pepperknit

The Potholder Swap 2010 is in full swing—what fun potholders are you making? I can’t wait to receive mine from the swap, and making the ones I’ll contribute has been a lot of fun, too. I have even tried my pattern out, and they function pretty darn well!

I took the opportunity to look through some crochet technique and pattern books to try something new just for this swap. The moment I found directions for a 4-color spiral, I knew it was the technique for me! The source where I read about it made only a tiny spiral, and it didn’t even lay quite flat, so I had to work out how to do the increases to keep it flat, as well as devise a method to taper off each of the spirals to maintain a circle but not make it feel as if each color just “stopped.”

It wasn’t overly challenging, but it was a fun little crochet puzzle. I am loving the structural, physics-like way I can approach crochet. (Knitting is more garment design, crochet is more product design—the way I approach them.) With 4 colors at play in each potholder, the color combinations seemed endless, all of them fun and kitcheny.

If you’re interested, my pattern for the Stir Me Up Potholders is available free via Ravelry, so you can download now and have a finished potholder in no time (each one takes me about 2.5 hours total—one hour each for the front and back, and half an hour to do the edging). That’s just one day of commuting, plus some time while I unwind at the end of the day.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop at the 5 required for the swap. I have more worsted-weight cotton yarn to use up! I have more color combinations I want to see realized! I’m sure everyone I know needs even MORE potholders, right? Despite the fact that so many of my friends are already doing the swap?

Someone described the spirals as being like candy—and perhaps that’s what making them feels like to me. Just a sweet diversion with happy-making results.

How can you resist?

Every girl needs her own army of meek adorable robots, don’t you think?

These guys are particularly polite and sweet, and they’re going to live with Specs, a polite and sweet friend who didn’t even bellyache one bit that I delayed more than six months to hold up my end of a swap. See, she was exploring paper cutting, and I eagerly said, “you make me something like that and I’ll . . . yeah, I’ll make you something in return. Sure. Sometime.”

So she awesomely worked this up for me—featuring an owl, no less, the mascot of my alma mater. And then I got all excited to make her something in return, sewing some things, looking at books, even crocheting the start of a Mechanobot . . .

But I just couldn’t commit! It was too hard! What would she really want? What could I possibly make her that she’d like?

Until Chawne recently got a copy of Crobots, too. And she didn’t dilly-dally like I did. In fact, within a day of receiving the book, she’d whipped up a robot she named Dexter. And Specs’s response to Chawne’s robot was so good, I knew I had to recommit. And so Sangamo was born.

Sangamo follows the pattern (Mechanobot, available free online!) pretty much to a T. I even had almost identical hardware to adorn her with. The only difference is I used screws with a flat head for her legs, and if you set her down juuuust right, she can stand on her own. Soon after, Sangamo’s cousin Miss Gloria rolled up.

Miss Gloria was based on the Wheely pattern, but modified—she’s larger than the written directions, because the scale between her and Sangamo was going to be too far off. The wheels are the size specified in the direx, though. Her adornments are more fancy—glass beads and sequins—because she’s a fussy, girlie robot. She works hard to keep her wheels in perfect condition. Her pet robot, Yuri, completes the trio.

Specs and her boyfriend have two cats, Dimitri and Otto, so I chose a name in keeping with the theme. Yuri also deviates from the written Catbot pattern, especially with respect to the hardware. I decided that to look more like a robot (I mean, really, it’s just a cat otherwise), brass screws and brass hardware would complete the look. Oh, and I added a tail, which shockingly the pattern does not entail.

I’m on a bit of a robot craze as a result, though my love is only for Mechanobot at this point. I think you’ll be seeing more of him around these parts.