I've Got Mad Crochet Skills ;-)

Repost from Nadine of Apron Valley Road :)
I'm "pretty darned good" at quite a few things, and "satisfactory" at lots of others. But apparently one thing I truly EXCEL at is...LAUGHING AT MYSELF...otherwise, I'd never be able to post (for the two or three people who actually read my blog)
THIS:

Go ahead. Laugh. I know you want to. I can see that quiver/smirk starting at the corner of your mouth. And that "WTF is THAT!?!" look on your face. It's all right...I give you permission...

See, it all started here...Val, my partner in Aunt Pitty Pat's Easter Mug Rug Swap, sent this tuck-in with her swap package to me.

Now, I've used knitted or crocheted cotton dishcloths before. I have always found them to be heavy, bulky, and "hard." But something about this one that Val sent seemed different. It was so soft and light! So I decided to give it a go! Well, I've been using it every day to wash dishes and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! I finally emailed Val to ask why it was so special. She said she used a "special yarn." I emailed back asking if it was something other than Sugar & Cream, which was the only cotton yarn I was familiar with. She said it was Peaches & Creme, which I had never heard of. A Google of "What's the difference between Sugar & Cream and Peaches & Creme" produced a number of reviews that said Peaches & Creme was softer. I checked Wal-Mart and JoAnn's, but neither had it, so I ordered a few skeins from fabric.com. While I'm waiting for my order, I picked up one skein of Sugar & Cream at Wal-Mart and decided to "practice" for when I got the "good" stuff. Val had included in her email the instructions she used (which she said were on the back of the Peaches & Creme label). Uhhh...I have to admit it was a foreign language, since I really don't crochet...full of things like "ss," "sc," "hdc," and phrases like "3 hdc at corner, hdc across, ss in top of 1st hdc."




Well, never mind - I have never been one to let ignorance stand in the way of creativity. I grabbed a crochet hook - any one will do! - from the stash of crochet hooks I inherited from my mom. I like the blue one - I don't care what size it is - yes, let's use the blue one, because it's pretty, and it kinda sorta matches the yarn, and isn't that what's important???!!!

So let's begin: Knit one, purl two...no, I guess that's knitting. I'm almost as good at knitting as I am crocheting! Well, let's just start doing SOMEthing and see how it goes. I'm really good at making that first loop thing and then a bunch more after that. In fact, I could make those single loop things all day long. It's when I have to turn around and go back down that chain of single loop things that I run into problems. So I just "made it up" and started sticking the hook indiscrimately in whatever loop I could find...obviously, that's what I did...yes..

After awhile, I decided that it was kinda sorta square-ish, but needed to be bigger, so I just started going around the edges, adding an extra loop thing here and there for good measure. When I felt it was big enough to wash a dish, I stopped.

Ta da!

I'm sure you've noticed by now that there are holes big enough to drive a truck through, and that it's not exactly square. Pish-tosh, I say! I'm only going to use it to wash dishes, after all!

That was yesterday. This morning, I was looking around for the remains of the skein of yarn and couldn't find it. I looked in the living room and the dining room and on the sewing table. I looked in the kitchen. I asked my hubby, and he said it had "probably run away to prevent me from making anything else with it." Harrumph! Then I found it - in the kitchen, under the big pull-out cutting board, hiding in the electric roaster, next to a pan of extra kitchen utensils (we are remodeling and purging and these items hadn't found a new home yet). It was obviously hoping that the spatulas and wooden spoons would disguise it if I came close, but I found it and snatched it up before the pancake flipper could give me the "Aunt Jemima Treatment"! 

"Oh nooooo, she's coming! Hide me!!!!"

I'm quite sure those skeins of Peaches & Creme are shaking in their knitted booties in the UPS truck on the way to Apron Valley Road.... Now, what shall I make next?