How the crochet-thing started.

New weekly Question/Answer for my Create Crochet Team. Non-crafters feel free to skip this one.

I used to be a corporate-suit-n-heels nurse educator. But in 2000, my arthritis finished eroding the vertebrae in my neck and I had to have fusions: three of them. They "harvest" bone from your hipbone to graft into your spine, and THAT hurt much worse than the neck. But only the first two fusions, because (thankfully) I only had two hips. The third surgery used bone from the Bone Bank.

So with my head and neck firmly encased in a torture-cage-contraption, suddenly I'm on disability, housebound and  immobile. I didn't drink alcohol (was sober 16 years), and the pain meds didn't work nearly as long as I wished they would, so I HAD to find something to occupy my mind. I got a giant crochet hook, a ton of WalMart yarn, and an afghan pattern book. Everyone got afghans for Christmas. Great big thick ones. Whether they wanted one or not. After I recovered, I stopped. Besides, everyone I knew had afghans already, and that was the only pattern book I had.

A few years later, I was shown a felted tote bag, made by a friend with a sheep farm. I had never seen felted wool before, only accidentally-felted Pendleton shirts. (D'oh!) So thick and sturdy, no stitch definition, it absolutely fascinated me that you could create a dense fabric like that from yarn! This bag was knitted, but I wondered if crocheting wool would work. Of course, I googled the topic first, and was delighted others had thought of it already.

Short attention span and all, I started with small projects: baby booties and amulet bags. They were gorgeous. And once I figured out how much shrinkage my crocheting did, I was able to free-form without patterns. If you didn't see it, I wrote a blog about felting before. Click  I also inherited a bin of bedspread cotton from a friend, and they made lovely, delicate amulet bags. I still wear the first one I made.