Tunisian Delight

Part of what I wanted to do while I was "for real" job hunting in Denver was to hone the skills that I have and learn new ones at the same time. I wanted to get better at spinning -- be more consistent and be able to spin yarn of a specific weight on purpose (you know -- other than either really bulky or really thin). With this project, I got to kill two birds with one stone, which made me all kinds of excited.

Tunisian crochet is something that not a lot of people practice anymore -- at least, I'm only starting to learn about it and see a few projects here and there. You use a looooong hook with a stub at the end -- so it looks like a knitting needle, but with a crochet hook at the end.

Photo ganked from Google.

I was recently introduced to a new blog called Nikki, in Stitches. She recently did a post on Tunisian Crochet and her efforts at learning the craft. Her post was not on the type of stitch I had seen before, so I went to YouTube and found a tutorial (I used this one). Turns out what I wanted to make is called Simple Stitch (easy enough, but apparently also called the afghan stitch) and after about 10 minutes, I was crocheting away.

I used the yarn I had spun up from Tanis Fiber Arts' Prism colorway (read about my adventures spinning it here). I love the way this yarn turned out -- I purposely plied it so that the colors would match up randomly, and when I saw another Tunisian Crochet scarf I knew that it would be the perfect way to showcase the beautiful colors. (Here's a link to my Ravelry project page.)

Tunisian crochet is kind of exciting because it manages to look like nothing else -- it's kind of knitted, kind of crocheted, kind of woven. There are other stitches that mimic knitting even closer.
It's a little on the short side, but I like it anyway. I may wear it a couple times and then perhaps gift it to a deserving niece or cousin somewhere.

I also finished a really great book this week. I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender, recommended by my wonderful mother. The main character in this book, Rose, discovers at an early age that she can taste other people's feelings in the food they cook. She discovers her mother's depression, the baker's feelings about his girlfriend, and so much more. She copes by eating heavily processed foods -- chips, vending machine snacks, frozen dinners -- anything that's so heavily processed it has no emotion tied to it. She tells the story of Rose and her family - her brother's reclusive-ness and strange disappearances, her mother's struggles with her private life and what her friends are facing. I really enjoyed this book and thought Aimee Bender did a wonderful job with the prose style and describing what Rose is feeling throughout. The ending was a little ambiguous for my taste, but it suited the rest of the story -- you don't really know what happened, and neither does Rose, so it's okay.

I love a good book, so I'll be talking about those that I read here a little more. I wish I could knit and read at the same time ... that would be wonderful.