All you need is friends

Only thanks to all my fabulous friends, online & off, I've made it through the last few weeks. Recently I've been working on a specific Canadian hat (I'll tell you why on another day...) and it has to be perfect. The hookers out there will tell you that color work looks cool in crochet, but is REALLY hard to get right when you make a letter or picture. I needed a Canadian maple leaf and was having a really hard time making the reference chart.  If you're not familiar with crochet, it takes a much smaller grid than knitting because the stitches are 'taller'. So all the charts out there are way too big to use for a crocheted hat. I had to make my own...

This is the best that I could come up with. I was never that happy with it. To me it looks like a space shuttle with lobster claws, but my online friends assured me that it did in fact look like a maple leaf. So I made the hat....

... and I hated how it turned out. Crochet stitches sit on a diagonal (see how the stem is slanted?) so the lobster space ship came out looking worse that I expected. But again, all my friends were very supportive, some liked it, others admitted it was slightly 'off'. One in particular, Ben Krudwig, let me in on his secret for crochet colorwork. I'll keep it secret since it's his technique, but let me tell you, it's BRILLIANT. I remade my grid and used it to redo the hat...

I'm still awed by how well his trick worked! The color lines up and now it's obviously a maple leaf. No guessing, no lobster jokes, just pure Canadian!

So I wanted to write this post to thank all the people who helped and supported me over the last few days. I really couldn't have done it without you, hookers & non-hookers alike!

HAPPY HOOKING!!