Situated across the street from Major the Bull (the work of Waller Foushee Studios):

is the Blue Coffee Cafe.

I first became acquainted with Blue Coffee Cafe on President’s Day 2011 when I met up with other members of my crochet guild to work on making a pattern for Major’s then sweater-to-be. It was a cold day, and I needed a cup of coffee both to drink and and to serve as a handwarmer.

Lucky for me, the coffee at the Blue Coffee Cafe comes in three sizes: short, tall, and giant; I settled for the tall.

Also lucky for me is that being the member of a crochet guild means that you get to meet new people and learn new things, and today, one of the members of the guild I belong to agreed to spend a couple of hours at the Blue Coffee Cafe teaching me her amazing overlay technique.

By amazing, I mean this:

As is apparent from this photo, Lori works her magic in thread, and this particular piece (Split Infinitive) is a creation of her own design that makes extensive use of an overlay split stitch, and today, Lori made a valiant effort to impart her knowledge to me.

After a cup of coffee and a generous slice of Red Velvet Cake, we were ready to begin.

With my 5.0mm hook in hand and two contrasting colors of Red Heart Super Saver at my side, we got to work. The first two rounds went quickly:

Next, Lori showed me her technique for anchoring the overlay color so as to have some tension on the thread/yarn so that it does not come undone as you work:

The third round did not go as quickly as the first two, but after several missteps, I did manage to get this far before it was time for me to pack up and get my son to his trumpet lesson:

Clearly, I have a ways to go before I am able to make anything that remotely compares to Lori’s work, but now that I have some sense of the logistics of this technique, I think that with a couple hundred hours of practice, I just might be able to create a rug to go with Lori’s doily.

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