How the Storm Stole My Mojo.

When it became clear that Hurricane Irene was really on her way (...we always hope that storms will just...shuffle out to sea before they get up here to New York), I envisioned all kinds of crafting-by-candlelight time.

And then, in a fit of bureaucratic ass-covering, I got evacuated, which was scary and stressful and a pain in the ass---thankfully---unnecessary, but also shut down the crafting part of my brain for the weekend. 

So in the end, I spent the storm (which was slowed waaaaay down by the time she got here, and I won the Power Line Lottery and never even lost electricity, let alone had anything sustain any damage besides "lots of annoying fallen leaves and branches") napping and cooking vegetable gumbo and watching Winter's Bone and reading Kelly Link's amazing collection of short stories Pretty Monsters (about which there will possibly be more to say later).  So all of the "here are my hurricane goodies!" items that I wanted to present to you...don't exactly exist. 

I do, of course, have an owl (...or three) on the skeins, but over the past two days I've been Distracted by Dishcloths.  (Or washcloths, in this case, but I couldn't resist the alliteration.)

I ended up making these in the most roundabout way possible---thanks to Ness of Bunnies and Bettas, I remembered the existence of the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup on Ravelry, and got there just in time to sign up to be sorted for this upcoming term.  So uh, this is just fair warning that I guess WIP Wednesdays and FO Fridays for the next three months are going to be filled with projects prompted by said group.  The class assignments go live tomorrow and I'm so excited.  Especially since the group has already led me to make stuff I wouldn't have otherwise.

Through a bunch of random link-clicking in the House Cup forums, I discovered the For the Children of Pine Ridge group (also on Ravelry), which coordinates efforts to send knitted and crocheted items to the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and one of their August/September projects is making cotton washcloths for the elderly people on the reservation.

I love the idea of handmade dish/washcloths, but I don't live in a climate where they're practical.  It's really humid here, so anything as heavyweight as a cloth crocheted from worsted-weight cotton is going to turn into a mildew ball.  So I'm thrilled to have a good cause to make them for and a place to send them.  The lame, teasy photo above is because both of these are actually finished, just not off the skeins with woven ends yet.  But oh, more are on the way.  If any of you have a favourite crocheted dishcloth pattern, please share it with me!

Now go, and roll around in the yarny coolness that is WIP Wednesday!