Crochet or Die 2: Doomed to Fail

The challenge was off to a decent start. I managed to finish the bust part within a few days, spent the weekend doing and re-doing the filler, started one part of the lower torso. crashed and burned pretty much after that.

A week's worth of work (I am a *very* slow crocheter); the point where I gave up

I normally crochet for an hour or two most days, maybe three hours when I couldn't sleep yet, with frequent breaks for reading or playing games or surfing the net. There are times when I zombie-crochet, though, not stopping until my arm or back aches.

For this project, I crocheted for a minimum of four hours everyday, with almost no break. I developed a callous on my palm.

A week of this and I got tired. I got bored. I couldn't sustain the focus necessary to get this thing done.

I failed. It's not an utter defeat, since even if I did not meet the major challenge of finishing the project on the specified date, I have been mostly successful at interpreting and following the charts.

Weeks after the deadline, I am chipping away at the dress. Since the dress is made up of several pieces, the matching up part frustrates me so. The pieces are of different sizes, with fillers to connect them.

I am determined to finish the dress, but not so keen on being hell-bent about it now.

Crochet or Die: A Challenge

What, you ask, is Crochet or Die?

It's a challenge I created to, well, challenge myself outside of my comfort crochet zone and force myself to try out something new. There are no hard and fast rules, just that the project should be challenging.

My second Crochet or Die challenge! But where is the first one? It's Pumpkin-pats' graduation dress, which I shelved for now.


I'll talk about the graduation dress on another post, but its challenges have to do with creating a dress without a pattern/designing a custom dress, using Irish crochet technique.

For this project, I'll be using a pattern from Keito Dama 137, the dress on page 9. The challenges entail:

1. Interpreting a Japanese pattern - from what I've seen around, Japanese patterns are dependent on diagrams/charts (yay!) using international standard for the symbols (double yay! Unlike Russian charts T_T); so it's not so much as learning a new technique or a new stitch as working blind on measurements, haha.

2. Get the entire thing done within 10 days. This is, in Ms Venus Raj's infamous words, the major, major problem. I figured out the guide to the gauge, and some of the Japanese characters but I am  limited

• with the dress having to be a particular color (yellow - thank goodness I decided to try out a new-to-me yarn shop and ordered a set in this color just before learning that I need a dress in that color)
• being stuck with using only that yarn
• by not having hooks smaller than 2.5 mm

Instead of getting gauge, I have to get the right size by adding or subtracting pattern repeats. Not really a bad thing unless you gotta finish it in 10 days. I don't have the luxury of repeating from the start if it turns out I fudged the number of repeats so I only have one shot at this.

Guys, I am on day three and I still don't have the top finished! I am the world's slowest crocheter. T_T