Old Biddy Syndrome

Hi.

Oh my gosh! Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Wow. This is incredible. Do you see this? Look, I've posted! So soon? I'm just blown away. Amaaaazing.

Alright, I hope my heavily sarcastic tone reached you through the internet. I doubt I have the capacity to fully describe my posture, facial expression, and speech inflections to provide you with the complete impact of the sarcasm. But onto the important thing, my little post ^_^.

Parents worry about their children. It's a fact of parenthood (I assume). Sure what they might worry about varies from family to family, but the bottom line remains that parents worry.

So when I talk about how my mom worries, I'm not trying to discount the worrying other parents do. I just don't think they worry to quite as much or in quite the way my mother does. Forget worrying about my ability to live independently or snaring a job where I am happy. Forget even finding a person who I am compatible with (and importantly gets along with the family). Forget even who I have become as a person or the decisions I'll make in terms of morality and maintaining the fundamentals she has taught me. A very prominent worry of hers is that I will become an old lonely spinster... and not quite for the reasons you might think.

Now, this worry is not founded in the fact that I frankly haven't met anyone or that when I have met people things have turned out right due to the circumstances. Her worry has been established by two things: my hobby of crocheting and my desire to own a cat.

I believe she voiced this concern after I had vocalized my desire to have a pet, a cat preferably. At first she protested, "did I not want my family to visit me?" Due to allergies to pet hair and dandruff, neither my brother nor my father would be able to enter my home. I countered with the fact that cats have certain breeds that are hypoallergenic, whereas that is not quite the case with dogs (at least I think so). When she realized that the objection would not dissuade me, she finally voiced her reason for resisting this idea. She feared that since I already picked up the hobby of crocheting, if I got a cat, I would be more likely to embody the stereotypical crazy old aunt with a litter of cats, crocheting the time away with skeins of yarn surrounding me in my seclusion.

At that point, I really had no response. I mean she was fine if I either pursued my crocheting, or acquired a cat. However, the intersection of these two interests was illogically forbidden. Yes, there is a stereotype of cats and old women who make things from yarn. But since when have I, as entire person, ever stuck to stereotypes very strictly? Of course, there was no way for me to counter my mother's ideology, aside from living my life, and proving that I will not be an old spinster. How can I help it that I like cats and their selfish characters. I can't help that I like to crochet!

And it's not like I crochet at every chance I get. Crocheting is not a full time hobby. I crochet depending on necessity or boredom. Really, I have occasional binges in crocheting, where I furiously crochet for a few weeks, and then abandon it, regardless if projects are incomplete.

[So forgive me for this super long introduction to finally get to the point I was hoping to talk about: crocheting. In my head this introduction/transition worked a lot better. But since I've written it all, I don't plan on going back to fix it to rework it ^_^.]

To be honest, with the creative/artistic streak in me, knitting/crocheting caught my interest when I was even younger. And first attempt at it was met with depressing failure. I don't believe anything went right. I think it was in middle school, when my great aunt was visiting. I saw her knitting and proceeded to ask her to teach me. I had acquired a pair of needles and a skein of rainbow yarn, the colors pale similar to yarn for babies. This was the first mistake. Why? Because the size of the needles should have been fatter and longer for a child who is learning. From there, the unfortunate mishaps came toppling down.

My stitches were too tight, I somehow managed to keep increasing stitches (and at that point I no longer had my great aunt to show me what I was doing wrong). And finally, to top it all off, There was a knot within the skein of yarn, making it impossible to use anymore yarn. This abject experience pretty much put me off of any sort of yarn work entirely - all the way till junior year of college.

I was taking a course called Probability and Statistics and I had a friend who was enrolled in the course. She and I would study together often. I had been late for one of our meetings, and upon arriving, I noticed her working with a ball of yarn and a needle. Upon questioning, she explained that she was crocheting a pair of finger-less gloves for a friend - the one who had made the scarf she was currently wearing.

Realizing my interest, she immediately offered to instruct me in the ways of the crochet needle. When she noticed my hesitation (I was flinching from the memory of the disastrous rainbow yarn) she insisted it was quite simple. Given that I had nothing to lose, she explained things in a way I understood, and that she'd be providing the materials, I figured I'd give it a chance.

Once I had completed a huge chain of slip stitches, and an accompanying line of single stitches, I forged ahead to make the longest skinniest scarf ever, complete with lost stitches covered up by a skillfully concealing border.

After sharing this interest with my mother, she procured a set of crocheting needles, a skein of yarn, and a "learn how to crochet" book she had sitting in a corner. Apparently, she had considered trying to crochet herself. [See, she herself encouraged my crocheting!] So from there, I learned every stitch in that book (I made swatches of each stitch to remember them). I was on a crochet roll of sorts. I made a single finger-less glove, a red hat I almost ran out of yarn for, and a blue hat that was slightly large. The glove was discarded to a dusty corner of my room; the hat was adorned with a flower and gifted to my mother; and the blue one altered and embellished with a butterfly for myself.

It was during this time I realized that I liked taking stitches that I knew and re-purposing them for my own designs (like the flower and the butterfly). Over the break that followed, I went on my first yarn shopping experience. Looking back, I realize I really did not know what I was doing, as I simply dictated my selections by what looked pretty and what my mother insisted on.

Ultimately, I used the yarn to make a warm hat for myself, a and man scarf for my brother. With the hat, I experimented with using more than one yarn at the same time and zigzags. The scarf was a mammoth of a project given the width of the scarf and the small size of the yarn I was using. That project pretty much killed the streak of crochet interest that had caught me that past month and a half. When I look at the scarf now, I give my brother props for wearing it, as the amateur quality of my work really makes me flinch.

Once the next semester had started, I had joined my friend's arts and crafts club, introduced my roommate to the world of crocheting as I moved onto the world of tiny beaded animals. I didn't pick up another crocheting project till late spring, when I was wondering what I should do with the yarn I had left over. It's a project that I have yet to finish even now >.< .

The latest crochet binge of mine began during the week I had the flu. Unable to use a computer due to the ocular strain, and unable to focus on any text, I took up my needle and went to town. I made a hat a day in that week.

Then during thanksgiving, I once again succumbed, when I found the yarn selection at the Pat Catan's (an arts and crafts store) I found myself buying yarn that just caught my fancy. The yarn I bought was consumed in the 2 hats I made for friends and my foray into the realm of making three dimensional flowers. And I am once again in a lull, contemplating finishing one of 2 incomplete projects I had started for myself.

It's through crocheting that I realized that I like doing things for others, or making things for them. If I don't have crochet fever running through me, I find myself motivated to complete projects for others, just so that I can see the surprise and joy on their faces. It makes it even better when they actually use what I've made them. And maybe that's why I can't seem to finish the projects I plan on making for myself... there's no one I'm eager to impress >.> .

There are also a few things that I like to think are my niches when it comes to crocheting. I love making circles. There is something about the math behind them that makes circles oddly appealing to me. This easily branches off into making hats, simply because of the fact that hats are round, so it's easiest to start with a circle to make them. And I like to think that with all the hats I've made and all the improvisations I've made, I  actually know what I'm doing now.

When it comes to expanding my current knowledge, the internet really helps. It is a huge source of stitches and patterns, to literally make anything you could think of crocheting. In fact my two favorite stitches, the starburst and clustered chevron, I found after looking through databases of various stitches. And even understanding the language or shorthand used in these patterns is easy to learn on the internet. Once you get a hang of it, it makes learning even more expedient. My future goal is to learn how to crochet with micro-yarn (for example what they use for doilies) just because I crave the knowledge and bragging rights ^_^.

But in the end, despite how good it feels when people compliment my hats or scarves that I made - wait, what am I saying, really that's ALL I care about. Haha, well, in addition to that, crocheting is kind of therapeutic, and it's something that I continue doing no matter what happens in the future - despite the fact that I miss crocheting with my roommate and shopping for/squealing over yarn with her.


So forget my mother's worries about me becoming an old biddy who crochets and has a cat. If that's what ends up being my future - well, let's just say I'll like it like that ^_^:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73rl9QzN8DU