I know that crochet is starting to catch up to knitting as far a popularity, but I thought it was very telling that in the past two days I have discovered that two long-distance friends of mine also crochet. These are gals I’ve known forever, and while we’ve had a lot of discussions about various topics, for whatever reason, this topic never made its way into the conversation. In fact, I only learned about their crochet ways because one of them gave me an awesome crocheted afghan for Christmas, and the other one I saw had posted pictures of a project she’s working on over at her Facebook page.

Pictured is a yarn trainer I purchased as a little thank you in reciprocation for the afghan. I’ve never used one of these, but now I am thinking of going back to the Knitting Warehouse site and ordering one for myself too. Sometimes I do roll my yarn before I start a project, but I really hate doing that. This little gadget looks like it would let me skip that step. Plus, I have to say that my cats are often mesmerized by the strings of yarn coming from the ball, and I have to constantly tell my dogs that no, this is not a ball for them to play with.