When my now twenty-nine year-old son was three, he became fascinated with the movie Top Gun. While it was not a movie I would have chosen to watch once a week for a year, my son felt otherwise, and he watched it at every opportunity.

Over time I heard the song “Highway to the Danger Zone” so many times, I feared the song might become permanently stuck in my head.

Now, twenty-six years later, my youngest son, has introduced me to what is a a crochet danger zone:

http://www.reddit.com/r/crochet/

The crochet subreddit at reddit.com is a vortex of crochet information/conversation/discussion that can easily draw you in and never let you leave.

It is where I learned about Vilma Ilona’s pattern for Chibi Eleventh Doctor which I found unable to resist.

Instead of organizing my yarn annex or guest room, I tried my hand at making my own Eleventh Doctor, and while my version has much messier hair and as yet lacks a coat, he is, for the time being, done:

Telling myself I would be there for just a minute, today I once again ventured over to the crochet subreddit to refresh myself after a morning of errands.

An hour later I emerged, having seen any number of fun and amazing projects as well having learned about two crochet tools: a crochet sphere generator, and a crochet lathe.

Eventually, I managed to escape the vortex and emerged long enough to finish two more rows of the second shawl.

Here is the overview:

and here is a detail:

I don’t know what it is that makes the crochet subreddit so easy to fall into, but there is an immediacy and honesty to the discussions that makes it one of the best online crochet hangouts I have come across, and if you haven’t taken the time to look it over, I can’t guarantee what you will find, but I can promise you won’t be disappointed.

And in case you haven’t heard the song “Highway to the Danger Zone,” or if you just want to have your memory of the summer of 1986 refreshed, I found this at youtube: