival home, i had a most lovely hand dyed creamy dk yarn in hand and knowing a few hours were still mine to do as i pleased i set about with Mr Hook, my yarn and a little critter upon my lap. several hours later i had one dodgy looking crocheted diamond, one that had been ripped out so many times i had lost count. not once, not once in the least, did i think to throw in the hook. well okay, maybe once or twice but such is my determination to make this shawl i kept on going where perhaps in the past i would have faltered, falling to the floor exclaiming i could go no further, in the hope my clan would notice me and my woes, rather than just stepping over me to get to the fridge door.

marvelously pants picture #2 featuring dodgy looking crocheted diamond shape at top
and so my lads of three returned triumph with delightfully blingy trophy in hand, announcing their one step closer to world domination in the robot arena and i, i was triumph too in the knowledge my little diamond was not going to cut the muster but this was good, very good because now i was wiser and would start all over again and agree this time, it was not the pattern that must have been written all wrong (muttered under breathe for most of the afternoon) but me, yes me and my inability to crack the crocheted cryptic code in front of me.

later that evening, several hours with Mr Hook in hand and i had a diamond of crocheted 'sort-ness', i had cracked the code. it had only taken me 5 hours of my sunday but a diamond in my hand i held.

marvelously pants picture #3
 my thoughts went to the fact i required 12 more of these diamonds, all joined as i go. i prayed to the crochet gods up above to give me the strength and the short term memory recall abilities to create another diamond in a little less time. otherwise my mental maths skills told me 1 diamond = 5 hours, thus 13 diamonds = 65 hours. and if perhaps i could bring the time down just a little, i wondered if i made a diamond a day would it keep the doctor away or would it indeed actually do the opposite and have my lads of three calling for the doctor as they stumbled across my body on the way to the fridge and telling him "we don't know how long she has been there, but we keep finding dodgy shaped diamonds made of yarn around the place, and she won't stop muttering to herself"