Christmas at Crochetwarts

Facebook is fun. I get to interact with friends that live far away from me, or those I haven’t seen in years but still like to hear what is going on in their lives. The other thing I do on facebook is hang out with other fans. I’m a member of several fan groups, including one for Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter. These groups have similar members, and lots of them actually know one another in real life (I know several of them myself).

This year, the Harry Potter group decided to have a gift exchange: Christmas at Hogwarts. We all gave our addresses to one disinterested party, who mixed up our names and sent them all out. There were questionnaires to fill out to help our gifters figure out what we might like, and I answered mine, barely paying attention to what I wrote, and got my hands on my giftee’s answers as soon as possible, so I could begin crafting as soon as possible.

Thankfully, she was among those who posted their Etsy wishlist to the event comments, so I weaved my way through it, looking at the different things she wanted. “Ooh, I could make that! And that!” I got to work.

I made an adorable hat (after digging through my hat-making memories and restarting it several times, that is). And then I started on some fingerless gloves.

I’ve written before about my tendency to ignore crocheting rules the same way my mother ignores cooking rules (while I follow a recipe and she adheres to a pattern). I looked around for some patterns that I could adjust to fit the end product I wanted, and settled on this one. Then, I completely disregarded the hook size and yarn weight, and went ahead and started with the same hook and yarn I’d used for the hat, and went ahead and used my same style of pulling everything as tight as it could be pulled. I pushed ahead, even though things didn’t seem like they would end in something too terribly comfortable. I looked at it as the pattern commanded I leave a hole for the thumb, and decided that the rigid cylinder I had crocheted didn’t look anything like a glove and that if I got it in the mail as a Christmas present, I definitely would not want to wear it.

I pulled everything out and started over.

The first time around, I had noticed that the glove looked a little big (after my ignoring the pattern and making it as big around as I wanted), so I tossed some decreases in, here and there… and didn’t write anything down. I wondered vaguely while I was making it how I was going to make a second one the same way, but whenever that thought crossed my mind, I tossed it away and continued on.

The second time around, I followed all of the instructions. I counted stitches. I even decreased in the right places (though the pattern was vague at that point). And in the end, not only did the yarn I was working with miraculously resemble the picture that came with the pattern, but the two separate gloves that I made looked similar, if not exactly the same. Funny how that happened.

Raven"Claw"less Gloves

I’ve still got yarn left… might as well finish the set and make a scarf.