Heart Decorations, Part 1

I saw a Valentine's Day decoration on http://www.marthastewart.com/ that involved making hearts from two layers of waxed paper with crayon shavings in the middle--you run your iron over the waxed paper (through a regular piece of paper so the wax doesn't come off on your iron) and the colors all melt together and look really pretty, at least if you believe the picture on the website. I wanted to make some waxed paper hearts to hang on the door of our center, then I thought, "But Rowena, you can crochet some beautiful ones!" I hate it when I get like that, don't you?

So I looked for materials. The only thread I had was purple, and that didn't belong to me, but I had held onto it since the tatting class my mom and I had taken with Stephen last year, and he wasn't screaming for it, so I figured I could use it. I found that I don't own any crochet hooks small enough to crochet with the purple thread, so I decided to tat a heart instead. I found a tatted heart pattern in "A New Twist on Tatting" by Catherine Austin, and got busy. The instructions for the three motifs were easy enough to follow, but I didn't understand the instructions for the border at all, so I just made it up as I went along, and you can see the result in the picture. Not exactly a heart, but kind of pretty.

So I went to Ben Franklin in Mitchell (see previous post) and bought three balls of thread (Aunt Lydia’s, made in India)—one red, one dark pink and one light pink—and two crochet hooks. I spent about an hour looking for a suitable crocheted lace heart pattern on-line before giving up and asking my mom. Now you should know that my mother is a master crocheter who probably crocheted her way through the delivery of all nine of her children and owns every crochet pattern ever published. She couldn’t find a crochet lace heart pattern, either, but she did find an actual heart, which she donated to the cause so that I could copy it.

Well, that heart was done in microscopic thread with a hook that would be at home in a dollhouse. I copied it with my Ben Franklin thread and after the second row it was obvious that if I kept at it, I would have a tablecloth. At this point I told myself, “Just make something up!” And here’s the result. Not bad, huh? Unfortunately I didn’t write down what I did, so the red and dark pink ones will be all-new adventures.