For Laughs: My first attempt to crochet

By now you all know my sister Melody, the crocheting queen and owner of Lap of Luxury Designs. This is a post I did on my private family blog about a year ago and wanted to share on here for a good laugh (at least for us).

This is a story that Mel and I still to this day can recall and go into tears of laughter over.  It’s probably one of those “you had to be there stories”, but still...

Melody started crocheting when she was in high school and I was back living at home after graduating from BYU.  I thought I’d give crocheting a try too.  I selected my yarn of choice from the store, bought the wand-thingy, and sat down with Mel to give me the basic instructions.  It wasn’t long before I pretty much got the pattern down.  So, off I went into my room to relax and crochet. I was attempting to make a scarf.  I worked painstakingly every day after work, and on the weekends until I ran really low on yarn and couldn’t go any further.

At that point I walked into Melody’s room to ask her how to put on the cute tassel/fringy thingy's on the ends like she always did.

{Interesting fact about Mel—she can spend hours patiently and meticulously sewing together an intricate blouse or crocheting hats, scarfs, iphone carriers, but with almost everything else her patience has about a 10 second limit.}

When I walked into Melody’s room that evening, she was either in the middle of her homework or some other activity consuming her attention because she took about 3 seconds to explain how to tie on the tassels.

It was something like this:  “You just take some short pieces of yarn and tie them through the ends of your scarf.” I don’t even think she looked up from whatever she was doing. 

A bit perplexed but feeling like this is supposed to easy, I walked back into my room to follow her instructions.  I assessed the amount of yarn I had left and did the quick math to figure out how big and how many pieces of yarn I could get out of it for the tassels.  I was able to cut about 10 four inches pieces to work with--it wasn’t much but i was determined to make it work.  As best I could I attempted to follow Mel’s instructions and *simply* tie on the tassels.  Finally I had about 5 tassels tied onto each end of the scarf, but it just didn’t look right or anything like Melody’s scarves always looked.

By this time Melody was in the adjoining bathroom between our bedrooms getting ready for bed.  I walked in to show her my work and wonder why it looked…well..so bad. 

My sweet, loving little sister took one look at my scarf and made a face mixed with horror, puzzlement,and just plain hilarity.  She took my scarf in her hands and fingered the sparse tassels as she asked, “What did you do?” 

I explained that I tried to do what she said the best I could but that I didn’t have very much yarn left and was a little confused as to the tying.  Just then one of the pathetic tassels fell off the scarf. Mel was like ,”What!?”

as another tassel fell off...

and then another...

and another. 

She couldn’t keep it in any longer and just burst out laughing at my quickly degrading scarf.  I too could not deny just how pathetic my scarf looked and my pride was lost with my own tears of laughter as Melody tried her best to revive my poor scarf.

Her and I both sat on the bathroom floor our laughter fueling even more laughter as we wiped away the tears.  It was one of the best laughs of my life.  Needless to say not only did my scarf not have tassels but it was just too ugly to wear and barely long enough to be considered a scarf.  I have since learned to crochet better and attach tassels, but I kept that first scarf as a memory of that time sitting on the bathroom floor just laughing ourselves silly with Melody.

(Yes, you may laugh too.)