The Unexpected Genius of Pigs and Other Books

It might get slightly winterish at some point tomorrow. We'll see. It's been pretty mild, although on rainy days, it does feel a bit cooler. Last night, we walked down to see the Christmas light switch-on and I optimistically wore my new needle felted hat, since it'd been raining earlier in the day. It was lightly misting when we went out and quite warm for the time of year. I'd optimistically worn my new needle felted hat, since it'd been raining earlier in the day and looked colder than it was. I really didn't need that particular hat on that particular night, but some day, it'll be perfect. It's clear out now and supposed to stay that way overnight, so tomorrow will start off cold and then the rain will come. Maybe snow on the hills. Sounds like a perfect day for lots of tea, some nice music, a bit of yarn, and a book (like all days!). I've got a nice Christmas cosy mystery on top of the pile ready to be started.

Here are a few more of the books I read in November. We begin with the pigs!

The Unexpected Genius of Pigs by Matt Whyman
I was scrolling through the new e-books available at the library and came to this one. It was laugh-out-loud funny. The author and his family live in a semi-rural area, but not out in the middle of nowhere. They have neighbours. They also had chickens that were attacked by foxes and wanted to know what they could do about this problem. His wife did some research and found that pigs deter foxes. Further online exploration brought her to a person selling mini-pigs. They ended up with two of them. The learning curve was steep, especially when it became obvious that there wasn’t very much that was mini about the pigs.The author later learned that mini-pigs are not really a thing, but since piglets are small and regular pigs sell for £30 or so (according to him) and something marketed as a mini pig sells for upwards of £500, there is some cash to be made by calling the pig mini, even if it is going to grow up to be anything but! By the time they discovered this and called the breeder, that person was long gone and no longer in business. Whyman set out to learn about pigs, so spoke to scientists, other pig owners, and pig rescue people. The book is a combination of personal stories about his own experience with his pigs, stories from other pig people, and what science can tell us about pig evolution, biology, and behaviour. Glad I found this book!

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro
I found this book at a charity shop. The stories were good, if unsettling, and I found it to be an enjoyable read.

Birds Art Life Death: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant by Kyo Maclear
I came across this memoir while scrolling through the e-book section of the library website. This is the title as it appears there. When I went to the author’s website, the book was listed as Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation. The author is an artist in a creative slump who lives in Toronto. She is also a sandwich generation woman, who is trying to care for her ill, elderly father and her children while still working out ideas through her artwork. She grew up in a multicultural situation, with a British father, a Japanese mother, living in Canada. One day, she meets a musician who is an avid bird watcher and she asks if she can tag along with him for a year. She thinks that his attention to the birds and how he incorporates that into his life, might teach her some things. This book is an account of what she thought about during that year, what she learned, how she used the lessons to make sense of some of the issues from her childhood, and helped her understand herself, her artistic practice, and her family better. It's a quiet book, filled with quiet moments of reflection about creativity, love, nature, passion for something, and how we direct that passion.

Endless Night by Agatha Christie
This was one of The Guardian’s book club selections for November (the other being The Murder of Roger Ackroyd). I decided to read it again because of this. I was familiar with the story, but because I’d also heard radio dramatisations and seen a TV adaptation that had inserted Miss Marple, even though she is not in this book, I decided to read it again. The book is narrated by the main character, who is remembering what led up to the present. He was a jerk who met a rich girl and thought he had everything he wanted at last, but the menace grows as the book progresses and of course, things do not move along in the ways he thought they would. The book was published in 1967.

And so another week begins. I hope it has started off well.

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Happy December Already!

Where did November go? It seems like it just started, yet here we are welcoming December.

We walked to see whether we could find some cranberries at the veg man who sets up here on Saturdays. I walked along the table and didn't see any, so I asked if he would be getting any in soon. He said he already had some and pulled a couple of small punnets from behind a box. I bought them. Last year, Andrew, the veg man in Moville, had bags and bags of cranberries for about a month and I stocked up, making cranberry jam, cranberry orange muffins, and shoving bags in every available nook and cranny I could find in the freezer. I am hopeful that the local grocery store will get some in--the SuperValu both here and in Ballinrobe had them during festive seasons past. For now, I am happy to have found a few cranberries and as soon as we got home, I got some jumbo porridge oats soaking in some orange juice so I can make cranberry orange muffins later. Yay!

It's just possible that November sped by me while I had my nose stuck in a book--it was an excellent, eclectic selection this month, mostly involving books I had no idea about until I stumbled upon them.

The Art of Kantha Embroidery by Niaz Zaman
I saw a blog post that mentioned kantha embroidery and, wanting to know more, I went to the library website, did a search, and requested this book. The original book was published decades ago and was updated and reprinted a few times. The author discusses the history of this kind of embroidery, which originated in what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It started out being a way to use worn sari fabric and thread to make blankets. Women would use the pieces of the fabric and also unpick threads to use for the embroidery, which was done mostly with running stitches in staggered lines. This naturally caused the underlying fabric to pucker a bit and provided added strength. Other stitches might be used for embellishment. There were traditional sorts of designs used, like the lotus. Today, there are kanthas made for a modern art market, so they’re made in non-traditional ways, using a more varied repertoire of imagery, and are mostly made to hang on the wall, instead of being made to use as a blanket. Cooperatives have been formed to provide income for women who are skilled at this kind of stitching. I found this book fascinating, combining as it did the history of the art/craft, explanations of the techniques used to create kanthas, the meanings behind the images used, and lots of photos showing both traditional and modern examples.

The Word Exchange By Alena Graedon
I dedicated a blog post to this book here.

The Sourdough School by Vanessa Kimball
This book is for people who are really interested in diving into the world of sourdough. The author is the founder of The Sourdough School, thus the name of the book. She talks about her own experience in the introduction, explaining how she became passionate about sourdough. She’d spent time in France as a child and then went there to learn about baking bread. When she went back to the UK, she felt terrible when she ate commercial bread, but there was no market for artisanal breads at that time. She avoided bread. Then she went back to France and a friend handed her a fresh, warm loaf, which she devoured before she could stop herself. As soon as she was done, she worried about how sick she was going to be, but to her surprise, she was fine. She discovered that she could eat sourdough. The book was interesting to read, but a bit too in-depth for me. I found the sections on science and nutrition interesting, and I enjoyed the life stories she included, but the how-to sections were impractical for me. For example, I have a small under-counter fridge, so the parts about how to rearrange things to accommodate various kinds of sourdough starter (in the event that one does not have a dedicated fridge for that purpose) were not very helpful. That said, I borrowed this book from the library and found it to be a good read. It wasn’t what I thought it would be, but that’s my issue and does not detract from the quality of the book. If anyone really wants to learn a lot about sourdough--how to start it, feed it, use it, and bake delicious bread with it, this is a good reference book.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
I’d heard about this book before, probably when they were releasing the movie, but I’d never read it. Bill read about the book recently and requested it from the library. This volume contained the original book and the sequel. He enjoyed it and I had time to read it before we were going back to the library, so I did. It was pleasant enough, but I didn’t love it. The first book was a collection of letters between the author and a guy (and a few others, including his co-workers and family) who worked in a book shop in London (at the address of the title). She lived in NY City, but also had a thing for London, even though she'd never been.  She loved books, and had specific requests for sometimes obscure books. The people in the book shop tracked them down and mailed them, and she posted cash to them. I enjoyed that part, because, spanning 15 or 20 years, they provided a window into what life was like in London in the 1950s and 60s, with rationing and other post-war issues. In this age of online searching and shopping, it was nice to see how the act of having to personally request books via letter led to relationships forming. The second book was about a trip she finally took to London--this was a life-long dream, but money problems derailed her plans to go several times. It was in the 1970s, I believe, that she finally got to go, but sadly, her correspondent had died shortly before she made it there. I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed the letters, and I felt myself growing bored fairly quickly.

I hope you're enjoying this first day of December!

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Hattitude

A couple of weeks ago, someone contacted me about buying a hat. I'd made him one earlier in the year and he told me he wears it all the time and was afraid he'd lost it a few weeks ago, so he wanted a spare just in case. He said he'd leave it up to me to decide on colour, so I rummaged around and pulled a bunch of leftovers to consider. In the end, I went with some Noro. I figured he'd like the colours and the gradual transitions between colours. I spent some time happily knitting and was quite pleased with the result.

With Noro yarns, it's all about the colour, which was perfect for the kind of hat he wanted. I sent it off and hoped he'd like it. I just spoke to him--he got it today and is thrilled. He loves the colour and it fits perfectly. I'm happy that he's happy!

This is just a really simple knit and looks nice in any yarn. It's great for variegated yarns with short or long colour changes. It can be made in a solid colour for a more understated look. I've held two strands of thin yarn together in different shades of the same colour to make a hat like this and it looks really nice. The hat can be made longer and the brim folded up or it can be worn as shown. An easy way to add a bit of texture is to do rounds of purl stitches every now and again. To make a very warm double-layered hat, make one and then pick up stitches along the bottom of the brim and work from there to make another hat, either in a different colour, a different pattern, or both.

The bottom photo shows the layer made in the same way the Noro hat. The photo above it has rounds of knit stitch alternating with rounds of purl stitches to make the ridges. I made this hat 5 or 6 years ago as an experiment. Turns out to be a great in the wind! Two, two, two hats in one!

Basic Beanie
Here's the basic beanie recipe I use for yarn of this worsted weight. I'm a loose knitter and use size 6 (US) 16" circulars. If I was a tight knitter, I'd use larger needles.

Cast on 80 stitches, join, being careful not to twist.

Knit one round. Place marker.

Knit2, purl2 around to marker. Slip marker and continue in k2,p2 rib until the brim is as tall as you want it.

Once your brim is the right size, knit every round until the hat is long enough from bottom of brim to the beginning of the crown. If you want a slouchy hat, make it longer.

You can just keep knitting until the hat reaches the top of your head, bind off, thread a long tail through a tapestry needle, weave it through the bound off edges and pull to cinch closed. I do a spiral decrease for the crown, because I like the way it looks.

Because I made this hat on 80 stitches, it's divisible by 10, so I will be doing 8 decreases on each decrease round (switching to double pointed needles when titches no longer reach around the circulars), as follows:
place marker at beginning of round
knit 8, knit 2 together around to marker
knit around to marker
knit 7, knit 2 together to marker
knit around to marker
knit 6, knit 2 together to marker
knit around to marker
knit 5, knit 2 together to marker
knit around to marker
knit 4, knit 2 together to marker
knit around to marker
knit 3, knit 2 together to marker
knit around to marker
knit 2, knit 2 together to marker
knit around to marker
knit 1, knit 2 together to marker
knit around to marker
knit 2 together to marker

Cut yarn, leaving a long tail. Thread the tail through a tapestry needle and run through the live stitches left on your double pointed needles, pulling tight to close. Weave in ends. Enjoy your hat.

I hope it's a pleasant day in your neck of the woods!





 

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I Survived a Midday Aldi Experience on a Post-Remodel Thursday During the Festive Season

We did the Donegal dash today, so Bill could return a book and pick up a book and I could drop something off at the library. We didn't feel like hanging around there, so we took the bus that leaves here midday and gets there just as the librarian is closing for lunch. We usually pop into the Animals in Need charity shop and Aldi and have enough time to walk over to the library, getting there just as he reopens, and then having enough time to get a bus back home. And we usually go on a Tuesday.

We were a bit late getting into town today, but we still had enough time to meander over to Aldi, stopping to look in the shop windows along the way. One of the things I like about this time of year is looking at all the window displays. Some stuff is pretty yucky, but there are always cute things, too. Some of the photos have reflections due to the way the light was on that side of the street.

Santa on the tractor made me chuckle--that is very appropriate for here!

I love the little doors. I'm afraid that the geese make me think of the scene in A Christmas Carol, where one of the smaller Cratchits exclaims, 'There's a goose, Martha!' when the older sister comes home from the shop where she works

adorable and makes me think of one special Little Man

who needs reindeer when you have a dog?

comestibles--dandelion and burdock soda(?)--maybe these are having a moment--I think I saw some dandelion and burdock tea somewhere recently

always time for tea!

 We checked the books at the charity shop, but didn't see anything we wanted. They were busy sorting lots of toys and books, so it was a bit crowded and we didn't hang around.

Then we went on to Aldi and as we approached, I saw this sign, remembered that the remodel had happened, and inwardly groaned.

I can assure you that I was not amazed. I HATE it when grocery stores remodel and reconfigure everything. I know where things are and I make my list in order. I rarely even notice the other stuff around what is on my list, zeroing in as I do on what I want and moving on. Yes, I know this is why they change things every so often, thus forcing people to pay attention to stuff and spend more time in the store. And yes, some of the new layout makes sense. I still didn't like it, even as I had to admit that some of the chaos was my own fault. A new sale starts on Thursdays and they get new temporary stock in on Thursdays, so it's always crowded anyway. Add to that the fact that it is the 'festive season' and things were even more crazy than usual. I wandered around as quickly as I could while dodging other shoppers and the pallets of stock and the people shelving it and looking for the areas I wanted. Nothing is in the same place that it was just a few days ago (the remodel was Saturday). Nevertheless, we found the things we wanted, paid, packed up our stuff, and headed to the library with time to spare before it opened after lunch.

When Colin, the librarian, arrived and we went in, I saw the table of Christmas books for children, which are apparently not like they were when I, or even our daughter, was small.

I didn't have time to read through this one, but if it's there next time, I might. I never thought about Santa's dark side and I am not sure I want to know what his issues are, but hopefully there's a happy ending.

We did our library stuff, chatted for a few minutes, and had 7 minutes to get to the bus stop to take the bus home, although had we missed it there was a Local Link bus 15 minutes later. And, come to think of it, we could have just flagged him down had we needed to.

part of Donegal Town as seen from the doorway of the library

We got there with a few minutes to spare, and just as we got there, we saw the little bus coming around the Diamond, where there was a guy putting the lights on the town Christmas tree. I expect that the next time we do a Donegal dash, there will be Christmas music playing in the town to go along with the tree, lights, and the cute window displays.

I like Donegal Town, but as we came around a curve in the road on the way home and I looked at the rocky hills and the clouds hanging around them, then looked the other way at the water moving in the wind, I smiled and thought, for the umpteenth time, 'I can't believe I get to live here.'

It's a nice day here today, and I hope the same is true for you in your part of the world.

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Small Spaces

We live in a small place now. We've never lived in large homes--I think the biggest place was 1200ish square feet and that was our round house with totem pole in Alaska. From there we moved to a small cabin with no running water (but a septic tank) and from there to a 700 square-foot house. Our apartments, both here and in the US have been various sizes and configurations, but never big. The last place we lived was a large terraced house. In truth, it was too large for us and I felt a bit guilty about renting it. I try to be very conscious of the resources I am using and don't like to be wasteful. It was a great house, but bigger than we needed. I frequently reminded myself that we were not using any more electricity or water than we would've in a smaller place and that we had to leave a very moldy apartment which was causing health issues, and that was the only place available.

So now here we are, back in a cosy little place, which makes me very happy. It did take a short time to get used to being in such a space, after being somewhere with what seemed to us like lots of empty space. Today I was reminded of yet another benefit of living small as Bill and I did the sweeping. We are happy to not have carpets, except for on the stairs and in the small back bedroom, so sweeping up is quick. Since there's not much floor space, it's much easier and faster than it was in the last place. I put on A Putumayo World Christmas and started sweeping the downstairs. I was done well before the 'album.' Bill did the upstairs and the stairs. The stairs are a pain in the butt, because they are covered with dark blue carpet. You look at it and piles of dust magically appear. There is a vacuum cleaner, but it's a piece of crap and we can stand there forever trying to get the stuff up with that to no avail. We find it easier to sweep the steps with a dustpan and whisk broom, so that's what we do.

The back bedroom has the same carpet. It's a small and oddly shaped room, with a very narrow end that widens out a bit at the other end, which also has a strange angle where the chimney runs up behind the wall. There's a rug over the carpet at the wide end, so that's helpful. At the narrow end though, there's a double bed shoved into one corner and a very small space between it and the wall on the other side. I can sit in the middle of the bed, stretch out my arms, and touch both walls. That long, narrow space between the bed and the wall was annoying, because of the way the carpet showed every speck of dust all the time. I'd clean it, leave the room, go back upstairs a while later and find that the dust and fluff fairies had been there. I decided I needed a rug that I could just pick up and shake out, so I gathered up small scrap balls of yarn (is anyone surprised that yarn would be my solution?) and began crocheting Romanian cords and sewing them together. When I'd done as much of that as I wanted, the rug was looking pretty cool and colourful, but it was too narrow, even for the very narrow space, so I rummaged around and found some balls of yarn that I'd gotten at a charity shop. It was probably meant for rugs or something like that because it's rough and feels a bit weird. It has a nubbly texture and I'd used some of it to make a seat cushion a couple of years ago. I wasn't sure what I would use the rest for, but figured something would come up and so it did. I used it to widen the rug by crocheting along one side of what I'd already done and doing hdc back and forth until I was out of yarn. Or so I thought. It was wide enough to use, although I noted I could use another few inches. I put the rug down anyway, figuring I could come back to it at a later date.

Last week, I was rummaging around in a bag to get yarn for another project, when I found a couple more balls of the nubbly yarn, so I can go ahead and add some width sometimes soon. Yay!

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Winter Warmth: Wool Before Wood

This is our new motto for the coming winter--wool before wood. It's always wool before any sort of heat, but unlike most of the places we've lived in Ireland, which have had electric storage heat, we will have to burn something here. We have portable electric space heaters, but the main heat source is either kerosene, which gets burned in a boiler in an out-building and then heats the water and radiators, or the open fire, which does the same, since there's a back boiler installed.

We really like electric storage heat, but we are definitely in a minority in that regard. When we went to inquire about the last place we lived, the young woman at the letting agent's office told us it was still available, but added, 'You should know that it has electric storage heat.' I said we knew that and we like storage heat. I asked her about whether that was a problem for people and she said it was--some people will not even look at or consider a place with storage heat. Several people had gone to look at the house, which is really nice, but were no longer interested when they found out it had storage heat.

One thing people don't like is that you can't just turn up the heat if you get cold. The heaters are wired to come on when the electric rates switch to off-peak and to turn off when they go back to peak, so you set the level during the day and it comes on at night. It stores the heat and then slowly lets it dissipate into the room during the day while it's off. Some have a separately wired heater on the bottom that can be manually turned off and on, but the last house we lived in didn't have those. It was also weird in that it had storage heaters even in the bedrooms, which seems inefficient. Most of the time, the bedrooms will be empty while the heat is slowly released during the day, so what's the point? In other places we lived, there were wall-mounted heaters in the bedrooms that could be put on a timer or used manually.

In any case, it's been our experience that Irish homes are well equipped with doors, so even in places where the living room and kitchen are one larger room, there's a door from that room, so it can be closed off. This means that we have avoided the other problem people have with storage heat--the expense. Electricity is expensive here. It is generated partly by wind, partly by peat and partly by imported natural gas, I think. Over and over again, people have told us how expensive storage heat is, but we have not found this to be the case. It would be expensive if we turned on all of them, but we've always used just one and kept the rest of the house/apartment unheated. Because we could close doors, we could have the one in the living room on and the heat would stay there.Cooking would also generate heat in the kitchen or kitchen/living room. We do not require or desire much heat. I have a very high tolerance for cold and a very low tolerance for warmth. We find most indoor spaces far too warm in winter and don't like the stuffiness and discomfort that results. I still chuckle when I remember Thanksgiving last year. I was finishing up the dinner in the kitchen, with the doors to both the living room and utility room closed. The kitchen was the coolest room in the house because it was in the back and downstairs, so only got a bit of sun in the mornings (on days when there was sun). It mostly stayed in the mid-high 50s in there, but on that evening, I was roasting and getting cranky. I looked at the thermometer and discovered it had zoomed right up to 65. I was happy to get out of the heat. A year and a half before that, we were out of town and staying in a place with a communal kitchen. It was March and we were the only ones there that night. We were sitting in the kitchen eating our supper, when one of the owners came in and said, 'Let me light a fire for you!' 'No, thank you! That's OK! We're fine!' we exclaimed. 'Are you sure?' he asked, frowning, 'It's no bother at all.' I felt kind of bad, because he was so nice and trying to be helpful, but we definitely did not need more heat.

Because I have Raynauds, my hands and feet do get cold, but fortunately, I have wool and I know what to do with it, so we dress in layers, and wear our woolly hats, shawls, fingerless gloves, and socks. I have lapghans and blankets. We breathe better when it's cooler and with our woolly bits, we can breathe and be warm at the same time.

Since we don't have storage heat here, we had to decide what to burn. Coal is a popular choice here--some of it from Poland and some from Colombia! I do not understand all the differences between different kinds of coal and in a year or two it will be illegal to sell anything other than smokeless coal anywhere in the country. This is already the law in Donegal, but I don't know how compliant people are or whether this is enforced. Either way, the coal use was surprising to us. We had no idea people burned that in fireplaces (open fires, as they're called here). Of course, at that point we were still unaware of the deep affection in which the open fire is held here. Open fires happen all year. The first summer we were here I smelled some weird smell and got an upset stomach. I wondered if it was peat and thought, 'No, it's July. Who would be burning peat now?' Ha! What a stupid assumption. It was peat and I eventually got used to it so it doesn't bother me, but I will still not be lighting a fire in July! This past summer was roasting for weeks on end and still the shop in the town had their display of peat briquettes and coal on the footpath (sidewalk).

As winter approached, we briefly considered filling the tank out back with kerosene, but there are minimum orders and we weren't sure we would be able to use that much, given how we use heat. We were also trying to avoid fossil fuel use, which eliminated coal as an option as well. We could buy bags of logs and packs of sawdust briquettes, but we'd have to haul them around in our shopping cart and be always going to get more. The briquettes are not sold locally, but in Donegal Town at Aldi and aren't easily carried on the bus. Bags of logs may or may not be available in the local shop at any given time. We hoped to find someone who could deliver wood in bulk, but not so much that storage would be a problem. Bill clicked around and found a guy, inquired about the delivery charge, and then when all seemed acceptable, asked about setting up a delivery time and date. After several days with no reply, he looked some more and found a different guy who charged €10 less for the same amount of wood and €25 less for delivery, so Bill set things up with him. He came last night, dumped a load and Bill gave him €130.

We chatted with him and he might have even gotten a new customer in our neighbours who use their cottage as a holiday home (and who we met for the first time last night). He seemed quite nice. He told us that the wood is all hardwood and mostly ash. This means nothing to me, because I am quite an ignoramus when it comes to burning stuff and what works best and all of that. Looking at the wood in the truck, we were surprised at how much was there--it was hard for us to visualize the amount from the picture in the ad.

It was dark when he delivered last night, so we left it there and planned to stack it this morning. When we got outside, most of the work was already done because one of our fabulous neighbours had already started dumping wheelbarrow loads in the doorway of a shed he'd cleaned out earlier in the week and started stacking the wood in there, all of which is very much appreciated. Bill took over the stacking in the shed, our kind neighbour kept hauling the wood from the pile to where it would be stacked, and I filled some boxes and brought them inside to toss into the small understairs cupboard we have.

It held far more than I thought it would, even though I just tossed it in there. No doubt I could have gotten more in if I'd stacked it neatly, but my old creaky, damaged knees would not be happy about having to kneel on the floor, so I just tossed it in and it's fine.

So there's that sorted. As it was being moved and stacked, it seemed like even more wood than it had looked like last night. We have no idea how much wood we will use on any day or how long it will last. It will depend on how cold and long the winter is and when we have to start lighting fires. If the weather forecasts are right, it's going to get even milder by mid-week than it is now and continue for a week or so like that and if that happens, it'll be December before we light our first fire of the season. It usually happens that we start using heat around Thanksgiving, but not so this year. Anyway, it'll be a learning experience and now we know that this guy is reasonable and reliable, so if we need more wood, we know who to call. We will miss having storage heat, but we are glad we can avoid burning fossil fuels and that we have a supply of fuel here and already paid for. Because we don't need much heat, we're hopeful that this will last through the season, perhaps supplemented with the sawdust briquettes, if we can get those again. One way or another, we'll eventually find out, but as always, we'll reach for the wool before going for the wood!

Hope you're cosy and warm enough or cool enough today in your part of the world!

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One Thing Leads to Another: Dishcloth/Square/Ornament

Last night I grabbed some scraps of worsted weight cotton yarn in candy cane colours (aka red and white) and a crochet hook. I'd decided to make a dishcloth. I began with Tunisian crochet and then frogged. I began again in a different Tunisian stitch pattern. I frogged again. I decided to do a different shape, which only led to more frogging. Rip-it, rip-it, rip-it! I wasn't feeling the love, so I set my Tunisian hook aside and grabbed the pouch of regular crochet hooks, rummaged around and found a size H (5mm). I began crocheting and this time the frogs were quiet. I happily crocheted away whilst listening to Christmas music--Mannheim Steamroller.

front of the dishcloth/washcloth

back of the cloth--a bit different than the front side--I like this side, too

As I was crocheting, I was thinking that this would make a nice square that could be used for blankets, sweaters, or shawls and the stitch pattern itself could be done in the round to make a hat. If done in the round, it would look like the back side above.

Then I was playing around with the completed square and turned it sideways so that it was a diamond shape. Then I folded the two side corners in towards each other to get a cornucopia shape, which I liked a lot. This afternoon, I made a smaller square using some scraps and did the same thing, leaving a long tail which I used to sew the two sides together from the bottom point.

The result is this cute little cornucopia.

I like the way the stripes on either side are going in different directions. This would be more pronounced on a bigger square. Here's what the back looks like:

I left a long enough ending tail to create the hanging loop, but I could've just woven the tail in and stuck an ornament hanger in the top. Or I could have sewn a small button to the front and made a small loop to go around it at the top, which would have allowed me to fold the top down and close it.

This could be done with any square, of course, and in any size. Larger ones could hold twigs, pine cones, dried flowers, a small bundle of cinnamon sticks, or a bunch of holly. Smaller ones made out of thread could hold single sprigs. Medium sized ones could be filled with chocolate (also a great use for a gigantic one!) or a small trinket of some sort.

We stopped using wrapping paper years ago, in favour of reusable gift bags. Two of the squares above, or any other square, rectangle, triangular, circular, semi-circular, etc, design, whether knitted, crocheted, sewn, woven, etc, could be sewn or crocheted together, leaving an opening, to make a festive gift bag. If you're a loom knitter, making a hat, turning it upside down, and threading a drawstring through what would be the brim would create a nice bag. This is a great use for scraps and means there is nothing to be thrown away once the gift-giving has been done.

The same holds true for the dishcloths. They can be laundered and reused over and over again, unlike sponges, and because they can be any shape you like, they're great projects for beginners or the more experienced. They're great for experimentation, practice, to play with stitch patterns or colour combinations, to learn a new technique, and are excellent for using up scraps, odd balls, and leftovers. They just go on and on, too. I still use some dishcloths I made 5 or 6 years ago and while they've faded a bit, they're still intact and they get the job done. I use cotton scraps for dishcloths (and my napkins, which I keep rolled up in a crocheted basket on the kitchen table) and I make sure to weave in the ends extra securely, since they will get a lot of use and be washed a lot.

The square above is very easy to adapt to any yarn, hook size, or project. Simply start with an even number of stitches for your chain and keep going until you have the size you want. It's nice as a square, but would also be a great scarf, stole, blanket, etc. You can do stripes or make it all one colour. You could hold two strands of thinner yarn together. You could use scraps by either making every stripe a different colour or just joining a bunch of scrap balls together and crocheting away. You could make a bunch of strips and then join them--so many possibilities and each one would give you a different look. I did three rounds of single crochet (dc in UK terms) as a border, but this is easily adaptable, too, so it can be whatever kind of border you want. I wanted a solid one for the dishcloth, but would do something else for a scarf , stole, placemat, or blanket.

For the dishcloth/washcloth, I used worsted weight cotton yarn in two colours (in my case, red was colour A and white was colour B) and a 5mm (H) hook

I began with A and made a chain of 24, but any even number will do.

Crocheted Square (US terms)
--With colour A, chain an even number of stitches.

Row 1: Sc in 2nd ch from hook, *ch 1, sk next ch, sc in next ch, rep from * to end. Change to colour B, if making stripes. Ch 1, turn

Row 2 and all subsequent rows: Sc in first st, *ch1, sk next ch, sc in next sc, rep from * to end, ch 1, turn. If making stripes, change colour after every odd numbered row. I carried the yarn up the side, since it was a short distance and it would be covered by the border. This eliminated many ends!

When the piece is as long as you want it, add the border of your choice.

I'm not sure what I will be working on later, but I have some commission work to do, so I will be spending some time on that shortly.

I hope today is a good day in your part of the world!

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