Socks for Ella and Me
Ella asked me to knit her a pair of socks. “Blue, please,” she said, very sweetly. She preferred a turquoise hue.
We already had the yarn: Patons Stretch Socks in colorway “Kelp.” The socks were finished in time for her birthday.
Since then, I finished another pair for myself in colorway “Plum.”
Here we are, modelling our hand-knit socks. Our feet are almost the same size, but hers are only nine years old.
I will soon have the smallest feet in the family. Yay! They won’t be able to borrow my sneakers anymore!
Crocheters, Knitters Do Essential Work
Crocheters, Knitters Can Make Radio Tubes!
Pennsylvania has a great online resource called the Access Pennsylvania Digital Repository, where you can find the actual pages of old newspapers, among other things. The best part is that you can search for specific words in these old newspapers. Amazing!
I was searching for biographical information about an old-time crochet designer, when this war-time ad appeared on the search list.
In the April 27, 1944 edition of The Ambler Gazette, page 3, National Union Radio Corporation of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, offered “Good Money for Girls and Women” for “Light, Clean, Easy, Interesting, and Essential Work.”
I love this part:
If you can sew, crochet or knit, you can learn to assemble radio tubes. It’s easy but a skill which will always be valuable to you. The tubes you help us make may save the life of some boy you know who has gone to war.
Employers of today should take notice! Knitting, crocheting, and sewing are skills that prepare people to save lives.
Valentine Project from New Book
For Valentine’s Day, Lark Crafts is offering a free crocheted Van Wyk Rose pattern from Crochet Garden. They’re hoping to make you fall in love with the book and buy it when it is released in May 2012.
The Van Wyk Rose is inspired by a painter named Helen Van Wyk. She made gorgeous flower paintings and taught her technique to others. She encouraged artists first to sketch the basic shapes in a flower, then add the petals and other details over this foundation.
Van Wyk’s sketch of the basic rose shape looked like a set of bowls nestled together. “That reminds me of a rose, even without the petals!” I said to myself. I hope you enjoy this easy-to-make design, named after Helen Van Wyk.
Quilt Fest Fun
When was the last time I was able to sit at my desk long enough to write a blog post? November, I think. We’ve done a lot since then! We did our usual December things, like school parties, a quilting ladies’ party, a band concert, and preparing for Christmas. And we also caulked and painted the inside of an entire house, organized lots of repairs and improvements on it, and filled it with furniture and other things one needs to live there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t our new earthen house, but it looks great anyway and it deserves its very own blog post.
So here I sit at my desk, and what do I see, but a pair of lovely earrings I bought at the Quilt Festival. Meg Hannan of Rag Sky Art Studio in Seattle made them with fiber millefiori. It’s the same idea as glass or polymer clay millefiori. For her earrings and pendants, she makes a roll of different color fabrics, fiber, and beads, soaked with liquid glue. When glue sets, she cuts the roll in cross-section to reveal designs that look like tiny, colorful fantasy worlds.
I’m planning a pinkish and salmon-colored sweater that will look great with these earrings.
Dusty’s Antique Linens and Buttons had baskets and baskets of vintage buttons that would have taken two hours to look at properly. For some reason—possibly that I’m planning a sweater in orange with teal, green, and other rich colors—I was drawn to the orange button baskets. These swirly fabulosities were cabochons from the 1970s or so, which were converted into shank buttons.
I have a sweater of moss greens on the drawing board as well. Thank goodness I already have a great selection of green Gail Hughes buttons and buttons to choose from, from a previous visit to Dusty’s.
Looks like a busy knitting year!
A Book Opportunity for YOU!
“There are so many wonderful flowers in nature, why would you want to design fantasy flowers?” asked a Crochet Bouquet Along member on Ravelry.
It’s true. Natural flowers are many and varied. I mean, look at this Antelope Horns milkweed that grew in our yard. What a strange and wonderful plant! Someday it will be the inspiration for some interesting and pretty crochet.
I love natural flowers, but I also love decorative flowers and fantasy flowers. Even as a kid, I was fascinated by artists’ interpretations of flowers in paintings, on greeting cards, on chinaware and tinware. A few brush strokes or a few simple shapes are all it takes to depict a natural flower.
Completely made-up flower designs give me a happy flower feeling, just like a natural flower would. Designing a fantasy flower is not a case of trying to improve on nature. Instead, it’s using nature as a jumping-off point for a flight of imagination.
Crochet Bouquet has a mix of natural-looking flowers and fantasy flowers; same with Crochet Garden. In fact, on the cover of Crochet Garden, the “O” of “Crochet” is my fantasy Samarkand Sunflower. A woven design on plate 31 of Treasury of Historic Folk Ornament (by Helmuth Theodor Bossert, Dover Publications, 1996) inspired it. It’s a woven interpretation of a flower, reinterpreted in crochet.
Having said that, I’ll bet that if you look far enough, you will find a natural flower that looks a lot like the Samarkand Sunflower.
Since I’m never going to stick exclusively to natural flower designs, here’s my suggestion:
- If you want lots of natural flower crochet designs, design them.
- After you have made a few samples, prepare a book proposal and start sending it to publishers, pitching it as a book of natural flower designs.
I think there’s still room for crochet flower books on the market, but not for long, so you’ll have to get going on this soon.
Better Late than Never?
Professor Wolfgang Michael was an expert on Reformation-era German theater. He taught at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also directed German language plays. I acted in several of his plays in the early 1980s. It was fun!
Dr. Michael wore Birkenstock sandals. No surprise there. He was a Bohemian academic. If he hadn’t worn them, we might have been concerned.
My friend Sheryl from Dallas is a professional in the world of finance and a great knitter. During a visit to Dallas in the early 1990s, I was truly surprised to see Sheryl wearing Birkenstock sandals. She said something like, “If I’m going to knit socks, I want to show them off!”
That sounded like a perfectly good reason to me.
Since this is to be my year for knitting socks, I asked for some Birkenstocks last Christmas. I like them a lot. Here are my Christmas sandals and my newly-finished socks. The yarn is Patons Stretch Socks (41% cotton, 39% wool, 13% nylon, 7% elastic) in colorway “,Sugar.”
More socks are on the needles.
Sugar Sock the First
Thanks to Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, when I finally had time to knit some socks, I didn’t need a pattern! At least 20 years ago, she taught a sock workshop in Central Texas, where we learned to knit socks from the toe up, trying them on as we went.
Once you have enough stitches to fit around your feet, you work even to your anklebone. Knit one-half round with a waste yarn, where you’ll come back later to add the heel. Knit a few rows plain, then make the ribbing as long as you want.
When my k2p2 rib was long enough, I made a stretchy, scalloped bind-off like this: k2tog, (yo, bind off one st) 5 times to form a little chain scallop, p2tog, bind off one stitch, (yo, bind off one st) 5 times, k2tog. Rep from * around, end with (yo, bind off one st) 5 times, cut yarn, stretch the last st until the yarn end comes out. Stitch the last st to the first st of rnd. Weave in end.
Sugar Sock the Second is about 1/3 finished. Hurray! I love hand-knit socks!
You Can Pre-Order Crochet Garden!
Just on a whim, I checked at Amazon to see if my new book is for sale yet. It is!
Crochet Garden will be released in May 2012, but you can reserve your copy by pre-ordering it at Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
This is the first time I’ve seen the cover, though the cover may change between now and next spring. This cover shows several designs from the book:
- “Sulfur Butterfly”
- “Samarkand Sunflower” in the O of ‘Crochet’
- “Grandmother’s Windmill Flower”
- “Trillium and Fronds” (the fronds are the stems of the flowers)
- “Russian Picot Daisy” featuring a little-known vintage crochet stitch
- buds from “Pinks of Any Color”
- another Trillium
- “Candy Cornflower”
- “Pasque Flower”
- and half of a “Mini-, Midi-, Maxi-mum”
I am looking forward to May!
Crafty Nautical Flags
Nautical flags are happy and colorful, and I just love them. But not only that, they actually spell stuff! I mean that each flag represents a letter of the alphabet.
In Polymer Clay for Everyone (my first book—oh yes, I love polymer clay, too), nautical flags decorate the top of a marine trinket box. And guess what!? They spell T-R-I-N-K-E-T-S.
Next time you’re near a Long John Silver’s restaurant, look for nautical flags that spell—can you imagine this?—E-A-T H-E-R-E. “Eat” is on the tall sign, and “here” is split in half on the long sign across the front of the building.
When Eva and I were at Disney World with her schoolmates, we saw this float in a parade. It spells D-U-C-K. (The K is in shadow at the bottom edge.) Whose float could that have been?
Someday I want to knit nautical flags into an afghan. Shouldn’t be too difficult. Garter stitch, I think. Then it will be up to you to unravel the hidden meaning.
Sunflower Earring Organizer
What could I make with the little sunflower I crocheted for the October Crochet Along? Another earring organizer! (See an earring organizer made with crocheted pansies here.)
My daughter likes green, which is convenient, because her school colors are green and yellow (okay, gold, but it usually takes the form of yellow).
I simply appliqued the sunflower on the corner of a sheet of kelly green plastic canvas.
Here are details:
Materials:
- 1 sheet of plastic canvas
- 1 spool of Wrights cording to coordinate with plastic canvas
- Embroidery floss
- The Sunflower from Crochet Bouquet (pages 71-72), made with Aunt Lydia’s No. 10 crochet cotton
- Fray-stopping adhesive
Instructions:
Start at the lower edge of the plastic canvas, about 3 inches from the right-hand corner. Leave a few inches of the cording hanging at the end, then use embroidery floss to whip stitch the cording around the outside edge of the plastic canvas. Tie on more embroidery floss as needed, leaving long ends.
Once you have sewn the cording all the way around, tie the beginning and ending ends of the cording in a square knot. Tack it at the back with embroidery floss. Tie off the embroidery floss, leaving long ends.
About 3 to 4 inches from the knot, make a coat of fray-checking adhesive about 1/2 inch long around on both ends of the cording. Let dry. Cut the cording through the 1/2-inch dried coat of adhesive. This will protect all the cut ends. If desired knot each end. You can see the adhesive at the ends of the cording in the picture. It slightly darkens the cording.
Weave the embroidery floss through stitches at the back of the piece. Dab a little fray-checking adhesive at each end. Let dry and then trim away excess embroidery floss.
Applique sunflower to the plastic canvas, placing it in the corner above the cording knot. Stitch each petal just inside the tip, so the tips will bend a little for a natural look.