Suggestions For You ~ Tunisian Crochet

If you shop on Amazon, you're probably familiar with the phrase "suggestions for you". These are the listings that pop up as you're shopping and are based on past purchases, so they are generally things about which you have some interest.

Two days ago I was looking on Amazon for a book of idioms after my son's teacher informed me that he just doesn't seem to understand them. I can't argue with her on this point. My son is so literal, that if you tell him he's just scratched the surface of something, he will look for the actual scratch.

If his teacher feels he needs a better grasp of idioms, then I'm the kind of mom who will buy the Scholastic Book of Idioms and read them at the dinner table. I'll talk in idioms, joke in idioms, until there isn't an idiom left that my son hasn't heard. (You're feeling sorry for my kids right now, aren't you?)

As I was buying over 700 sayings and expressions, I received my "suggestions for you". On this particular day they found a weak spot, Tunsian crochet. I can ignore a lot of things, but I find Tunisian crochet cool and interesting. I've done some basic Tunisian crochet, but nothing fancy. I was sucked in by the picture on the cover of a beautiful woman wearing a Möbius strip shawl. Darn you August Ferdinand Möbius and your clever mathematics!

Powerless against their suggestions, Amazon triumphantly sold me a copy of Get Hooked on Tunisian Crochet by Sheryl Thies. I find it ridiculous that every other crochet book has "get hooked on" in the title like it's a command we crocheters just can't resist, but my personal library is a hopeless testament to the success of this particular marketing campaign.

Now that I have made it sound like I was practically forced to buy this book, I'll share my project with you. After looking through all thirteen options, I chose the Möbius style shawl on the cover. I happened to have a couple skeins of Patons black lace in my stash, so that's the yarn I'm using. I know it's a little hard to see the pattern in black and that's too bad because it's pretty cool.

It took me several tries to get the stitch down actually. The pattern reads "YO, Tks 3 (5 loops on hook), pass YO over 3 loops just made". I guess my mind was stuck in the world of regular crochet because I interpreted that to mean that I should YO and pass through the three loops just made on my hook. When I finally read the instructions more carefully, I realized that the 3 loops just made should be drawn under the previous YO thus carrying or passing that YO over those three loops.

Now that I think about it, it's kind of funny that I was struggling because I was not being literal enough!