Now that my 2011 North Carolina State Fair project has been safely delivered to the fairgrounds, I have had to deal with the consequences of having spent most of the past nine weeks doing crochet and not doing house work.

Before the afghan was done, I would tell myself that I would get to it (the housework) later. It seems that later has finally arrived, and I spent more of the morning than I would have liked doing what I think of as remedial cleaning.

Once I felt that I had made enough progress on the house cleaning front, I turned my attention to the ball of yarn I was making by tying the ends of yarn scraps one to another.

By mid-afternoon, shortly after my son got home from school, I had the last of the scrap ends tied together:

I have previously used this sort of scrap yarn with an 10.0 mm hook and a strand of navy yarn. While I loved the effect (seen here):

I wanted to try it with a smaller hook (for firmer, more clearly defined stitches) and a lighter color of yarn (to better see the firmer, more clearly defined stitches). With that in mind, I got out a 6.5 mm hook (aka “K hook”) and paired the scrap yarn with Red Heart Super Saver hot red. Here is the result:

And as can be seen in this detail, pairing the scrap yarn with the hot red and using a hook that is 3.5 mm smaller does result in a more clearly visible stitch:

I am really happy with the way this turned out, and I will be looking create more projects using this combination of tools and materials.

Maybe not everyone is ready for it, but I think hot red really is the new black.