uncharted waters

Leah's in uncharted waters, trying things she's never tried before and loving it. Most of it is happening without my help, by the crafter's choice and by necessity, since I'm covering a full-time job in a client's office this week and then doing my usual work in the hours before and after. You can imagine the chuckle I got when I noticed the camera was not in its usual place and I turned it on and found this:

She had been searching the Web and found Simplicity pattern 4510, then hijacked Scott's bakery delivery route one day with a detour to Joann's and with a xmas gift card in her pocket. Pattern purchased, she rummaged in our fabric stash to find fabric. It's not enough yardage, but she plans to simplify the pattern anyway and says she'll figure it out along the way. Well, okey dokey then.

There was cutting and sewing the other night, and apparent rummaging through the button box yesterday. I am concerned about the pattern size she chose after measuring herself, but she tells me she will figure that out later too if she needs to. No prob, sez the confident one!

Yesterday, I arrived home from client's office to an email from her with a link to this Daisy and Rose Irish Lace Collar, which she found via Ravelry. When she got home from an afternoon of fun, she dug around in the needlework supplies and found DMC Cordonnet that she thinks will work and a vintage crochet hook, size 10, that's way smaller than anything I've ever used. The pattern is from New Zealand and they use different terms than we do for crochet stitches, but the terms they use are also terms we use, just meaning different things, so that's a challenge. In other words, if the pattern calls for a treble crochet, you don't do what we know as a treble crochet, but instead do a double crochet. If the pattern says double crochet, you don't do our usual double crochet, but instead a single crochet! I told Scott it's like if somebody said, "I would like you to help me paint this fence" but what they really mean is "Let's go to the beach tomorrow." The pattern makes perfectly good sense as we see it, but it means something entirely different!

Once she got the hang of how this all works, she was off to do her thing and here's where her first motif is this morning.

Her gauge is way, way off (loose = bigger), but she doesn't mind, says she'll just make fewer motifs or have a more elaborate collar than the original. Blocking will, of course, result in a miraculous transformation too.

Rock on, kiddo!