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Don’t ask me why or how. These things just happen to me. All of a sudden, I have metal hooks and balls of yarn and printed-out patterns and little plastic stitch markers and scraps of failed attempts trailing me from room to room. The dreaded crafting fever is upon me once again, and nothing will do for it but to feed the demon until something stronger comes along to replace it.

Once, it was polymer clay beadmaking. Then crocheted “doily” kind of useless things. Then knitting. Then macrame jewelry made with yellowed-with-age pattern books published in the 70’s. Then beadwork with those teeny little “seed” beads that are a major pain to pick up when spilled and worse to separate by color afterwards…

I’m sure I missed a few items there, but you get the drift. It’s a lifelong condition, alas. In my childhood, I made Christmas ornaments with pearl-headed pins and sequins and ribbons, and candles with ice-chip holes in milk cartons, and dangerous-looking drinking glasses etched on a craft gadget and broken off from the bottom of empty glass bottles (they didn’t use plastic bottles much in the 70’s). And macrame jewelry back when those now-yellowed-with-age pattern books were new. And seed-bead necklace strings with little “daisies” knotted in every inch or so.

Are you sensing a pattern here?

Okay, so this compulsion to “create” stuff isn’t anything new. However, I thought that this time, I’d try a new twist: making things for people who are going through the same godawful cancer treatment experiences that I dragged myself limply through back in 2004. Cuz, ya know what? It’s occurred to me that maybe it would be nice to be giving for a change. And, it’s also occurred to me that I might just have to go through that whole better-living-through-poisoning routine again. And there is just NO FREAKIN’ WAY I’m going to EVER wear a wig again. I wore hats whenever I wasn’t at work, because I absolutely hated being “wigged”. On the comfort scale, I’d rate wig-wearing while chemo bald scalp-skin-sensitized somewhere between having your toes strangled all day in holey stockings and being ratcheted open with an ice-cold speculum. Hats, mmmm. The selection was a bit limited, alas, and not exactly cheap. So I had three, plus a Red Wings stocking-knit cap that was so tight it made my brain hurt. Now, here it is, four gloriously hairy years later, and somehow the memory of that experience flirted outrageously with my deep-seated but long-buried craft cravings and omg…the demon was released again, bouncing headfirst among the lilypads going WooHoo! WooHoo! WooHoo! Crocheted chemo caps! Now! In all colors, styles, fibers, patterns, sizes, gimme gimme gimme gimmeee…

Ehh. I’ve been sneaking into Michaels after work, furtively smuggling plastic bags full of fuzzy and pointy crochet ingredients past my husband and into what he refers to as my “bad areas”. These are places near a well-used chair or a bed where I have to have at least 8 paperbacks, various computer peripherals, a bag of wrapped chocolate candy with two pieces left (untouched for months), dozens of foil candy-wrapper fragments, half-filled drinking glasses, coffee mugs, a stack of bound books (also untouched for months), hair clips, pens, drawing pencils (ack, I knew I missed one - sketching!), partially-used notebooks, and whatever else has caught my attention, however briefly, in the past few weeks. Okay, it’s disgusting. I’m a slob, I admit it freely. But you see, it’s the price you pay for being….CREAAAAATIVE! And having the attention span of a gnat.

So there we have it. Gentle reader, judge not too harshly. I am, ostensibly at least, making crocheted chemo caps for those less fortunate than myself. For free. Although I make keep a few around, er, just in case. So my living room is starting to resemble a giant furniture-filled spiderweb, what of it? I had to teach myself how to crochet all over again, being too, er, practical to take a class or something. There’s free patterns and stitch instructions all over the internet! I can prove it! I’ve printed out 2,359 pages of them! And, of course, there’s always room for more patterns, or possibly a hint or two why my turning chains are leaving holey seams on one side, or any insight as to why yarn strands will cling to each other so tenaciously that I wind up breaking the yarn before they relinquish their stubborn mutual hold - and with not a knot in sight! It makes ripping out stitches a nightmare. Therefore I do humbly appeal to the crochet community to help me keep my chemo cap project on track. Take pity and drop me a line, offer a word of advice, a link to a great pattern or a great crochet blog (yours?!!?!), anything! Won’t you pleaaaase, please help me, help me, help meeee oooh…