i crocheted some rocks this weekend

Last weekend, my boy and I went to Rügen Island on the Baltic Sea. On our first day, we walked along a beach and I noticed how many pretty rocks there were.

A few years ago I had a friend that collected rocks from all of her trips. Inspired by her, I picked one and decided it was going home with me. But then I found a prettier rock, so it replaced the earlier one. I also had my boy pick a rock for himself. And then we found some that were prettier - white on the outside, black on the inside - so he gave me one as a rock from him. And then I found a bigger rock of the same type and said "Wouldn't it be great to crack this open?" and my boy spent half an hour doing just that, as we kept finding better rocks/ruining the earlier ones. At the end of the day, we discarded all of the first rocks and kept these:

He cracked open all of these and has the other half of the smaller rocks.
You can either say "awwwww" or gag at the sweetness at this point.

The next day, we climbed down 412 steps to view this from the beach:

Of course, there were more rocks on that beach, and I picked up another for myself, one for him and a large chunk of chalk (that's what those cliffs are made of) for each of us.

The one on the right looks like a seal, right?

But - and this is where it gets interesting - there were also some really nice, smooth, large rocks. And I picked one up and said I was going to crochet it into a paper weight. My boy said something like "You're crazy - what do you need a paper weight for?" As if that would stop me. I also had him pick a rock for himself. He was wise and chose a smaller rock.

Well, we then had to climb back up those stairs. I had some rocks in my bag and he had some in his (okay, just another bag of mine that he was carrying). After the first thirty or so steps he realized that I'm the weaker female and need to be cared for and he should carry all of the bags. But that also meant that he was carrying about five pounds of rocks, if not more, just for me. He's so sweet.

Anyway, I finally started to crochet the rocks yesterday. There is no pattern as each rock is special and unique, so it's basically a case of start it, expand it, contract it, close it.

This was the easy bit.

And the more difficult bit.

After a certain point, I just had to crochet while the pattern was on the rock. The bamboo needle might not have been the best choice as I was afraid of snapping it at times.

And look, it's sealed and finished. Pretty paper weight memory complete!