A Spice of Life Project... with a feline touch.

The two separate Spice of Life projects

As I have always wanted to crochet, but just couldn't get to grips with it despite several attempts, when I saw a notice in a nearby shop for a class to learn precisely this, I jumped on the opportunity. What the French call a mercerie, and that I myself would call a sewing-and-handicraft shop, those in the know refer to as LYS (local yarn stores). Crochet appears to come with its very own terminology in English, but even without this I'm having to switch from French to English, and vice versa with each new stitch description.

Second Spice of Life project - pre-frogging...

Since mid-January, we learners have been huddling over balls of wool and little by little the crochet project at hand has been taking form. In fact, it seems we are following the Spice of Life design and this was a large CAL (Crochet Along) which turned out to attract many aspiring and confirmed crocheters around Britain, and via various social media has now become an international success.

First Spice of Life project - WIP

Curiously, the act of ripping out offending rows of stitches is called frogging, and believe me there has been a great deal of this on my WIP (work in progress). Crochet has actually proved to be far easier, and more accommodating of the beginners's errors than knitting, but I still haven't mastered the art of creating a straight edge. Far from it - so I feel another frogging session coming along...

This particular moment is hugely popular with the cats, who just love wool in any size, shape and form and take great pleasure in rolling in the metres of yarn as it is unravelled, spaghetti-style. This thread-fest has extended to doing a bit of independant DIY feline frogging, stealing balls of wool, , sleeping amongst them or on the wool bag itself, and should any of these activities fail to provide full satisfaction, running off with the crochet hook itself.

Of course the question of colour choice has been the trigger for numerous bouts of frogging. As the colour combination possibilities are vast, so is the desire to experiment. The official Spice of Life CAL project uses 14 different colours... I've finally stayed with my original choice for the first piece, with a very limited range of five colours and it is the parallel work that will be more adventurous - once I've frogged those offending initial rows...