Cat Mad Crochet

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Over my lifetime I have spent too long in hospital waiting rooms for loved ones having surgery. I wish never to do it again while knowing that my husband and I are only going to be waiting on surgeries and medical tests more as our parents wend their various ways through their 80s. This week saw me waiting again and, of course, I took along a crochet project. Actually, I took two because things happen and having an extra is never a bad idea. This turned out to be a very good thing.

When I find myself having to wait, I like a project with lots of colors because I get to play with the colors, and I love colorful projects. Projects with a lot of counting are good because I have to focus on the counting. If I am very lucky, a colorful project with a lot of counting will keep me from thinking of anything else because there just isn’t room in my brain for other thoughts. Living in the moment by force of numbers, if you will.

This week, to deal with my personal set of horrors (in addition to the worldly horrors we are all living through right now), I started just such a project despite everything else on my hooks right now. I took a pile of lace weight bits from the stash and started a reading/gaming wrap for Adia. I pulled only her favorite colors, so gone are the pinks, and held two strands together for a happy marled effect. 

I switch one color whenever I feel like I need to change colors, and I make sure the next color I’m joining is near or in the color family of the strand that’s staying. I know some people are quite chaotic with marling. I am not. I like the colors to blend and create soft color transitions. 

Because I just want to focus on color with this wrap, I am using a linked double crochet. It’s nice and smooth looking and, because the stitches are linked, it doesn’t look stringy the way some projects made with all double crochet can. 

The wrap is small because there was a terrible incident with missing stitch markers, which is exactly why I take multiple projects along. I ended up working on Hannah’s periwinkle lace shawl during the surgery and most of the days in the hospital because I didn’t have stitch markers, bobby pins, or paper clips. I’m sure there was probably something I could have used, but I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to work it out. 

Anyway, it’s started, and it helped on the final day while we waited for a last minute infusion before discharge. Also, discharge is a terribly icky word. Ew.

I am exhausted. Everyone is happily back home safely. My cat is genuinely overjoyed at my return. She sat on lap, in the middle of my pretzeled legs, and hugged my foot and purred for an hour. Cats are good monsters.