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.
Inspiration from Highlights
My daughters reread their past issues of Highlights for Children, so copies of the magazine are often sprinkled around the house. I admit I reread them, too, and always look for the hidden pictures. It’s such a fun publication.
In the spring of 2011 I was working hard to finish the last few designs for Crochet Garden. The deadline loomed. The large and unusual flower called Rafflesia was on my list as a possibility for the book. “Should I make a Rafflesia?” I asked myself again and again.
To delay having to answer my own question, I opened the nearest copy of Highlights. And there was an article called “This Flower Stinks!” about the Rafflesia.
I felt this was a sign that I should definitely make the Rafflesia. My version doesn’t stink, thank goodness. If you make it from bulky yarn, you can use it as a bowl for candies! I call mine Rafflesita, because it is a much smaller version of the original flower.
Thank you, Highlights!
Kitchen Lintel
Building a house can play games with your mind. It’s about space and defining space. It’s about seeing the trees over the wall one week, and barely seeing the tops of the trees over the much taller wall a couple of weeks later.
I like the game of opening up a space in the wall for a window. Suddenly you can see through the wall. As you build the wall higher, it becomes a frame around the outside scene. It’s an open-ended frame with unlimited potential. It could grow tall enough to frame the heavens.
The sensible lintel puts an end to all that romantic thinking. It caps the potential, it closes the frame. This is not a sad thing, though. It just focuses your attention on a certain view.
The lintel seems dominant when you install it. As you build the wall over the lintel, its visual impact gets smaller and smaller. Once the windows are in, you hardly notice the lintel.
Cover for New Book
You’ve probably heard the old saying, “Never judge a book by its cover.” Most people ignore this advice. A book’s cover is extremely important. Publishers analyze, fret over, and redesign book covers for maximum selling impact.
I love the covers that Lark Crafts designed for Crochet Bouquet and Crochet Garden, so I was eager to see what they came up with for Cute Crochet World.
The first glimpse I had of any of my book covers was on Amazon.com. And today was the day for Cute Crochet World! I saw it on the Amazon link here at the blog. Right away I clicked the link to see a larger view.
The cover is posted here for your convenience, though I wouldn’t mind if you clicked on the Amazon.com link!
Let’s say this is the cover for now. Sometimes they change. Fun!
House Building Update
In Summer 2012, my daughter Eva and her friends Beth and Tim worked with me to build walls for our Compressed Earth Block house. We finished the wall with four windows in it: two windows for each daughter’s bedroom. Then we moved on to the kitchen wall, which we were able to build about 5 feet tall before school started and took away my helpers.
In September 2012 the house looked like this. Here’s the southern wall, which is the longest wall in the house, measuring 80 feet. About 68 of those feet are made with earthen block. Charles and the teenagers and I installed the lintels ourselves. We rigged up a pulley, but still needed to guide and lift the heavy pieces with our own muscles.
Here’s that 4-window wall from the inside. Looking at this photo fills me with nostalgia! The place looks so different now. I’m glad we have photos to remind us of how the house developed.
Moving around to the northwest corner, you can see wooden frames around the top of the wall. Present day earthen buildings usually have a reinforced concrete bond beam along the top of the walls. Our bond beam is about 4″ tall, but since the walls are 2 feet thick, we used a lot of concrete.
Charles, our friend Brittney, and I poured this part of the bond beam one autumn day in 2011, using thirty-two 80-pound bags of concrete. A motorized conveyor that brought buckets of concrete up to scaffold level. But our muscles got a workout, carrying buckets from the mixer to the conveyor and lifting the buckets from the conveyor to the top of the walls.
Finally, here’s the northeast corner, an L-shaped section of wall nearly 80 feet long. Once we finished the rest of the house, this little section would seem like a breeze. You can see our stacks of bricks, all sorted by thickness, which varies with the moisture content of the soil. The blue thing is our brick machine, made by AECT, Inc. of San Antonio. Here’s a better photo of it:
Crochet Charm Lace is a New Name for Flower Cloth
Formerly known as Flower Cloth, Crochet Charm Lace is made of separately crocheted motifs, fitted together and pinned, right-side-down, on a waste-fabric template, then sewn together wherever they touch. The fabric is removed and the lace turned right-side-up.
Why the new name? My new book, Cute Crochet World, has lots of motifs that are perfect for the Flower Cloth technique, but they’re not flowers.
The inspiration for Crochet Charm Lace came partly from the quilting world. A charm quilt is patchwork, where every patch is from a different fabric. Since you can use yarns in different weights, colors, and textures, the “charm” part of the name seemed to make sense. I call it “lace” because the fabric has spaces that let the light shine through.
The first Crochet Charm Lace project I made was the enormous Rose Poncho. I crocheted dozens of Oval Center Roses, Simple Fives, and Rose Leaves (from Crochet Bouquet). For a template, I sewed a poncho using a commercial poncho pattern and some unfortunatey ugly fabric. I pinned the motifs to the template. Sewing all those motifs together took forever!
This doughnut-shaped doily is true to the “charm” aspect of Crochet Charm Lace, because of the many different yarns in the project. Find step-by-step photos and instructions at http://crochetinsider.com/article/crocheted-flower-fabric. All the motifs are from Crochet Bouquet.
The Trillium Flower Scarf is made from motifs from Crochet Garden. You can see step-by-step photos for putting the scarf together here.
Cute Crochet World: A Little Dictionary of Crochet Critters, Folks, Food & More
Quirky, eclectic, and just plain fun: with this adorable collection, crocheters can embellish clothing, decor, gifts, and more! Suzann Thompson, author of the popular Crochet Bouquet and Crochet Garden, has fashioned more than 60 irresistible motifs that fall into six categories: Critters, Food, Seasons, Growing Things, Home, and Toys, Tools, & Transportation, plus a few Martians thrown in!
This is the blurb for my newest crochet book, Cute Crochet World: A Little Dictionary of Crochet Critters, Folks, Food & More, which will be published in May 2014. It’s finally listed on Amazon, which means I can write about it!
Like the title says, it is cute as can be. I wish we could have a look at the cover, but for now we have to settle for “no image available.” I guess seeing the cover will be the next big thing to look forward to.
You can pre-order at Amazon.com.
Yarn & Coffee in Santa Fe to Host Author Visit
“Craft. Community. Inspiration.”
These wonderful words describe a shop which carries two of my favorite things: yarn and coffee!
Yarn & Coffee, in Santa Fe, NM, is hosting me for an author visit and book-signing on Saturday, October 19th, from 12 noon to 2 p.m. I will be demonstrating:
- how to make a flower cloth scarf, like the one in Crochet Garden (pictured here),
- and how to assemble a crocheted ribbon rose, like the Shelly Rose in Crochet Bouquet
I’ll be glad to sign your copies of my books, whether you bring your own or purchase one at the shop. We’ll have time to visit, so please bring a project to work on.
Hope to see you on the 19th at
Yarn & Coffee
1836 Cerrillos Road
Sante Fe, NM 87505
For more information, please phone (505) 780 5030.
New Crochet Charm Lace Scarf, Starring Televisions
For crocheters and fans of word play, here is the TelevisionStars Scarf. The motifs are from Cute Crochet World: “Vintage Television” (with regular antenna) and the Simple and Elementary School Stars of “Starry Night.”
The TVs are made with Classic Elite Liberty Wool. My stash of golden color yarns came in handy for the stars. You can use a wide range of weights and fibers of yarn in a Crochet Charm Lace scarf.
After finishing and blocking all the TVs and stars, I arranged them right-side-down on my scarf template (mine is a strip of burlap, but any sturdy fabric will do). Think of trying to fit a lot of oddly shaped pieces into as small an area as possible, and you’ll understand what arranging motifs for Crochet Charm Lace is like. The arrangement was fairly good, but a lot of spaces were too small to fit another star into, but too large to leave open.
I chose Lion Brand Cotton Bamboo “Cherry Blossom” for the filler motifs, because its pretty vintage color looked great with the old-fashioned televisions. Some filler motifs are single crochet sts worked into a ring; the others are half double crochet sts worked into a ring.
Once all the motifs were in place, I safety-pinned each motif onto the fabric template. It was time to sew. Through trial and error, I have learned that yarn makes sturdier seams than sewing thread. I split sewing lengths of one of the gold 4-ply yarns into two 2-ply strands.
After sewing about six inches of motifs together, I couldn’t wait to look at the finished product. Wow! I loved it!
On my way home from New York, one of my flights was cancelled because of storms in the Dallas area. While waiting for the next flight, I sewed stars and TVs. The new flights skirted around storms, adding 45 minute to the flight I sewed TVs and stars.
Back at home, I took out all the safety pins. The next step is my favorite part of Crochet Charm Lace: turn the finished piece right-side-up.
Happy Valentine’s Day with Daughters
Oh. My. Gosh. These last few months have been very busy for me! Our earthen house-building project has become intensely busy, and I think we will be able to move in by summer. And I’m writing another book.
With all this activity, some of my projects are sliding, and unfortunately, one of them is writing for my blogs. I hope to be posting more frequently and regularly by the beginning of June. In the meantime, please have a look at our progress on the house. Update in 2021: I’m still adding old posts to my new blog, so come back and check on the earthen house, every now and then.
My daughter Eva photographed the heart-shaped cow hoof-prints. My daughter Ella made the lovely yarn, button, and pompom Valentine’s Day bag. The flowery heart belongs to my Mom. A young man in her home village of Sorg, Germany, made many of these little sweetnesses as tokens for skiers, and gave her one.
