My current front burner crochet project is an effort to make two crochet hats in tandem using Jenna Wingate’s free scrap buster pattern. Working the two hats in tandem rather than in sequence has given me the opportunity to explore how crochet stripes can be used to create different effects and completely different color “personalities,” for hats that were made using the same pattern, at pretty much the same time.

It’s been a lot of fun.

But knowing how ends pile up when working a scrap yarn project, I decided that before I moved on with more crochet stripe fun, I should weave in the ends that had accumulated as of my last blog post.

While I like to wait to weave in ends (in case I change my mind about a color), I don’t like saving them all for the end or the project. By the time I crochet that last stitch, I am ready to move onto what’s next, and if there are a lot of ends still to weave in, I tend to get impatient and increasingly sloppy.

So in an effort to do an end run around my bad habits, I got out one of my bent-tipped yarn needles and wove the ends in,

Up and down, back and forth, and in and out. Soon the hats were transformed from this:

to this:

I was pleased with my efforts and with all of that tidying in the rear view mirror of life, I was ready to move forward

I sorted through one bin and two bags of yarn scraps, looking for yarn that would enhance each hat, and after thirty minutes, I settled on colors for a total of eight crochet stripes, and I got six of them crocheted before it was time to walk the dog:

I truly believe, as I say in the third declaration of my crochet manifesto, that each stitch is an opportunity to learn, and I try to further my education, one stitch at a time.