Hooked

I've been obsessed with crocheting bookmarks for over a week now. Hence the lazy posts. Last summer I had deprived myself of the crocheting as punishment incentive to put the finishing touches on the ones already crocheted--tucking the tails, blocking and adding ribbons and beads. But while I was preparing the five bookmarks for my read-a-thon mini-challenge winners I decided that it was probably best to leave the blocking and decorating to just before handing them over to their intended anyway as it is so difficult to store them in such a way as to keep their ribbons from creasing and their edges from curling. I learned this while trying to keep several nice for several days while prepping the last two and all of the envelopes.

So with the new permission to go crazy crocheting I've done just that. I've lost count of how many I made in this latest stint but I know that what I had before I started was in the teens and that counted the five slated for my read-a-thon mini-challenge winners. Now my collection of not-yet-beribboned bookmarks numbers nearly forty and that doesn't count the extra one I made for one of my challenge winners after deciding that I couldn't mail the one with the big bead on it this time nor does it count the one Ed asked me to make for him that was half again as long as the regular ones with 20 rows instead of 12.

Until the last couple days I was focused on getting at least one of the granny-square-stitch ones made for each color and type of thread and then started making duplicates of the Xmas colors (red, white, green) and the blues (my fav color) and then I decided to switch to the striped pattern I designed myself and not only see how many cool color combos I could accumulate but see how much time I could shave off the nearly four hours that pattern has been taking me to make.

After making four in just over 24 hours I've gotten it down to just under three hours. The granny-square-stitch with 12 rows of 2 clusters of 6 double crochet now takes me 40-50 minutes. The striped ones have 7 rows alternating 9 clusters of 4 double crochet with 8 clusters of 3 double crochet with 2 double crochet standing singly to bracket the ends of the latter. With four rows of the first and three of the latter that adds up to 4(9x4) + 3(8x3 + 2)=222 double crochet for the striped vs the 12x2x6=144 double crochet for the granny-square-stitch. Which means that once I'm as practiced with this new pattern I should be able to make one in 80-110 minutes.

Of course for neither of them does this time count the tucking of the start and finish tails, the blocking and the application of ribbons and/or beads. The striped one has two tails per stripe and I didn't stop to tuck the six tails on any of the four I made in the last 30 or so hours. I probably should do that before I start another one. The day before I started work on the striped ones I'd tucked tails on a stack of ten or eleven granny-square-stitch ones and then made one more granny whose tails are still hanging so that gives me 4x6 + 2 = 26 tails to tuck.

It's my least favorite step in the process but it's definitely time to tuck them tails. That's the equivalent of thirteen granny-square-stitch ones and I never did let the stack get bigger than twelve before tucking. It's one thing to accumulate a hundred naked bookmarks. It's quite another to accumulate several dozen untucked tails.