On Tuesday, after I had finished work on the pink crochet skull that was (and is) my initial foray into the pattern known as Mr. Yarn Bones, I was certain would have it done for today’s blog post, but it seems I put my crochet cart before my crochet horse.
I had made substantive progress before the sun went down on Sunday:
Monday, however, got eaten by errands, and it wasn’t until late in the day, by the light of a lamp, that I was able to continue work on the skull. I made substantive progress, getting as far as round 38, where the pattern directed me to “recenter” the piece.
When crocheting in the round, over a number of rounds, the first stitch drifts toward the right, if you crochet right-handed, and toward the left if you crochet left-handed. Aimee Borst, the designer of Mr. Yarn Bones, has come up with a simple and brilliant solution. Simply recenter the project by advancing a few stitches, so when I finished round 38 of the skull, I crocheted three stitches. The next stitch I crocheted was now “the first” stitch of round 39:
This simple adjustment made a world of difference. A couple of more rounds with the reentered skull, and I was ready to begin “the stuffing,” which—because I had to insert my stuffing filled hand into a somewhat narrow crochet tube—turned out to be kind of arduous:
My stuffing skills are not super great to begin with, and each time I work on a project that requires skilled stuffing, I am reminded of this truth. It also occurred to me, that if I had begun stuffing a dozen or so rounds and several hundred stitches earlier, it might be easier to do a better job of the stuffing.
But I had so much time already into the first skull, I was not about to pull the stitches out without knowing if it would help. So I did the only reasonable thing—I started work on a second skull:
I am not quite to the point that I can begin stuffing and find out if changing the order of operations will put the crochet cart behind the crochet horse, but I am continuing forward, one stitch at a time.
