What’s a vegan doing, crocheting with alpaca? Well, my boss liked the Double Layered Braided Cowl enough to ask me to make another out of this yarn. It’s Misti Alpaca Best of Nature worsted, and it feels lovely and soft. However the half doubles in the back back loop, or the third loop, are an absolute pain. Working in the front of the hdc is easy, but turning and working back in the back of it is fiddly and made my right hand go pins and needles-ish!

It wasn’t this hard with the Red Heart With Love, which is a heavier worsted. I also didn’t get gauge with the alpaca and had to go up a hook size, and also add five extra stitches to the strips to be sure of it being the right length.

As you can see, I’m actually using my handmade yarn bowl for this, as I had to hand wind the hanks into balls and they need corralling! I have crocheted two strips so far but have to wait a for a call back from S before I go any further, to make sure I understood her requirements re using the two colours.

I also started yet another pair of Granny Stitch Slippers at work yesterday with some old Knit Picks Brava. I will definitely have enough to make the feet in one colour this time, then add cream around the top.

It was a nutso day at work yesterday. I was called in Friday night for four hours and it was pretty dead, but Saturday was busy busy busy. As closing time approached, I found myself getting to the ‘fried brain’ stage where if people wanted math done to calculate how much they needed, or if it was ‘buy one, get three free’ and they wanted  four of something and twelve of something, but five different colours, it got to be too challenging!!

For a while, there was only cut cut cut and no putting bolts of fabric away, so it was wonderful when there was breathing space between customers so I could get things moved back to the shelves. About 5.15 I took a big breath and gave one of my coworkers a meaningful look, and she said she thought I was going to need help to ‘dig myself out.’ 😉

Thankfully by then I had managed to tidy up my area and was helping to get things put away at other cutting tables.

Today I had a lie-in and a blissful morning at home, and I’m now hoping that ds2 and ds3 will get out of bed so we can have a family walk this afternoon with ds1. Time will tell.