Crocheting is something  I learned to do when I was sixteen or so from a book, and my first piece was a doily. It suits my stiffening joints  better than knitting, and so I crochet.  I am willing to try crochet utilizing (nearly) anything  that has a thread or yarn-like structure, and an adequately sized hook.

Sometimes I remember that Edie Eckman, author of several colorful books on crochet, says on page 5 of Beyond the Square Crochet Motifs that crochet “is made up of only three movements, combined in an infinite number of ways.

• Put your hook somewhere.
• Wrap the yarn over the hook.
• Pull the hook through something.”

 This bathmat is made from old T-shirts and  socks, cut into strips with a method  found online.  End were cut on a diagonal and overlapped for joining.  It washes in the washing machine and hangs over a shower curtain rod to dry.

 These two motifs are the same.  The coaster on the right is made with a weight 4 kitchen cotton yarn, just under 4 inches in diameter.   The super small one is the same pattern made in beige sewing thread.  Its lacy effect is due to its stiffness relative to the size of the stitches.   We may use it in a doll house.  At a scale of one inch equals a foot, the little doily would be a foot wide for the doll house.

 The little hemp doily is made from a hemp craft twine.  It is very stiff, and unblocked.  I superimposed a white cross stitch as an experiment.  I probably will not crochet much with this twine, because it moves along rather slowly.

 Wanting a hemp doormat, and not finding one at a suitable price, I decided to try making one.  I will never do this again, because the process caused a permanent inflammation at the base of my thumb, and even so, it is kind of small, and still cost about twenty dollars for the hemp cord involved.

The most fun of these to make were the coaster, the doll house doily, and the bath mat.