Happy Valentine’s Day!
Happy Valentine’s Day on this Flashback Friday. The big polymer clay heart is from my very first book Polymer Clay for Everyone. For a glimpse into the future, the stars, people, sun, house, and trees are motifs from my new book, Cute Crochet World. It will be out soon!
I love family.
I love home.
I love pink.
I love getting together with my quilting friends once a week.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
As Seen on TV!
Stranded checks on the knitting machine. Sounds good. Are they payable to me? Are they written for large amounts?
What? Oh. It seems the checks on the knitting machine are knitted checks with the unused yarn going across the wrong side of the work, i.e., stranded. It has been a really long time since I knitted on my Ultimate Sweater Machine, so maybe you can forgive me for the “stranded checks” mistake?
It really is fun to knit on the Ultimate Sweater Machine. Plain rows add up very fast. Stranded rows take longer, because they’re hand-manipulated. It helps to have a handy tool, like the one in the picture. It helps you push out every other pair of needles to make stranded checks.
I bought this tool years ago from Catherine Goodwin, who still sells handy knitting machine tools at her website: http://www.knittinganyhow.com.
Hot Pad for Flashback Friday
My parents’ 56th wedding anniversary on January 19th was also our one-month-versary of living in our new house. We love it!
We are unpacking stuff that has been in storage for years. Sometimes unpacking is like finding old friends and sometimes…well, I wonder why I kept some of it. It must have seemed important at the time.
This hot pad qualified as an old friend. It takes me back to the time before we ever dreamed of building a house, before kids, back to when my design career was just starting, in the early 1990s. Three double-sided knit hotpad designs were among the first I ever got into print. The house design may have been the sample I sent to the editor in my proposal. I gave it to my mother-in-law, Gene Frederick.
It hung in her kitchen for years. After she died, the hot pad returned to us and now we are using it in our new house. Things come around and go around and gather memories.
Instructions for this hot pad are in “House Warmings” (three potholder designs and patterns), Country Handcrafts, pp. 4–5, Bazaar 1992.
Crochet Charm Lace Along Sneak Peek
Can you see the pale orange yarn stitching these motifs together? Wherever they touch, you sew the together, catching loops on the back edge of each motif. This leaves the familiar “chain” look at the top of the stitch to show on the right side of the piece.
I couldn’t wait to see what my Perspective Daisy table mat is going to look like, so I took out the pins and folded the corner back for a sneak peek:
Five Point Flower, Step by Step
A friend on Ravelry has been experimenting with the Five Point flower on the pages of Crochet Bouquet. “I’m having trouble getting the petals to line up,” she wrote.
Looks like it’s time for some step-by-step photos, to supplement the crochet instructions in the book! I hope this will inspire you to give “Five Point” a try.
Rnd 1 is pairs of dc separated by ch-spaces.
Rnd 2 is worked in the ch-spaces of Rnd 1. The stitches are really packed in to make a densely packed petal.
Rnd 3 is worked into the original ch-ring, but behind the petals of Rnd 2. Fold the petal toward you. Insert hook into the original ring from the front as you normally would. The instructions tell you exactly how to begin the round with a tr into the ring.
This is how Rnd 3 looks as you progress around the flower, creating tr sts separated by ch-spaces.
When Rnd 3 is finished, it looks like this from the front and from the back. Because of the way Rnd 3 is positioned, the points of Rnd 2 should be more-or-less between the arches of Rnd 4.
The stitches of Rnd 4 are worked into the ch-spaces of Rnd 3. Again, a lot of stitches are packed into those ch-spaces. The points of Rnd 2 should be between the arches of Rnd 4. The yellow arrow shows where to insert your hook in Rnd 5, after you fold forward the petals of Rnd 4.
Fold the petals of Rnd 4 toward you, insert hook between the petals of Rnd 2 (see the yellow arrow in the photo above). This round locks the petals into their correct alignment.
This is how Rnd 5 looks from the back—sl sts between the petals of Rnd 2, separated by ch-spaces.
Rnd 6 is worked into the ch-spaces of Rnd 5. Here are a couple of petals of Rnd 6, as viewed from the back side.
Rnd 6 is finished, and we’re ready for one more round.
The Five Point is finished! The colors remind me of Valentine’s Day. It will be here before we know it!
East and North Walls
With Mud Daubers Fred and Art working full-time on the east and north walls of our earthen home, they rose amazingly fast! Rachel and I helped at first, then left all the sifting and lifting, mixing and mudding to Fred, Art, and the rest of Callon’s crew.
They had little patience for the guillotine or block-cutter we had used since the Summer of 2010. It was slow, difficult to use, inaccurate, and it broke lots of bricks in half the wrong way. A circular saw, fitted with a masonry blade, was much faster. It cut through most of the brick’s thickness, and we could break through the rest of the brick by hand. Unfortunately the circular saw created a huge cloud of sandy dust. We either wore a dust mask, held our breath, or, if possible, stood upwind of the saw.
So goodbye, dear guillotine! You weren’t a great block-cutter, but you were perfect for builders like me, who like quiet tools.
When it came time to build the last and biggest (5 feet wide) earthen arch in the house, Rachel and I were back on the job. We laid the first row with such speed and confidence, Fred remarked, “Looks like y’all have done that before.” Yep, we had a lot of practice rebuilding fallen arches.
We finished the arch. Fred and Art finished the east wall. Jerry and Van answered my call to work on the bond beam as the daffodils burst into bloom.
House Graffiti
Once the rooms of our earthen house were defined by walls, I labeled the girls’ rooms, hoping to make more real to them the possibility of having their own spaces.
Inspired by my work, Eva added her artistry to the master bedroom floor. There’s something about spray paint…
I hope my daughters remember these symbols of love under their feet when they walk around in their rooms. And I will think often about the happy home hidden within my happy home.
Crochet Charm Lace Along: Pinning Motifs
It’s a great day when you finish all the motifs for your Crochet Charm Lace project! To me, that’s when the real fun begins: arranging the motifs on the template.
The last of my motifs were blocked on Monday, so that night, while the Texas Longhorns were thwacked by the Fighting Ducks of Oregon, I sat on the floor in front of the coffee table at my parents’ house, arranging and pinning Perspective Daisies. It was a lot more fun than actually watching the football game.
I spread the different flowers around evenly, taking care to avoid symmetry in the design. You might call it “planned randomness.”
The orange flower arrangement looked elegant. “Do I really need to add the green and magenta filler motifs?” I wondered. The finished lace would have more open spaces, but not too many.
The ballgame was over, so I rolled up the fabric template and packed up to go home. Luckily, I had time to think this over.
Today I spread the template out and photographed it with just the orange flowers on it. Then I placed the green and magenta circle motifs and took another picture.
Digital photography is a great design tool. You can photograph your project with different arrangements or colorways, then download them onto a computer and look at all the photos on the screen at the same time. That’s the easiest and best way to make a design decision—with all the choices in front of you.
The green and magenta circle motifs filled in the spaces between flowers, which made the lace seem sturdier. The extra color added richness and made the arrangement look happier and more natural. Okay, okay. Rich, happy, and natural wins over elegant any time.
But you know, that’s my opinion. You are free to make your own choices about arranging motifs, without any thought or fear about what anyone else thinks.
Here they are all pinned! I ran out of safety pins, which are preferable, but straight pins will do the job. Just be careful when you’re working with the straight pins—they can stab! Next step: sew the motifs together.
Crochet Charm Lace Along: Blocking Motifs
Ask any good craftsperson about finishing, and you will hear the same thing: finishing takes longer than you think it should, but finishing must be done, and must be done well. It doesn’t matter whether you’re sewing a dress, crocheting a sweater, or building a house.
That brings us to blocking, an essential part of finishing your work. Blocking is best practice. All the pros block their work.
A reader, writing about crocheted flowers, said “no worries, you can block it into shape!” But no, blocking is not a way to alter the shape of your crochet or to force it into a shape it wasn’t meant to be.
Blocking allows your stitches to assume their intended shape; it relaxes and sets the yarn so the stitches will retain their intended shape.
The stitches of crochet and knitting tend to pull in one direction or another, so they often cause your work to curl. My little Perspective Daisies are so curly they look like nine-legged spiders.
Blocking to the rescue! Here’s how to block small pieces, like flowers. You will need:
- A place to lay out your work to dry and maybe to pin into
- Water
- Pins (possibly)
- Steam iron
- Clean press cloth (optional)
Moisten crocheted piece. You can spray the piece with a mister, or hold a handful of flowers under the tap and squeeze out excess water.
Unfurl and stretch out all the bits that are meant to be flat. I did this for each and every daisy petal. That took some time.
If a piece still curls stubbornly, pin it flat.
You may stop here and simply let the items dry, epecially if your yarn will not take well to steam.
If you are going to steam your pieces, consider turning them face-down. This protects the public side of your piece in case the unthinkable happens (you know, scorching).
You may wish to use a press cloth to protect your pieces. Moisten and wring out a clean tea towel or cloth diaper. Lay it over the crocheted piece.
Bearing the weight of the steam iron in your hand, hold the iron over the pieces and let the steam penetrate the stitches. (The iron will release steam from the press cloth, too.)
Let the pieces dry, remove pins if necessary.
For a thorough discussion of blocking and its various uses, read Lily Chin’s Couture Crochet Workshop.
Watch for “Pinning Motifs” on November 15, 2013.
Paired Leaflet Frond Tutorial
Hello to Jan G. and her Knitting xxxx group! Jan asked for a tutorial about the Paired Leaflet Frond, which is part of the “Trillium and Fronds” pattern (pp. 126-127) in Crochet Garden. Thank you for asking!
The Paired Leaflet Frond’s delicate construction is worked from the top down, opposite of how we know a frond or vine grows. It does have a single top leaf, which you can see on page 16, where the Paired Leaflet Front is featured in the section on Steam Blocking. In the rest of the book, we used it as a stem, so the flowers are hiding the top leaf.
Reminder: In Crochet Garden, when you see a list of stitches, you are meant to put each stitch in the next st of the row below, unless otherwise instructed. For instance,
“2 hdc, sc, sl st” means
“hdc in next 2 sts, sc in next st, sl st in next st”
Once you have made the top leaf, *ch 15, which is the suggested number of stitches for the stem and first leaflet.
To make the first leaflet, sc in 3rd ch from hook, hdc in next 2 sts, 3 sc in next st. Those last 3 sts are going to cause this leaflet to bend back in the direction of the top leaf.
For most crocheters, this will be the left-hand leaflet. Photo A shows the frond up to this point. The arrow points to the st with 3 sc in it.
Now for the second leaflet: ch 6 (see Photo A2), sc in 3rd ch from hook, hdc2tog over the next 2 ch-sts, sc in next ch, sl st in the same st as the 3 sc from the first leaflet. This stitch will be stretched out, so you will be able to see it well.
Photo B shows the completed second leaflet. That last sl st is on the hook.
Here’s the tricky part. You need to turn the paired leaflets so that their base is up, their tips pointing down or toward you. When I rotate them counterclockwise, everything comes out in the right places: the top leaf hangs away from the hook, the yarn is behind the work and the hook in a sensible working position.
Now yarn over (see Photo C, which is at this point).
Pull the yarn through the st on the hook. The new stitch you create will show between the two leaflets (see Photo D, where the arrow points at this stitch). Now your are in the correct position to start again at the * and make as many leaflet pairs as you like.
You can make the distance between the leaflet pairs shorter or longer by chaining less or more than 15 sts at the beginning of each repeat.
Hope this helps, Jan!