As part of an attempt to organize my crochet empire/guest room, I am making a concerted effort to use the yarns that I have stored in various cubbies along one wall. The yarns include, among others, vintage wools purchased from my son’s trumpet teacher.

Representative of the of the vintage wools are these two skeins, identified on the label as “coral 103”:

The two skeins are from two different dye lots: 771 and 905B

I do not particularly like the color of these two skeins of yarn, but be that as it may, it is my yarn, and it can be used for felting, so today, while my youngest son was at his last rehearsal preparing for his final boychoir concert, I got out my L hook, and (from memory) began to crochet a stash bag using The Purl Bee’s amazing stash basket pattern:

When I finish crocheting this bag, I am going to attempt a streamlined, never-before-tried, felting/kool-aid dyeing process in an effort to both give it more structural durability and improve the color.

In her book Crochet Tips & Tricks: Shortcuts and Techniques Every Crochet Should Know, Lily Chin goes on at length about the importance of a gauge swatch and treating the swatch exactly as you will treat the finished product. Ms. Chin gives the reader lengthy and salient advice about the seemingly innumerable steps necessary to insure a good outcome for At one point warns her reader “If you’re making a garment and refuse to swatch, all I can say is that you get what you deserve!”

While Ms. Chin’s advice regarding the value of a gauge swatch is no doubt sensible, particularly as it applies to garments, the fact is that for many crocheters the desire to get started on a project trumps all else, and often with hook in hand and yarn untested, we throw caution to the wind and dive right into a project, and hope against hope, that something like pink lemonade flavored Kool-Aid will fix what ails our project.