March is National Crochet Month

March is National Crochet Month and I've been crocheting daily, creating dialy and  sometimes, multiple times a day, with hook and fiber. I' hard at work on to projects -- one  has become three--  so there are four separate pieces growing around me.

 Through participating in the National Crochet Month Freeform Crochet Along (CAL) I've had daily prompts and I've responded to them, tried to fulfill them or amended them. It's been exhilarating to  take this journey with people from all around the world, and to share responses and creations, one scrumble or motif at a time.

It's been wonderful to wake up and see one of them grow. This happened a couple of days ago as the  assemblage outgrew the lunch try it had been inhabiting. I found a curtain, strung a dowel through it and hoisted it across my bedroom book case.
If i were able to stand, I would have hung it higher.

This let me know that the parts I think of as the beginning and the end -- or the left and the right, had no room for the middle. And I've reconceptualized it as a  triptych.

I find I've been too curmudgeonly -- everything I've resisted doing has had the greatest yield in an object, addition  or learning.

Like hairpin lace. Here are my riffs on hairpin. First time I've touched the loom in a year, since I made some for my teacher's certificate.

Then there's the incredible  wealth of inspiration from Duplet magazine. I made what turned out to be a huge leaf from there. So I designed a smaller one, larger than the tiny ones, but smaller than the big one. It took three tries, but now I have  new pattern that I know I will use again and again.

Here are some other recent ( this week) scrumbles and motifs.

And here they are in place

The beginning and the end -- in progress

The middle in progress

It's wonderful to have a shared journey. The IFFC piece is required to be kept secret, as are the 20 designs I have out in world, seeking acceptance.  The FreeForm
CAL 2012 has been liberating!