Drying In
Last year about this time, the extremely efficient, thorough, and excellent builder, Callon Ratliff, agreed to finish the inside of our earthen house.
Before Callon could start installing windows and framing inside walls, my efficient, thorough, and excellent family team had prepared the house for drying-in. This is why, as related in the previous post, we worked in the cold and rain to finish the bond beam. Callon would soon be free to work on the house, so we had to hurry, hurry, hurry!
The finished bond-beam covered the south, west, and about two-thirds of the north walls of the house. Once it was cured, Jerry and Van attached angled sheet metal to the bond beam and the eaves. Callon and his crew attached M-panel sheet metal to the angles to span the area between the eaves and bond beam. My favorite part was when they closed in the western gable end.
Now the gable end is open.
Now the gable end is closed!
Crochet Charm Lace Along: Arranging Motifs
If you like jigsaw puzzles, you will love the next step in Crochet Charm Lace: arranging the motifs.
In the previous post, we talked about how to estimate the number of motifs you will need by crocheting enough motifs for one quarter of the project and arranging them. This turns out to be a great test run.
I arranged my Perspective Daisies and Ladder Leaves every which way. All the arrangements looked awkward to me, I think because of how difficult it was to point the leaves in random directions. Or they disrupted the roundness of the daisies too much.
Some of you will look at the photo above, the one with daisies and leaves, and say, “That looks good to me.” If you were making this particular project, I would say, “Go for it!” We all have different tastes, and we have to trust our gut feelings about what we like.
The leaves had to go, so what next?
All my Crochet Charm Lace projects so far have had small round motifs or in the case of the Rose Cape, small plain flowers. I crocheted a few one-round motifs of sc, and a few of hdc. The next photo shows how they look with the daisies. Better, I thought.
The green dots were a great improvement over the leaves, but I couldn’t resist experimenting a little further. The orange and green were bright and kind of acid-looking. I tried toning the brightness with some magenta-color dots, which were single rounds of sc and hdc like the green.
That was even better! Though oddly, it looks better in real life than it does in the photos. Weird. Oh, and also, these photos show the flowers facing up, because I could visualize the finished piece better that way. When I pin them to the template, they will be face-down.
By making only enough leaves for a quarter of the piece, I didn’t invest too much time in making leaves. One quarter is enough to test your main idea, and then you can go on to finish crocheting all the motifs!
I’m still working on the flowers, but they’re almost done. On November 11, arranging the motifs.
Bond Beams
The southern wall is the longest earthen wall in our house, so my friend Rachel and I were happy to lay its last brick in September 2012. My brother Van and our cousin Jerry came as quickly as they could, to begin work on the bond beam.
They set up frame boards and ran re-bar along the top of the walls. Our bricks were so sandy and dry that drilling holes for the metal stakes was an exercise in frustration. Van drilled the hole, the sand filled it back up. Finally we hit upon a solution: just add water! Drill, pour water in sandy hole, drill again, wet sand doesn’t fall back in. Yay!
It wasn’t until December that we finished pouring the bond beam for the great majority of the earthen walls. My sister-in-law Kathy joined us on a cold and miserable day to pour the north and west library walls and the bond beam for the infamous arch of a previous post.
The next day, in order to finish the southern wall, we worked in the rain until after dark. Jerry mixed concrete, I carried buckets of concrete and lifted them up to Van, and Van poured and smoothed the concrete.
We had around 40 bags of concrete for the southern wall and we knew we would probably use most of them. We were cold, tired, and sore. I don’t know how Van and Jerry managed. This is the trick I played on myself. I didn’t look at the pile of concrete bags. I didn’t look at the pile of empty bags. If Jerry poured me a bucket of concrete, I carried it; if there were no more buckets, I would know that we were done.
It wasn’t quite that simple—but that strategy kept me going almost to the end, when Van said, “I think we’ll need about two more bags.” At that point, pure relief kept me going, and the anticipation of a long hot bath.
Crochet Garden Giveaway! Deadline December 5th
Lark Crafts is giving away four crochet books, including Crochet Garden! Enter to win by leaving a comment on their blog post by 9 p.m. EST on Thursday, December 5. Here’s the link:
Crochet Charm Lace Along: Template and Motifs
Make a Template
Crochet Charm Lace can be any shape you want. All you need is a fabric template in that shape.
For the Flower Cloth Scarf in Crochet Garden, I used a piece of fabric the exact size I wanted the scarf to be. It’s just a long rectangle. In the photo, you can see that I used burlap. That’s what I had on hand that day. Since burlap frays so easily, I machine sewed a line of zig-zag stitch around the outside.
The Rose Cape template is sewn from a commercial pattern. I used some old double-knit fabric, which didn’t require any zig-zag stitch on the edges. Can you see the piece of cardboard I placed between the front and back of the cape? That was to keep me from pinning through both layers of the template.
I suppose you could use a garment for a template, as long as it won’t be ruined by the many pins you will use to hold the motifs in place.
Crochet Motifs
Crochet your chosen motifs, weave in ends, add details as necessary (like the centers of the Perspective Daisies), and block them. Motifs are much easier to arrange and pin after they are blocked.
The original plan for my Perspective Daisy table mat was to include the daisies and some leaves. Here they are on the ironing board. I held them under the water tap and squeezed the water out as best I could. I unfurled and stretched every petal, turned the flowers right-side-down, and steamed carefully with the iron.
How many motifs will you need to crochet? Good question!
Fold your template into quarters and mark the size of one quarter (1/4). I ironed the folded piece to set the creases. Then I could easily see how big 1/4 of my template was.
Crochet enough motifs to cover the marked area. Make sure the motifs you crochet represent the variety of motifs you will use in your finished project. I needed about 14 daisies to cover 1/4 of my table mat template.
Write a list of the motifs and how many you needed to cover 1/4 of the template. Multiply the numbers by 4 for an estimate of the total number of motifs you will need to crochet. My table mat will need about 14 x 4 = 56 daisies in all.
This method gives you a chance to experiment with arranging the motifs. I really wanted to have leaves among the daisies, but no matter how I arranged them, the leaves looked awkward. Regretfully, I put the leaves aside and used green crocheted circles as space fillers instead of leaves.
Here’s my list of daisies made with different yarns. I checked them off as I finished them.
On November 8, 2013: blocking motifs.
Crochet Charm Lace Along: Choosing Motifs
For Crochet Charm Lace, you need crochet motifs, like flowers and leaves. Naturally, I’d love for you to use patterns from my books. There are lots of other motifs to choose from, from birds and butterflies to sea creatures.
With all that choice, what do you do?
You can choose lots of different motifs, for a look the doily above, which I made some years ago for an article at crochetinsider.com.
You can choose a major motif and one or two accent motifs. The main motif from the pink Flower Cloth Scarf (see previous post) is the Twirl Center Rose; Paisley is the accent motif. Find patterns for both these motifs in Crochet Garden.
Or you can strike a balance between the two: several motifs, like in this sample where you see all the variations of Center-or-Not and the Plain Veined Leaf from Crochet Bouquet.
For my Crochet Charm Lace Along project, a table runner, I am going with option 2. After some trial and error, I decided to use the two variations of Perspective Daisy, along with lots of filler circles. At first it was also going to have leaves, but that didn’t work out.
Filler circles are meant to fill in the awkward spaces between motifs that are too small to fit a regular motif into, but too large to be acceptable. Filler circles are one round of sc, hdc, or dc. You will probably make lots of these. Tiny motifs work well for this, too.
On November 5, 2013, look for “Make a Template and Crochet Motifs.”
Crochet Charm Lace Along—Choosing Yarn
You’ve seen the pink Flower Cloth Scarf in Crochet Garden. You’ve seen the Roses Poncho.
“I want to do that, but I’m not sure how to get started!” you may be saying. Anyway, I hope you’re saying that, because I have been wanting to do a Crochet Charm Lace Along for a long time.
To make our Crochet Charm Lace projects, we will:
- Choose yarns and motifs.
- Crochet the motifs, weave in ends, and block.
- Arrange the motifs on a fabric template (it won’t be part of the final project). The template can be any shape. You choose how to arrange the motifs.
- Turn motifs face-down and safety-pin in to the template.
- Using yarn or thread, sew the motifs together wherever they touch.
- Remove safety-pins and turn your project right-side-up.
A reasonably-sized Crochet Charm Lace project, like a scarf or table mat, may take you around 3 weeks to a month, if you work steadily, a little each day. With the holiday season almost here, it seems that the end of January might be a good end date for us.
So let’s begin!
Choose yarns.
You can use any fiber, texture, or size of yarn. Why? Because you are making separate motifs and they don’t have to be any particular size. Okay, that’s a little too much choice for a lot of us. Here are a couple of suggestions for you:
- If you want to use lots of textures and sizes of yarn, then choose a limited color palette. See the Pink Scarf above.
- If you want to use lots of colors, then limit the textures and sizes of the yarn. The Trillium Scarf above is a good example. It is made with only one kind of yarn.
I am making a table mat for my Crochet Charm Lace Along project. My container of orange yarns is overflowing, so I pulled out lots of textures and weights of orange yarn.
It was a lot of orange. For a little relief, green seemed to be the answer. Here’s the orange, with and without the green.
This is a great project for using up yarn leftovers. Have a look through your stash and see what you can come up with!
On November 1, 2013, look for “Choosing Motifs.”
Halloween Success
My friend Marie, who is an excellent quilter and hostess, had the perfect pumpkin button to finish off my Candy Cornflower. Most impressive was the fact that she knew exactly where it was. Thank you, Marie!
I pinned the Candy Cornflower to my shirt and wore it all Halloween day at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. Like many of the people there, I enjoyed being with friends, shopping for craft supplies, and seeing thousands of gorgeous quilts.
Now that Halloween is done for the year, I hope you’ll consider crocheting the Candy Cornflower in different colors. Pattern in Crochet Garden.
Candy Cornflower Crochet Along with Improvements
It’s almost Halloween, and we still have a couple of days to crochet some Candy Cornflowers!
The idea for these flowers came straight from my childhood, when candy corn was practically a food group at Halloween. It’s called corn, so it must be a…veggie?
The pattern for “Candy Cornflower” is on pages 124-125 of Crochet Garden. Round 1 is pretty easy.
Things get more interesting in Round 2, where you create a common popcorn stitch to start the petals.
But first, how do you start a round with 6 hdc? To start the round with hdc, make a slipknot on your hook, yo, and draw up a loop in the first ch-2 sp as directed (Photo A). Yo again and draw through all 3 loops on hook to finish the first hdc (Photo B). Work remaining 5 hdc in same ch-2 space.
To popcorn-join this group of 6 hdc, enlarge the last loop of the last stitch. Take hook out of loop. Insert hook into the top of the first stitch of the group, then reinsert it into the last loop (Photo C). Pull the last loop through the top of the first st to complete popcorn (Photo D).
Before you start any petal after Rnd 2, take time to identify the stitches of the previous round, which you will be working into. And remember, in Crochet Garden, unless otherwise directed, each stitch (or stitches) goes into the next stitch of the previous round.
In Round 3, fourth line of pattern, change “petals of rnd 1” to “petals of rnd 2.” Unlike your usual popcorn stitch pattern, in this round, you work into the stitches of the previous popcorn, skipping the first and last hdc of each petal, for a total of 8 hdc per petal. The sts of these petals are also pulled together as you would join a common popcorn stitch (Photo E).
When you’re finished with Round 3, the underside of the flower looks like Photo F.
Since Crochet Garden was published, I have crocheted the Candy Cornflower several times, making what I hope are improvements to the pattern along the way. Here are my rewritten Rounds 4-6.
Improved Candy Cornflower Rnd 4: Ch 2 (counts as first hdc), hdc in next st, (2 hdc) in next st, hdc in next 2 sts, (2 hdc) in next st, hdc in next 2 sts, popcorn-join this group of 10 sts, ch 6. *Starting in first st of next petal, hdc in next 2 sts, (2 hdc) in next st, hdc in next 2 sts, (2 hdc) in next st, hdc in next 2 sts, popcorn-join this group of 10 sts, ch 6; rep from * 5 times, join with sl st to first hdc of rnd. Fasten off C. (Photos G and H show underside and topside of Candy Cornflower after this round.)
Improved Candy Cornflower Rnd 5: Join D with *hdc in first hdc of next petal, hdc in next st, (2 hdc) in next st, hdc in next 4 sts, (2 hdc) in next st, hdc in next 2 sts, popcorn-join this group of 12 sts, ch 4, sl st in next ch-6 sp, ch 4; rep from * 6 times, join with sl st to first hdc of rnd.
Improved Candy Cornflower Rnd 6: *Sk 3 sts of next petal, working in back loop only, (hdc2tog) 3 times, ch 1, sl st in next ch-4 sp, ch 2, sl st in next ch-4 sp, ch 1; rep from * 6 times, join with sl st to first st of rnd. This rnd bends to the back forming the top of the candy corn motif. Photo I shows Rnd 9 in progress.
Weave in the ends, block gently, and you have a Candy Cornflower!
One last note, in Crochet Garden, I mentioned that candy corn makes excellent false teeth and fangs. Two lovely models demonstrate in the photo below.
Third Time is the Charm OR Fallen Arches
After Charles and the kids built the arched window for our well-house, they pulled the wooden arch form out of the opening. We had ourselves a window! Here they are, posing in a totally (or should I say “toats?”) teenager fashion for the photo.
So with this good memory glowing in my mind, when Rachel and I finished this interior arch on the house, I said, “Let’s pull out the form and see the arch!”
The form caught a little on the earthen brick, so I tapped it gently with the hammer. Slowly it moved out from under the arch. Finally it came free from the arch and…
…the arch tumbled down!
Okay, okay. That was bad. I think the problem was that we tapped the arch form out instead of lowering it and then pulling it out. Well, we did lower it as much as we could, but it was catching on a little lip of earthen block at the bottom, so it wouldn’t lower enough.
Stoically, we vowed to rebuild it next time we worked. And we did. We finished just as Charles brought a couple of colleagues over to look at the house. “Charles, will you help us get this form out?” we asked. He did, because he’s a helpful guy and having more than two people for the job is best.
We removed the shims, we unscrewed the frame from the uprights and removed them. Charles gently lowered the arch form. He quickly realized he had better step out of the way, because…
…the arch tumbled down!
Charles’s colleague, Alex, has read widely about early Mexican and Native American building techniques. The literature of the time describes how people would glance up and scuttle hurriedly under freshly-built arches. “I can see now why they might have done that,” he commented.
We agreed that next time we built the arch, we would leave the form in for a couple of weeks. So we did. The arch is fine. The mud we used as mortar to hold the arch bricks together just needed time to cure. And here it is, sometime later, finished and ready for us to pour the bond beam on top of the wall.
