Back to the main purpose of the blog--greening it up, Baby!

Do It Yourself--you'll be glad you did.

 It's been a while since I have posted here. I have been busy with other things, and working on things to post about. :)

I've been crocheting a bunch lately. My family likes to have "couch blankets." When we were still in Bloomington I made almost all the hats and scarves we wore during the cold months, and I gladly crochet dishcloths and washcloths for our daily use.

Why would I do these things, when I could save time and maybe even money (good yarn is not cheap, but SO worth it) by running across the street to Target or Kmart or where ever and just buying a blanket for $20 or 5 washcloths for a dollar? Why? I have good reasons. Very good reasons.

1) So these precious skills are not lost to time. If I HAD to, I want to know that I can have nice things because I can make them, grow them, raise them, etc. People used to make nearly everything for themselves and their neighbors, now we make almost nothing for ourselves.

2) Every stitch is like a directed meditation on the person you care for enough to make the item. Will they like it? Will it be warm enough? Will it be too warm? Every single stitch is an expression of love and care.

3) I like to imagine that the recipient will feel loved, honored and comforted by these labors of love. Even if they don't, though, I have still gained knowledge. I have created something beautiful and nurturing. I have accomplished something worthwhile, and I have enjoyed myself while doing so.

4) The labor involved is also like a directed meditation on material possessions. For instance, I have two throw blankets in my home I bought on sale at the grocery store for $11 each. They are good, cozy blankets. But they are made of synthetic fibers, on the other side of the planet from where I purchased them. Do you know why we can get so many things made of plastic so cheaply? Because, according to most economists, the TRUE cost of production is not captured in the cost that we pay.

We don't pay to clean the environment of the toxic by-products created in manufacturing because of relaxed environmental standards in developing nations. We don't pay for the damage done to the local ecology during the process of extracting the raw materials. We don't pay for the changing weather patterns (yet), we don't pay for the lost human capital (yet), we don't pay for the true cost of discarded waste when that color goes out of fashion and 250,000 consumers redecorate their homes with a "new look for Spring" they saw on the DIY network or HGTV.

Material possessions. We over-value them and under-value them simultaneously. I guarantee you, though, if we all made our own blankets and washcloths and hats and scarves, we'd feel differently about discarding them when the next home fashion trend rolled through town. 

Those crocheted dishcloths are amazing, by the way! They work like a charm, hold up to rough use and go straight in with the laundry. No hassle, no fuss, no chemicals dyes, no sponges to get torn up and thrown away (and that's not even taking into account the germs on those former invertebrate members of the shallow sea life community.) I felt like the last person on Earth to hear about them, but there are literally thousands of free patterns available online.

I have also been crocheting blankets as I said. I have here a few images of the finished products (fair warning--this apartment came furnished and the "color choices" it was decorated with are NOT my usual subdued style--sunglasses may be called for):

This is the first blanket I crocheted, and I made it for myself to use while reading in my recliner. That explains the shape, right? I used Caron Simply Soft yarn, if I recall correctly, and I think the color was "rose garden." It was a joy to make, and I used the same pattern on this one I did for the one I later made for my son...because every time I turned around he was snuggling with "my" blanket and I wanted it back.

I tried to get a good shot of the stitches close up, but my photography skills are truly lacking. You can kind of see the pattern, though.

This one I made for my son, whose favorite color is green. He picked out the yarn in Bloomington and I started it on the long flight over.  I didn't use a pattern, I just had a general shape in mind, and stopped when it was "big enough." I used a very large hook size, and made a very simple double crochet net. (eHow has a tutorial on double crochet and to create the netting effect just skip one chain between dc stitches. On the next pass, dc in the chain1 spaces of the previous row. When  you reach the desired length, finish with a triple crochet edging. Leave a comment if you want more instructions!)  This blanket's been done for weeks now.

This was the next blanket I made. This one was for my husband and I used a red heart free pattern for it. Scott wanted a different yarn for it, and he chose red heart super saver urban camo. I thought the colors looked nice, but it was a hard yarn to find, and frankly, hard to work with. This will be the last time I start a project without at least getting an in-person impression of the yarn. The finished product came our fine, but I would have preferred it to be a little softer. Scott seems happy with it, but I would like to make him something cozier at some point down the line.

 

The next project I worked on was this for my brother. I used a different pattern for his, also a free pattern from red heart, and he DID like the look of the yarn. I am a "tight" crocheter, and always wind up using less yarn than patterns call for. The upside of that is that I can make blankets and things bigger then specified with the same amount of yarn. (I'm just guessing, actually, I'm sure why it happens, but it does. I consistently make the same project using about 3/4 of the yarn called for in the pattern.)

I have fallen in love with Bernat Mosiac yarn, and the next couple of crochet projects I will be working on are Bumble Berry Pie Afghans. I will be making one out of the color "Fantasy" for Ami and one out of "Waterfall" for myself. :) I SO can't wait. Here is the next project in the making:

This charming pink/purple/lavender square is the very first square for Ami's Afghan. It's going to be beyond lovely.

I will be sure to post more pics when I get further along with Ami's, but I might wait until I finish it. I love this yarn so much (it's GORGEOUS) I might be a little bit obsessive about working on it until it gets done.

My next post will be about bread making. I will be posting my recipe for white bread, corn bread and a recipe for very low fat banana bread. I have lots of pics already taken for both, so it shouldn't take too long to for me to get it all typed. Unless, of course, I am obsessively working on something else. After that, I will post tutorials for 2 basic crochet dishcloths.

Take care, and go make something for yourself!

Weekend in Dubai--General thoughts

Everybody's heard of Dubai. Well, perhaps not everyone, but many people have. I think most people know it as a city with lots of wealth, heavy investment in tourism, man-made islands and the tallest building in the world.


My dear friend Bridget studied Arabic there at the American School as a Fulbright Scholar several years ago and I remember all the glowing things she had to say about it at the time. She would almost  wax poetic about how beautiful and how safe it was there, how everything was posh and how much she truly loved it. "Really?" I thought. This is still the same part of the world where women aren't supposed to leave home without a male relative to escort them, and the sexes are still segregated,  right? I'll admit I didn't know much about Dubai then, and I only know a little more today, but I admit I didn't believe her. I thought perhaps she was only seeing the best of Dubai. I never had the slightest inkling at the time that I would ever visit there myself one day.


After having lived in Kuwait for several months, the difference between the two places was indeed striking. Construction in both places is rampant, and they are both wealthy, they are both Islamic, they are both constitutional monarchies, lead by powerful ruling families who retain strong clan ties to other powerful families, as is common in Arab culture. Indeed, the culture is something that the citizens of both places are obviously proud of, as is evidenced by the adherence to traditional dress and social customs, even as the populations and, to a lesser extent, lifestyles are blended with everything modern, convenient and technological.

But where Kuwait is dusty, dry-looking and has the wary, somewhat hostile feeling of the frontier (except inside the malls, which are huge, shiny and status-baiting enough to do Dallas or Houston proud),  Dubai is clean, sparkling, colorful and welcoming. Everything I saw in Dubai showed some measured of care had been taken with it. Even the underpasses along the main motorways had tile mosaics lining them, depicting the culture and heritage of Dubai in big, simple, easy-to-make-out-as-you-are-speeding-by-in-a-cab layouts. I wish I had thought to take a picture of it, but one would have to have a camera constantly at the ready in order to capture every bit of excellent planning in that very well appointed city.

I don't at all mean to imply that the city is perfectly planned or that it is without flaw. In fact, there are some serious issues in Dubai regarding fair treatment for laborers and other, less visible, flaws that desperately need to be addressed before I could give an unreserved endorsement. It's the stark contrast  between Kuwait and Dubai that I so curious about. The difference is probably largely related to the fact that for Dubai, the oil has run out, forcing the leadership to find other means of support going forward. Kuwait, still veritably drowning in oil has all the money it needs, and will need for the foreseeable future, so what do they care how clean their streets are, or how efficient and/or beautiful their city is? Or what they will do to sustain themselves when the oil runs out?

Is this the resource curse? Maybe. Maybe not. The oil might never "run out" for them, but that doesn't mean that they still don't need good leadership to drag their country kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Yes, I said 20th century, not 21st. Cell phones, automobiles and air-conditioning do not a millennium make. Even the granting of women's suffrage in 2005 hasn't seemed to have much impact on the visual appeal of the city. Google street view images for Kuwait, and the first thing you will probably notice about them is that it is difficult to tell which part of the city you are looking at, because they all look dusty, beige, and have piles of rubble, sand, and refuse in them.

Kuwaitis are very proud of Kuwait, though. "The Emir, may Allah grant him long life..." is a fond public figure, and Kuwaitis insist that "this is the first country, the best country..." and feel universally that the problems of Kuwait are the fault of all of the foreign laborers who come to their country to work. That doesn't seem to be a point easy to hold onto when one visits Dubai, which also has a huge ratio of foreign workers to citizens. Kuwaitis are wealthy, and by all accounts travel frequently to Dubai. Having the national pride that they do, I can't imaging that they wouldn't go to Dubai and think "I want this for MY country." Where is the pressure that should being exerted on the administrative powers that be to impose cleanliness, efficiency and beautiful order on this wealthy and potentially beautiful nation?  Just to prove my point about Kuwait's possibilities, I plan to offer a series of future posts about our experiences and discoveries here that will lend examples and contrasts.

Our visit to Dubai was during the first weekend in March 2012. I have broken the visit up into  several posts rather than making it one long post that would eat up too much time to read in one sitting. My next post will cover Day 1--the desert safari! I am going to try to share as much of the experience as possible, so check back soon!