Crocheting and blocking, oh my!

I took Charlotte off the needles today! Actually, I finished the majority of the knitting on Saturday (ending with color 4). Here you can see what an unblocked medium-sized shawl looks like on my back!


Then Sunday I taught myself how to crochet! It was surprisingly easy. I'd been led to believe, years ago, that it would be fantastically difficult for a knitter to learn crochet, based on the difficulties knittingangel had teaching ivoryneedles to crochet. Thus, I was totally surprised when the instructions in the original Stitch N Bitch book turned out to be easy to follow. And, what was more surprising, was that it's remarkably easy to pull the crochet hook back through the loop on the same hook! Wow. I still am not quite sure why it works, but all I know is that it does work, and that I was able to do all the crocheting parts of Charlotte. Now, I will have to go back to a certain summer top and crochet the neck edge and armholes to neaten them up!

Charlotte is blocking now, as you can see. Not the best shot for color (at all), but it was better than the one with flash. It'll have to do until I can get to the ubiquitous fence shot. (Actually, it's blocking on a beach towel, and if you focus your eyes just right, it almost appears that the shawl is lying across the back pocket of a pair of jeans, strangely enough. ... 10 minutes later: a second glance confirms that yes, the beach towel is of a pair of jeans. I never noticed that before. Note, for example, the belt on the left-most side of the picture.)


Blocking was rather difficult, mostly because I either bound off too tightly, or, more likely, my crocheted border was too tight. I did bind off on vastly larger needles, so I think it's the latter. If I laid out the top of the shawl straight across (with help from Coffeeboy, who attempted to be very mathematical about it), the pointed end just wouldn't unfurl far enough; there wasn't enough give on the sides of the triangle. So I had to bend the tips a bit. I think it won't matter too much when worn, particularly once I fringe it.

More pictures to come, when the shawl comes up!