Lily VS Lisa

The great race has been completed and a winner decided. No, I don't mean the "Tour De France", I mean the world's fastest crocheter race. Here's the link:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/072205_nw_knitting.html

First off, I get no kickbacks from either of these ladies, but I have purchased and used some of Lily Chin's books. I don't know Lisa but if she has published patterns, I probably have some of hers, too.

Lisa won with an impressive 107 stitches to Lily's 82. I'm not sure of the time period this encompasses, I think 3 minutes. That's pretty _amazing_, I wonder what kind of hook she used? I bet it was a Boye hook, but I'd say that because they are my _favorite_ hooks. The Addi hooks are supposed to be fast, but I've never tried them yet. Yes, even though the Boyes are my favorites, I stray from time to time. But I always come back to my beloved Boyes;) Perhaps Lisa will get a crochet hook deal? Lily Chin already has her own brand of yarn out, as well as several pattern books. At any rate, I wish both parties the best of luck in their future endeavors (and if they want to give me some yarn or something, that's cool too;))

A lot of people feel speed is not something that should be considered for crocheting. After all, crocheting is fun and you probably shouldn't hurry fun. But I can tell you when you start crocheting, it's _all_ about picking up speed. I remember the first afghan I made (okay, I sort of made it. My older sister Bee helped a _lot_ with it). It seemed to take me forever to get a row done. It wasn't even a hard afghan, just stripes of double crochet. I never thought I'd finish it. Now I could whip right thru it, providing there was enough on tv I wanted to watch. I'm not saying everybody should strive to be superfast - that's up to you. But becoming accomplished in your field of interest is a good thing.

That's part of the reason I have so much trouble with knitting. It seems to take me forever to knit a scarf, and again, a simple garter stitch pattern. And when I drop a stitch - well, it's not a pretty site. I will rip it out and begin again, this time crocheting. I imagine if I tried harder and practiced more, I'd get the hang of knitting. But crocheting is so much more_fun_. You can immediately see where you're going with it and what shape your object is taking. You're making a hat, you can see what shape and how big the hat will be within a few rows. Knitting takes longer to get to that point. Crocheting to me seems to be a more fluid art form.

Oh, yes, I said "art form". Crocheting is an art form - maybe a wearable art if it's a sweater or even functional art if it's mittens. A beautiful doily is a truly a work of art. It is art in one of the purest forms - the artist, the medium, the tool. Unless you figure paint or use your hands to sculpt, you can't get much closer to creating art than fiber arts such as crochet and embroidery. (Yeah, I know knitting, sewing & quilting are in that catagory, too, but this is_my_blog - I get to emphasize what I want to.)

So there you go, future speedy crocheters - the number to beat is 107. I don't think I'm capable of going that fast, but I wish I could. It would give me an excuse to buy more yarn;)